Boost Ecommerce Sales: 10+ Expert Strategies for Rapid Growth

The western genre, and its modern-day equivalent space exploration, captures our imaginations because to be an explorer, adventurer embarking out into the unknown and creating our own path is what many people desire.

Entrepreneurs are these new cowboys and space explorers.

Names like Steve Jobs, Richard Branson, and Elon Musk are now etched in our history and culture because they created business for things we didn’t even know would benefit our lives.

The last two are even looking to explore the stars – evermore encapsulating the image of space cowboys.

However, few are bold enough to take the first step into the unknown.

A Harvard Business School study found that 75% of venture-backed startups fail.

A high failure rate can seem discouraging, however, rugged outdoorsman Theodore Roosevelt said,

Entrepreneurship is not for the faint of heart, and launching an ecommerce business is not an easy task.

The good news is, you don’t have to embark into the unknown by yourself.

Tactics To Improve Ecommerce Sales

We’ve gathered 53 experts to provide proven tactics and strategies that will help increase your ecommerce sales.

Let’s dive in.

1. Build your brand awareness.

Grow Your Brand and Trust

Brand awareness impacts trust (which impacts sales), repeat purchases, and even SEO.

The more people know (and trust) your brand name, the higher your sales will grow.

To improve brand awareness, focus on quality.

Create high-quality content, consider influencer partnerships, partner with other businesses in your industry, don’t neglect paid ads, and be active on social media.

– Bill Widmer, Content Marketing & SEO Consultant

Lon Safko, CEO, LonSafko.com

Be everywhere.

You need to have all of your pages SEO’d with great content and really good images that have been tested.

You have to have a strong presence on Facebook, and depending upon your product, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest.

Work all channels to drive prospects to your ecommerce location.

Jason Greenwood, Founder Greenwood Consulting & eCommerce Manager HealthPost NZ

Build your brand authority & affinity.

Josh Braaten, CEO, Brandish Insights

Build awareness.

Most companies battle for the expensive conversion terms.

Eric Yonge, CEO, EYStudios

Use the full force of digital marketing to get people to your site but then make sure it is VERY easy for people to add to cart – the more buttons or steps it takes to checkout, the more likely people are to abandon their cart.

2. Build email lists and use email marketing to stay engaged

Build and Effectively Manage Your Email Marketing Strategy

Build your email list and get really good at email marketing.

Other channels (i.e. Periscope, Facebook, Instagram) will come and go, but you always own your email list.

Don’t take that responsibility and opportunity lightly.

– Jonathan Anderstrom, President, Creed Interactive

Chloe Thomas, Marketing Problem Solver, eCommerce MasterPlan

Email marketing.

Too many don’t do it, or don’t do it well.

It’s not hard, it’s not SPAM, GDPR didn’t kill it.

Use it to build a relationship with your customers.

Emil Kristensen, CMO & Co-founder, Sleeknote

My top piece of advice would be to continually look to grow your email list with quality leads.

Ecommerce companies are often at the mercy of Facebook and Google, and if they decide to make changes to their policies you could end up significantly worse off.

In contrast, you actually own your email list, so no amount of policy changes will be able to stop you from being able to directly interact with your customers through email.

Another benefit of having an email list of relevant leads is that it supports repeat purchases.

In a world where competing on price is becoming the norm, being able to directly contact customers to encourage repeat purchases is more important than ever.

Finally, qualified email leads allow for abandoned cart emails to be sent out.

Not only does this reduce the amount of revenue lost due to a purchase not being completed, but it also enables you to take advantage of further upselling opportunities.

Kaleigh Moore, freelance writer, kaleighmoore.com

Leverage that email list for more than just discounts and sales.

Show life behind the scenes, tell stories, and make customers feel like part of your family.

It may not have immediate ROI, but it’s a long-haul play that always converts.

Jeff Sauer, Founder, Jeffanalytics

Grow your email list through organic search efforts, and sell to your email list more often.

Shayla Price, B2B Marketer

Email marketing holds the answer for online brands with a desire to increase their sales.

Right now, most companies possess tangled email systems with stale subscriber lists and poor follow-up sequences.

It’s time to take control of your email marketing to truly nurture your leads and retain more customers.

Start by segmenting your lists to send personalized messages to your audience.

You also want to create workflows that adjust with the subscriber’s behavior.

There’s power in your email list.

Use it to boost your sales.

George Hartley, CEO and Co-founder, SmartrMail

I’m biased here, but email!

Send relevant email regularly to your customers.

They’ve opted in because they like your products, so use it to engage.

Use a tool like SmartrMail to set up email automation funnels, and custom product emails, and it will create ongoing personalized engagement.

3. Meet your customers where they are on social media

Drive More Traffic With Facebook Advertising

It’s one of the best ways to drive new visitors to your store, convert them into paying customers and re-engage them to buy even more.

According to Adweek, the average return on investment from Facebook Ads in ecommerce is 152%, and it’s the largest social media referrer for ecommerce orders.

Not advertising on this channel is a major missed opportunity for online brands.

The best part: it’s easier than ever with tools like Vantage that specialize in Facebook ads for ecommerce to build and launch campaigns that drive sales.

– Paige Gerber, Head of Marketing, Vantage

Rupert Cross, Digital Director, 5874

Facebook dynamic product ad retargeting is the lowest-hanging fruit most online brands aren’t doing.

Without it, leads with showed intent are disappearing!

But it is crucial that it is properly set up, along with the advertising sets.

Mike Pisciotta, Co-founder, Marketing Your Purpose

Take control of your Facebook Ads.

Use what I call the “ad stacking method,” which is a heavy focus on segmenting every single visitor based on actions they do or don’t take on your ecommerce store and then placing the right message in front of them at the right time based on where they are in the conversation, AKA your marketing funnel.

Instead of leaning on Facebook’s algorithm for advertising success, set up your ads using custom audiences, inclusions, and exclusions, so you can show an ad based on what action they have or haven’t taken yet.

Jeremy Howie, CEO, Enlightened Marketing

You need to bring back 98% of your prospects.

Many ecommerce owners don’t have their Facebook pixel completely set up in their ecommerce store, let alone installed.

With that said, make sure you have a Facebook pixel installed on your website.

Secondly, make sure that you have the various events like Add to Cart or Purchase Events set up so Facebook knows what actions your visitors to your store have or haven’t taken.

When you have segmented custom audiences following events, you wield a powerful asset that you can use to generate ROI from using Facebook ads, in addition to creating cold audiences from these groups of website visitors by taking advantage of Facebook’s ability to create lookalike audiences.

4. Improve your conversion rate by testing, testing, and testing

Test and Test to Avoid complacency.

Be tireless with optimizing your online store and marketing channels for increasing conversion rate.

If you haven’t tried 50+ changes to your approach to see how it impacts your metrics, you haven’t experimented enough.

– Nick Raushenbush, Cofounder, Shogun Landing Page Builder

Maddy Osman, SEO Content Strategist, The Blogsmith

Always be testing.

If you’re not achieving the goals you set for yourself, dig into your analytics to figure out where people are dropping off.

Then, make a hypothesis about why that part of the process is so conversion-killing.

Next, A/B test different versions of just that one element so that you can truly isolate what’s happening.

Make it a habit to regularly test different aspects of your ecommerce website that you know could be improved.

Pat Petriello, Head of Marketplace Strategy, Tinuiti

Use data to make smart future decisions instead and never ever stop trying new things.

Zach Heller, Marketer, zachheller.com

Conversion Rate Optimization.

You should constantly be A/B testing the various elements of your website – from button placement and color, to calls to action and product photography.

Test to lift conversion rate in tiny increments over time and you will end up with a whole lot more sales.

Casey Armstrong, CMO, ShipBob

Make the purchase and checkout process as easy as possible.

With so many 1-click buy options, such as PayPal, Amazon, and Apple, you need to reduce as much friction as possible.

After that, make sure you offer next-day or 2-day shipping.

For more complex sales, using electronic signature software can boost your average sale price by 18%.

Don’t give people reason to not buy when you can control these factors and don’t give them a reason to start searching elsewhere.

Jason Ehmke, Senior Client Data Analyst, AddShoppers

Make your product easy to buy.

Don’t make your customers have to work to buy from you.

Do you really need someone to create an account before they purchase, or can it be a part of the checkout process?

The easier it is for a customer to make a purchase, the more likely they are to buy.

Cory Barnes, Digital Marketing Manager, Kelty

Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO).

You can drive all the traffic in the world to your site, but if your conversion rate sucks, it’s all for naught.

Take a hard look at every aspect of your site.

• What could be better?
• What are your competitors doing?
• How does it look on mobile/tablet?
• How fast is it?
• What do your customers/users think?

Get unbiased opinions.

Not everyone’s going to agree, so test.

Test, test, test.

Keep the process going all the time.

It isn’t good enough to redesign your site every few years.

You must be making improvements all the time.