Growth hacking is one of the most popular buzzwords that is floating around in the digital marketing space today.
The term is used to describe the concept that every content and marketing strategy you create and implement should have a strong focus towards driving growth to your business. Growth hacking has traditionally been a strategy that was reserved for how online services and startups gain new users and customers.
But with recent widespread adoption of growth hacking strategies more and more businesses are starting to take notice. In this article we will take a look into growth hacking strategies for ecommerce that can help you boost sales and increase your brand awareness.
Table of contents
- Improve Your Website Speed
- Create Smooth Navigation Throughout The Sales Process
- Use Reviews as Social Proof
- Use Attention Grabbing Buttons For “Add to Cart” and “Buy Now”
- Build a Section of Recommended Products and Frequently Bought Together
- Include a Wish List Option
- Offer Multiple Payment Options
- Offer Customers Coupons and Deals
- Use Action Driven Exit Pop-Ups
These growth hacking strategies can help you accomplish some the following for your ecommerce business and brand:
- Increase conversions
- Decrease your ad spend
- Increase average order value
- Get more website and product reviews
- Gain more social media followers
- Develop influencer relationships
- Automate components of your ecommerce business
- Improve your website experience
So let’s take a look at some of these awesome growth hacking strategies that you can implement inside your ecommerce business that can seriously grow your sales and increase your brand awareness.
#1 Improve Your Website Speed
Website speed is oftentimes an overlooked component that can have a serious impact on your sales conversions and perception of your brand.
If website visitors have to wait an extremely long time for a web page to load in order to purchase a product or service, they will simply leave.
According to a study conducted by Akamai in 2017 a small 100 millisecond delay in page response has been shown to decrease conversion rates by up to 7%.
They also reported that a two-second delay in web page load time increases bounce rates by nearly 104%.
Mobile optimization and speed is even more crucial. Akamai reported that 53% of mobile visitors will leave a webpage that takes longer than 3 seconds to load. Mobile traffic is nearly half of all internet related traffic and your conversion could be seriously struggling if your website loads slowly.
Recommended Reading: Akamai Online Retail Performance Report: Milliseconds are Critical
Simply put, if your website and all of its related pages don’t load in under 3 seconds, it could have a serious impact on your sales revenue.
Our number one recommendation to check your website speed is GT Metrix. It’s a completely free online tool to use that will help you check your website speed and identify where it could use improvements in order to load faster for your visitors.
#2 Create Smooth Navigation Throughout The Sales Process
Nothing is more frustrating for a customer than not being able to purchase a product quickly and navigating around a product or sales page.
It’s important that you properly integrate and test your product pages along with your sales checkout pages. Put yourself in the customer’s shoes and experience the sales process they go through and ask yourself this.
Can the client complete their purchase in under 5 clicks?
If you answered no to this question, then your product and sales page process is too long. Checkout Amazon’s product to sales page integration and see how seamless and easy the process is. You can go ahead and purchase a product in under 5 clicks.
This is speed, simplicity and money in your pocket.
Reading tip: How to build a sales Cadence that converts leads efficiently
#3 Use Reviews as Social Proof
Reviews are one of the quickest ways to increase your conversion rates. They play a vital role in helping your online store convert at a much higher rate.
Not only should you have product reviews, you should have them placed strategically on your ecommerce store and product page.
Newegg.com does a great job of displaying the location and color scheme of reviews on their product pages and they also provide in depth interactions about the product from customers who have purchased and used the product.
Product Page
Product Review Section
It’s extremely easy for the customer to get further information about the product and see all areas of concern that they may have about the product. This is especially important for complicated products like computers.
Reviews provide that extra push and reassurance to help buyers make their purchasing decisions and can have a serious impact on your sales conversions.
Pro tip: get more reviews with the right tool
#4 Use Attention Grabbing Buttons For “Add to Cart” and “Buy Now”
The two most important buttons for your ecommerce website are the “Add to Cart” and “Buy Now” button. It should come as no surprise that the color of these two buttons should be extremely noticeable on the product page.
The two most noticeable and popular colors that are used for ecommerce stores are orange and red. They are the two colors that pop out the most to the naked eye and help visitors navigate to when they are ready to buy.
These buttons should also be placed in easy to spot positions inside your product pages. It will help drive your conversions higher and make things easier for your customer.
A combination of a bold “Add to Cart” or “Buy Now” and a strong website and product page design will help your customers convert higher.
Checkout the following product page by Aliexpress below.
You can visibly see the buttons and the product is displayed professionally across the webpage.
#5 Build a Section of Recommended Products and Frequently Bought Together
Amazon has been known to do a great job of recommending products to their customers and showing frequently bought together items in order to help boost their sales.
This is a very small but powerful tactic that can help increase your average order value and help your customers find other products that they may have never considered.
Checkout the examples below.
Recommended Products (Protein Powder)
Frequently Bought Together
This helps customers further explore your website and gain an idea of what other people are purchasing for the type of product that they are looking for.
#6 Include a Wish List Option
Not every customer that views a product page is going to buy it that same time. People have budgets and are paid at different times of the month. They might want a way to come back to that product when they are ready to buy it.
Having a wish-list option on your ecommerce store is a great way for clients to give themselves a reminder that they wanted to buy a product.
Including a wish-list option on your website also enables you to offer discounts to your customers that have made purchases on your store previously.
If some time has passed since they last visited your website, you can send them a small discount for the item that they added to their wish list.
This is an incredibly useful way to increase your conversion and help customers feel like you are thinking of them and giving them value.
#7 Offer Multiple Payment Options
It’s very important to give your customers multiple ways of paying for a product or service because every buyer is different and every buyer transacts with different options.
You could potentially lose on a sale because you don’t have the payment option that a potential client uses.
Having multiple payment options also shows your buyers that you work with multiple vendors which gives your website more credibility and improves the likelihood that customers will buy from you in the future.
#8 Offer Customers Coupons and Deals
People love the idea of getting some below retail price. They simply love to save money anytime they get the chance. Coupons are the way to help them do that. It’s a good idea to incentivize with coupons in exchange for their email address.
This way they can get the product at a lower cost and you can also add them to the newsletter. This will allow you to turn them from a simple website visitor to a loyal customer. It’s important to note that closely monitor and manage your discounts so people don’t abuse them.
This can be done with the use of a coupon website. Checkout some of the best coupon sites to help you find deals for your online shopping
Recommended Reading: Best Coupon Sites For 2020
#9 Use Action Driven Exit Pop-Ups
It’s no question that pop-ups can be annoying to visitors, but they can be very valuable to ecommerce website owners. If a customer accidentally clicks to exit your website it can prevent you from getting a sale.
Strategically placed exit pop-ups on posts that have buyer intent are extremely valuable to have on your ecommerce website.
The great thing about exit pop-ups is the fact that they can help you rescue a sale. You can place them on product checkout pages or sales carts and if a visitor decides to leave they can pop up and display a coupon which can entice them to buy.
If you have own an ecommerce website which has heavy traffic you would be surprised how much of a sales lift you can see over the course of a year if you implement exit pop-ups on product and sales pages.
Conclusion
These growth hacking strategies can have a serious impact on your ecommerce sales and brand awareness and are extremely cost effective to implement. With the ever changing ecommerce market and demands by customers it’s important to innovate and provide extreme value whenever possible.
These simple yet effective strategies can have a tremendous impact on your ecommerce sales and brand.