Growth hacking strategies for ecommerce that lift sales

The best growth hacking strategies for ecommerce are fast, measured experiments on the moments where shoppers decide to buy: how fast the page loads, how easy checkout is, whether they trust the product and what else they add to the cart. Test one change at a time, keep what lifts conversion or order value, and drop the rest.

What is growth hacking for ecommerce?

Wikipedia describes growth hacking as a marketing specialty focused on rapid growth, built on frequent experiments such as A/B tests. Sean Ellis coined the term "growth hacker" in 2010.

For an online store, that means treating every part of the customer journey as something to test, from the ad that brings a visitor in to the email that brings them back. The tactics below can help you:

• Increase conversion rate
• Raise average order value
• Get more product reviews
• Win back visitors who did not buy
• Lower the cost of each sale

For a broader view, see our guides to growth hacking strategies for startups and ecommerce marketing strategies.

1. Make your site fast

Slow pages lose buyers before they see the product. Google's Core Web Vitals give a practical target. A page counts as good when, for at least 75% of visits:

• Largest Contentful Paint (the main content loading) is 2.5 seconds or less
• Interaction to Next Paint (how fast the page responds to a tap or click) is 200 milliseconds or less
• Cumulative Layout Shift (how much the layout jumps around) is 0.1 or less

Check your scores in Google Search Console or PageSpeed Insights. Common fixes are compressing product images, removing unused apps and scripts, and lazy-loading content further down the page. Read more in our post on Core Web Vitals.

2. Remove friction from checkout

Checkout is where most sales are lost. Baymard Institute's average across 50 studies puts the online cart abandonment rate at 70.22%. In its survey of US shoppers who abandoned an order (excluding those just browsing), the top reasons were:

So the fastest wins are usually: show the full price, shipping included, early; offer guest checkout; cut form fields; and show trust signals such as returns policy and secure payment near the pay button. Baymard estimates that large ecommerce sites could raise conversion by 35.26% through better checkout design alone.

Then win back the people who still leave. Our guide to shopping cart recovery campaigns covers the emails.

3. Use reviews as social proof

Reviews reassure buyers who cannot touch the product. The Spiegel Research Center at Northwestern University found that a product with five reviews was 270% more likely to be bought than one with none, and that the effect was larger for higher-priced products. It also found that purchase likelihood typically peaks at average ratings between 4.0 and 4.7, because a perfect 5.0 can look too good to be true.

Make reviews easy to leave, with a follow-up email after delivery, and show them close to the price and the buy button. Keep them honest: in August 2024 the US Federal Trade Commission announced a rule banning fake reviews, buying reviews with a particular sentiment and suppressing negative ones. See also our glossary entry on social proof.

4. Make "Add to cart" impossible to miss

Your "Add to cart" and "Buy now" buttons should be the most visible elements on the product page. There is no single best colour. What matters is strong contrast with the rest of the page, a clear label and a position near the price, visible on mobile without scrolling. Test variations with split testing rather than guessing.

5. Recommend related products

"Frequently bought together" and "Customers also bought" sections help shoppers find what they need and raise order value. Amazon described its item-to-item recommendation method in a 2003 IEEE Internet Computing paper, and many ecommerce platforms and apps now offer similar recommendation blocks. Our posts on cross-selling and upselling explain how to choose what to recommend.

6. Add a wish list or "save for later"

Not everyone is ready to buy on the first visit. A wish list gives them a reason to come back and gives you a signal of intent. With the shopper's permission, you can email them when a saved item is back in stock or drops in price.

7. Offer the payment methods your buyers use

Baymard's survey found that 9% of shoppers who abandoned checkout did so because there were not enough payment methods. Look at what your customers expect in each market: cards and digital wallets everywhere, plus local options such as bank-based payments in some countries and buy-now-pay-later where it fits your product. Your payment provider's data shows which methods your visitors try to use. Read more about keeping transactions secure.

8. Use discounts carefully

Coupons work, especially in exchange for an email signup, but they train customers to wait for deals if overused. Set limits per customer, track redemptions and use them for specific goals, such as a first order or winning back a lapsed buyer.

If you sell in the EU, follow the price reduction rules. Under Article 6a of the Price Indication Directive, any announced price reduction must show the prior price, which is the lowest price you charged in at least the 30 days before the reduction.

9. Use exit-intent offers without blocking the page

A dialog shown when a visitor is about to leave can rescue a sale with a discount, free shipping offer or reminder of what is in the cart. Be careful with pop-ups that cover the page. Google says intrusive interstitials and dialogs can hurt search performance and recommends small banners instead. Keep exit offers easy to close and show them once, not on every page.

How do you run these as growth experiments?

1. Pick one metric to move, such as checkout conversion or average order value.
2. Choose the tactic most likely to move it, based on your data and the research above.
3. Run an A/B test long enough to reach a reliable result.
4. Keep the winner, document what you learned and move to the next test.

Pair this with our guide to conversion rate optimisation strategies for more test ideas.