Last Updated on Apr 8, 2020 by James W

When sellers first started to shift to websites from their physical stores, the shift was enthralling and almost magical. There was a lot to learn and experiment with. Fast forward to today, the age of digital transformation. The internet has changed the way we live our lives. E-commerce has brought shops at our fingertips, and a whole industry has popped up, full of exciting possibilities. The best advice for the e-commerce business owner of today is to build their business on the right channels at the right time. Consumers are doing more than 50 percent of their shopping online, and you must cater to this segment.

For the growing e-commerce business of today, here are the most important tips to gather the most profits in under 6 months:

Choose the right software

As an e-commerce retailer, you must be able to sense potential problems before they turn into bigger problems for your company. The software is a major part of any e-commerce business nowadays. This needs to be evaluated and addressed periodically to keep business tasks running smoothly. It can be any software which makes it easy for you to do business. Keep in mind things like

• Security and data governance issues
• Usability and user-friendliness
• Scalability
• Budget considerations
• CRM pipeline management
• Marketing
• Customer service excellence

The real problem for e-commerce business owners arises when the right software is not playing. The software of your choice must be scalable and simple to teach your employees. Only the right software can help you gain more conversions. The best way to choose the right software is to identify the needs of your business and then approach vendors for solutions.

Target your customers

You can’t sell successfully to everyone. That’s the first rule of e-commerce business. Know your target audience and where these people usually hang out on the internet. The first mistake many e-commerce business owners make is not to specify this crucial step of selling. It leads to wastage of time in the long run and many failed campaigns. Don’t waste time on tactics which do not convert. We started off promoting on social media, and that got us nowhere fast. After about six months in business we were connected with someone at a deal site, ran our first deal and it was a success,” says Jessica Geier from Raw Generation. After that, Jessica and her team spent time in searching deal site and approached them for business. It worked as a catalyst for their business growth, and they succeeded in their e-commerce selling experiment.

The moral of the story is not to go after deal sites; it is to go for things which are most relevant to your business and can get you the most selling rates in the shortest period. You will hit the right market in the least amount of time and will have more profit to plan out future campaigns. No one can figure out how to save dollars and invest them in the right way, but you can take help from analytics and make intelligent predictions.

Get free referrals

The best example of referral marketing comes from Uber and Dropbox. These companies offered a good deal of their services for free if one user agreed to share the service with his or her friends. A simple referral for these companies would mean free rides or a lifetime of free storage on the cloud. $0.00 is the future of business. If you want to create a buzz around your e-commerce business, offer something for free and turn customers into free ambassadors of your business. Apart from referral-based tactics, you can deploy many other tactics to benefit your customers.

Cameron Parker turned his leggings business into a multimillion-dollar enterprise simply by paying attention to his user base. He frequently travels to countries where he has ambassadors. He remains in contact with these people through 80 Facebook groups which are active and buzzing with activity. Black Milk Clothing is a cult of fans who love leggings so much that other brands would be jealous of this fanbase. When you turn your users into ambassadors, you have to spend $0 on marketing and promotions. Cameron had a unique vision of turning leggings from a boring clothing item into an attractive piece of daily wear. My marketing budget is zero dollars. I didn’t spend a cent on advertising, don’t do AdWords, don’t do campaigns, don’t spend any money at all. The whole growth has been purely organic word-of-mouth, building, I guess, a tribe of followers that basically run around the world promoting the product.

Make checkout easy

If you want customers to be happy with your business and visit the store later for more business, make checkout as smooth as possible. Make sure that your customers are not getting frustrated by complicated checkout procedures and they are satisfied with the payment gateways. Look at these stats Baymard compiled to make you aware of the dangers your business can face if you ignore checkout:

• 61 percent people abandon checkout because of a secret price popping up at the end of the checkout which may include shipping or any other charges
• 35 percent people abandon checkout because they don’t want to create an account
• 27 percent agreed that they abandoned checkout because it was too long or complicated
• 22 percent leave because the website was lagging

Moreover, Baymard also calculated that $260 billion are recoverable through fixing the checkout process. Sites can see an improvement of 35 .26 percent by fixing their checkout.

Quality content

Create high-quality content and promote it through the right platforms to have the most sales during the first year of business. High-quality content is further described as relevant and unique information which brings the most engagement. You can get more conversions if you provide information which no one else has provided before. Educating your leads on the site and then diverting them to the e-commerce site is a good idea for e-commerce business looking to hit two birds with one stone.

Richard Lazazzera, the founder of Finch Goods, has these examples of content which you can incorporate into your blog or main site. Lazazzera is also the founder of A Better Lemonade Stand and contributes actively to e-commerce blog sites across the globe.

• Upsell
  
• Newsletters
  
• Abandoned cart emails to remarket
  
• Referral offers
  
• Exit-intent popups
  
• Retargeting
  
• Customer loyalty programs
  

Last word

For those planning to grow a business in the current e-commerce market, the best way is to educate and gain inspiration from those who tried and succeeded with their growth hacking techniques. The more success stories you read, the more encouraged you will feel to achieve your target. Is there a story you want to share with us? Tell us in the comments below:

AUTHOR BIO

ABOUT Erica Silva

Erica Silva is a blogger who loves to discover and explore the world around her. She writes on everything from marketing to technology, science and brain health. She enjoys sharing her discoveries and experiences with readers and believes her blogs can make the world a better place.

Find her on Twitter: @ericadsilva1