In a previous article, we discussed the top tips for creating a successful online store. Once you have your e-commerce site established, it’s crucial that you continue to grow your business. This growth is necessary to stay relevant for today’s online consumers and to offer a seamless, enjoyable virtual shopping experience for your customers. Let’s take a closer look at some tips to help grow your e-commerce site.

1. Improve Your Customer Service

As an e-commerce site, you most likely have a solid customer service team. This team plays a crucial role in helping answer customers’ questions, providing assistance with placing, returning, or refunding orders, and offering technical assistance with using your site. Since today’s customers expect 24/7 support, it may be difficult to offer this with your team alone. 

A great way to improve your existing customer service is to implement a chatbot application on your site. A chatbot is an automated customer service software system that provides online chat communication without human interaction. This allows customers to contact you via the chatbot regardless of the day or time. When your chatbot answers their questions promptly and efficiently, this increases the likelihood that customers will purchase your products and/or services. In turn, this will help drive site conversions, profits, and brand loyalty. After all, customers will be more willing to support a business that is attentive to their needs and doesn’t make them wait or hunt down someone to contact.

2. Engage with Content Creation

Did you know high-quality, educational content makes customers 131 percent more likely to purchase from a business? Indeed, content creation is a powerful way to help your e-commerce business grow. Specifically, quality blog posts can help you rank better on search engines, increase your site’s visibility, share your expertise in your niche market, and educate your target audience about topics they are interested in.

Content Tips:

  • Post blog posts or email newsletters at least once a week.
  • Focus on educational content that is interesting and relevant to your target audience.
  • Optimize your content using relevant keywords to help visitors find your site.
  • Hire a professional content creation team if you need help with researching, planning, and creating long-form content.

3. Connect on Social Media

Just like writing weekly blog posts and sending out newsletters, posting high-quality, relevant social media content is a great way to connect with both existing and new customers. Social media platforms allow you to reach potential customers and get your target audience involved in how to grow your site regarding products and services, site improvements, and content. 

As an e-commerce business, Facebook and Instagram are popular platforms to promote your products and services, share upcoming discounts and sales, share links to your latest blog posts, and get to know your customer base. 

Social Media Tips:

  • Post social media content multiple times a week, such as every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.
  • Use a combination of different types of content, such as promotional, educational, and even inspirational posts (i.e. Motivational Monday posts).
  • Publish your social content across various platforms, such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn. This helps reach a greater audience as not everyone uses the same platforms.

4. Expand Your Customer Base with Email Marketing

If you do not have an email sign-up CTA (call-to-action) button on your site, this can significantly prevent you from growing your e-commerce customer base. Email marketing is an excellent way to reach new potential customers, boost your sales, and grow your business. As your customer base grows, your email marketing can help you continue to build a lasting business relationship with your customers.  

Email Marketing Tips:

  • Add an email sign-up CTA to your site’s home page for new customers, which provides a discount on their first purchase.
  • After a customer makes a purchase, have an email sign-up button to receive special offers and upcoming news on sales, product releases, and educational how-to guides related to your business.
  • Strike a good balance for sending out emails, such as once or twice a month. Be careful not to annoy customers with frequent emails!
  • Send emails for customers’ birthdays. This is a delightful way to make your customers feel appreciated and valued, which boosts customer loyalty too.

5. Personalize the Shopping Experience

Around 80 percent of online customers are more likely to buy a product or service from an online store that offers a personalized shopping experience. Indeed, today’s online customers prefer a shopping experience that is tailored to their specific needs. A personalized shopping experience displays relevant products and services to every customer, rather than displaying the same items for everyone. 

Personalized Shopping Tips:

  • To personalize each customer’s shopping experience, gather useful data about their interactions with your site. This includes which keywords they used to find your site and their time of visit, interests, gender, location, and age. Use Google Analytics, Google Search Console, and other applications to gather this key information.
  • Provide products or services related to the product’s page they are currently viewing. This can help drive more sales and improve the overall shopping experience for customers.

As you can see, there are several approaches to grow and improve your e-commerce site. Since more people are shopping virtually, it’s important to keep finding new ways to stay relevant for your target audience. This will help increase your site’s conversions and profits, as well as lead to customer loyalty and provide great value for customers. If you are in need of an affordable, digital business partner, contact Awesome Website Guys based in Wilmington, NC.