Double Your eCommerce Revenue in 18 Months

Looking to grow your ecommerce store revenue? I’m going to show you the strategy we use to help our ecom clients do just that. This can work for large and small online stores…the question is: how fast can you implement and scale what’s working?

Today I want to talk about revenue and growing an ecommerce business. It’s going to take a departure from the blog as I’m not writing about Google Ads. We are going to cover how you can build up your ecommerce store revenue and make your business more profitable this year. We are also going to show you how this can work on Facebook, which we find is a great partner with email. You can of course do all of this on Google and Bing too.

What’s your biggest issue when you run an ecommerce store? Revenue? Acquiring customers? Being profitable on all if not 90% of your sales? When I talk with friends in the industry or even potential clients, it seems all 3 can be an issue as every business is at a different stage of their growth. Today I want to share some ways we can solve these problems and help turn businesses around. This is about peeling back the layers and really staying focused on doing the hard work. It’s not fun nor is it sexy but when you double your revenue in 18 months, you’ll know it’s worth it. Hell, even if you increase your revenue by 50% or even 30% from the past year, you will be doing better than most businesses out there.There are three areas you should be working on should you want to increase your revenue:

One final point, a lot of what I’m sharing today is based on working with non-drop ship ecommerce shops and online brands. This may or may not work for a drop ship brand but remains to be seen. Now let’s talk about how you are going to grow with these three areas over the next 18 months.

Customer Acquisition

Most businesses will have 2 or 3 channels that they get 80% of their customers from each month. That may be Google Ads, Facebook or even Instagram. However, even if you spend 80% of your time and effort on these channels, there are other opportunities you should be looking at to acquire more customers.

We see a lot of brands get stuck on the 80/20 rule and though it holds true for digital marketing and customer acquisition, we believe strongly in incremental growth for any brand. Today’s hot brands may not be here in 2030. Even branching out to Bing would be a great way to expand your reach and grow your revenue.

Other channels you can look at are Pinterest, Amazon (love or hate them), Bing, and you can even look at Reddit or Quora as well. The goal is to find other places where your customers hangout online and grow your business overtime.

Average Order Value (AOV)

As the image shows, your average order value (AOV) is simply the number of orders divided by your revenue for a given period of time. When possible, we try to get clients to use the number of customers instead. It’s a more meaningful number and lets you understand what you can spend to acquire a customer in the first place. If you know your AOV, what can you do to improve it? Plenty.

Your two main options are trying to upsell or cross-sell a product or a series of products while someone is on your site or has recently bought from you. Amazon makes 35% of their revenue from doing this…

both the “Frequently Bought Together” and “Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought” sections promote products related to the item that you are currently viewing on the site.

If it’s good for Amazon, I know it’s worth testing out for clients. You already spend time and money acquiring that customer, why not try and get them to buy more of what you are selling?

Up-selling Your Customer

Up-selling typically happens on the product page of a site. You are trying to convince someone to buy a higher version of a product. I have a bonus tip at the end of this section and it’s something we are trying to get a client to implement.

Apple is what comes to mind for most people as they try to have you upgrade your ram, hard drive or other parts of your new Mac. Sometimes it is worth it and other times you should stay away. Car brands and just about any tech brand is going to try and upsell you on accessories for your new tech purchase. The Google Pixel 2 below is the perfect example of trying to get me to upgrade the storage or even get the Pixel 2 XL, which I didn’t go for.

Even though the product page is where upselling happens 95% of the time, most sites have two other options: search result page and category page.

Search Result Page: if your search bar auto-completes, why not show the higher end version of the product someone is searching for. In my case, when I go to search on Google’s store for a Pixel 2, they could show me the Pixel 2 XL as I started to type in “Pixel 2”. Maybe I didn’t know about the high end version of the phone and by showing it to me, I end up buying it.

Category Page: If I land on a site from a Bing search and wanted to purchase the Pixel 2, having the Pixel 2 XL as the top result before the Pixel 2 would be a good way to nudge me towards buying the higher-end.

Cross-selling Your Customer

Cross selling happens in the shopping cart as you try to convince someone to buy a related or complimentary product based on what they’ve already put in the shopping cart. You can do it on the product page too but it’s not as effective. One other place that is effective is the email receipt someone receives after a purchase. It typically has a high open rate and a perfect place to do a cross-sell.

If I’m buying the Pixel 2 then you could add headphones or extra charging cables for my new purchase. If you sold a high-end item including art or furniture, you could try adding a premium service offer. That premium service offering could be design services where you go design a custom space in an office or someone’s home.

A good example could be Harry’s shaving brand below. They are offering a mystery box item that goes with the product I was looking at. I do use Harry’s, so it’s an interesting offer I may go for next time I’m on the site. A mystery box is an fun angle because it adds a level of surprise and excitement to what you are buying.

To finish off Average Order Value and how you can increase that on your site, you can do free shipping when people hit a certain spend level. The spend threshold is usually set just about your AOV. You can also look at trying bundle pricing for items that people buy together. Amazon does this with their “Frequently Bought Together” section. The price for your customer is cheaper than if they bought each item individually and you have a higher AOV by having customers buy more in one transaction.

Repeat Customers

Acquiring customers is easy and that is what your typical agency will work on with you. They are always looking to increase your spend and help you find more customers. Some agencies might even go one step further and work with you on getting a higher average order value (AOV). That is not as easy but it can be done with testing.

If you have done all of the above then your last step is having customers come back and buy from you a second, third and fifth time. The product you sell and where you sell it will determine how often you can do this though the majority of businesses can have repeat customers.

Target your first time buyer with an ad. What do many of your first time buyers have in common? Find out what multi-buyers are buying after their first purchase. Maybe those who buy blue jeans, come back and buy belts and a t-shirt within 90 days. Maybe you sell furniture and you know those who buy something for their kitchen will come back and buy another one of your products. The goal is to turn a one-off-buyer into a repeat customer.

If we target a person with ads and an email listing other items they should buy within 30 days, it becomes a good way to turn a one-off-buyer into a repeat customer. If your store has been around for a number of years, you can do this across all of your customers who have bought from you in the past. If the first email does not work, you can look at offering a discount through a series of emails, though I’m not a fan of discounting as a matter of business since it’s what got some old school retailers in trouble.

Now let’s talk about your big whale of a VIP customer. You know the one who spent $300 on their first purchase and came back and bought four more times in the last 2 years spending $1,500. Let’s show them some love. Send them an email or a handwritten thank you note and express your thanks for buying as much as they did.

Ask them what they like about your business, how you can improve and what they want to see more of. Use this as an opportunity to understand why they bought so you can go and out find more customers like them. I would not do any discounting but if you just launched a new product they might be into, perhaps follow up with an email when it launches to let them know. That is it for this week. See you next time.

Originally published at https://www.takesomerisk.com on July 31, 2018.