Introduction
They say you need a mentor to succeed in business, but truth is you only need their advice.
With a rockstar like you running the show, you’ve proven time and again that you were born to do whatever it takes.
If you focus on executing winning strategies, you’ll be one step closer to success.
But where can you find these mentors and how can you discover their secrets?
Fortunately, we did the hard work for you.
We asked over 100 ecommerce experts to share their best tips for succeeding in ecommerce.
You’ll learn everything from what it really takes to succeed to the best marketing strategies.
And hey, if you need a slight nudge to get you started, our inspiration secrets will motivate you to take action… right now!
So here’s a crash course of worldly advice from some of the best in the industry.
Take notes.
Share your favorites.
But at the end of this ebook the focus should be on taking what you’ve learned and applying it.
Without execution, everything you’ve learned goes to waste.
We want you to win.
And if you believe in action as much as we believe in you, you’ll be unstoppable.
Alright, enough fluff, check out the first section!
Inspirational Quotes
Need an extra bit of inspiration to get started? These ecommerce experts share some inspirational quotes to help motivate you to jumpstart your business today.
Inspirational Quotes from Top Ecommerce Experts
Jeff Cleasby
VP of Strategic Accounts, LeadCrunch
Twitter LinkedIn
“My best tip is for store owners to build, market and grow their business is summed up in one all encompassing overarching word. That one word: “willingness”. Are you willing to take the shot, put in the extra hours, zig when everyone else zags, network like mad, conduct market research, act on that market research, lose sleep when dreaming big, step out on the skinny part of the branch, fail forward, leverage big data, learn, take the hit, get back up, get gritty!
Myself personally I was taught and learned what willingness was and looked like from a young age. I have used this trait to benefit both my personal life and obtaining continued business success.”
Nicole Martins Ferreira
Ecommerce Entrepreneur, Oberlo Content Marketer and Author of 50 Ways to Get Sales with Dropshipping
Twitter LinkedIn
“If you’re waiting for the perfect moment to start it’s already here. Start now. Seriously, stop reading this and take that baby step. I know you’re busy and tired. But even if you were on a two week vacation you’d probably find an excuse not to start then too. You’re not going to have that special moment where you suddenly have more time and resources. Your success will come from the baby steps you take today. Were you only able to buy your domain name today? That’s cool. Tomorrow sign up for a store. The day after that add ten products. The day after that write descriptions for those products and add them to your store. Because in the end, those baby steps lead you to a complete store pushing you further along than people who daydream about it in their heads. Business is about action. Daydreamers don’t prosper. But you can. Just take that first small step. It’s the biggest game changer.”
Matt Lawrence
Ecommerce Growth Specialist, Whitecap SEO
Twitter LinkedIn
“Focus. It’s so easy to be distracted by the hot new marketing trend that promises to triple your sales, but if you spread your resources and attention too thin, you won’t be effective in any channel. Figure out what makes your brand unique, pick the right marketing channel to spread that message, and set measurable goals to define success or failure. Only once you’ve mastered this channel should you move on to the next one.”
Ivan Kreimer
Content Marketing Consultant, Content Fiesta
Twitter LinkedIn
“Start with what you know best. Whenever you start marketing an e-commerce store, the first thing you’ll end up doing is Googling something like ‘how to grow an e-commerce store.’ That search will lead to a hundred different articles featuring a wide set of marketing tactics. The articles will promise low-cost high-reward results which will push you to try them out. It will be soon a year when you look back and you see the dozen tactics you tried which led to zero growth.
Please, I beg you, don’t spread yourself too thin. Follow the path of least resistance. If you have experience with SEO, start with that. If you know how to optimize a landing page, do it. Even if your skillset isn’t marketing related; a web designer can create a beautiful page that will surprise your customers and even attract links. If you start with what you know best, not only you will grow faster, you will avoid the ‘shiny object syndrome’ that so many entrepreneurs face when they start their ecommerce store. The decision is up to you; your store’s growth rate will tell you whether you made the right one or not.”
David Vranicar
Content Marketer, Oberlo
Twitter LinkedIn
“The unbelievable software and apps out there have solved some of the biggest challenges in ecommerce. Finding products, reaching customers, and so on. But these tools are so good that they’ve introduced a new challenge all their own: Lots of beginning entrepreneurs have fairy tale expectations about how hard it is to launch businesses. Truth is, it’s still hard. As tools evolve and crush more barriers to entry, we have to make sure that entrepreneurs keep plugging away when things get tough. And they will get tough.”
Nick Elzenni McLeod
Principal CoFounder, Bespoke Haus
Twitter LinkedIn
“Build or create with the customer in mind: always engage them on a human and personal level, then service them with wow! If you can repeatedly execute this authentically, you will (in theory) never have to worry for profit or word-of-mouth!”
Ronnie McKenzie
Founder, Store Hacks
Twitter LinkedIn
“Having the right mindset, discipline, consistency and motivation when starting out is integral to your overall success. You need to be able to wake up each day with a spring in your step motivated to take on whatever the day throws at you.
Optimism allows you to take on the world and is the catalyst for forming habits and being able to see the light at the tunnel in the darkest times. Some days you won’t achieve what you set out, however the consistency to show up, work to the tasks you have scheduled will allow that light to get much closer, much faster.”
Prerna Malik
Online Persuasion Copywriter and eCommerce Content Marketer, Content Bistro
Twitter LinkedIn
“As cliche as this may sound… stand out in a crowded niche by being totally YOU. Get super clear on what your ‘secret sauce’ is and your brand – your site, your social media content and your emails. Your product descriptions should leap off the page and connect with customers, your social media copy and blog posts should create a solid community, your emails should make them want to get to know you better and more importantly, buy from you.
The first step is to nail your brand voice and then, USE that voice.
As an eCommerce copywriter, the first exercise I do with my clients is diving deep into not just who their brand is but more importantly, who their customers are and then, blend all of this research to create that ‘secret sauce’ that makes customers come back to a business because they just LOVE who they are, what they do and how they do it!
Once you’ve nailed your ‘secret sauce’ recipe, implementing all that fancy content marketing, growth hacking and SEO-ing will become MUCH easier because you’ll know exactly what to write, how to write it and why you should be writing it!”
Deepak Jain
Community Lead,MySmartPrice
Twitter LinkedIn
“Just like any other brick & mortar business, the secret sauce of ecommerce success lies in patience, persistence, and the right marketing of your product to the right audience at the right time.
Also, you cannot go wrong in investing a small budget towards paid & organic digital campaigns. Make sure that you spend at least 20% of your resources towards Content Marketing, Social Media, SEO and Influencer relationships.”
Andrew Roach
Content Marketer, Oberlo
LinkedIn
“Research is absolutely imperative when you’re starting your business. If you take the time at the beginning of your entrepreneurial journey to really gain an understanding of your niche (your potential customers), and the best way to market your products, everything else will come easier later on.
Each and every one of us has access to a wealth of data. If you don’t use it, you can bet that competitors will. Knowledge really is power, and taking the time to learn will help you to unlock your path to success.”
Tracy Champagne
Marketing Consultant, Smallbizmke
Twitter LinkedIn
“Consistency in failing and trying again, and the self discipline to be consistent in your daily activities will give you the results that you want, if you just keep going.”
Reza Khadjavi
CEO, Shoelace
Twitter LinkedIn
“There are no shortcuts. Embrace the journey.”
Nakul Anand
UI-UX Designer, Social Peanuts
Twitter LinkedIn
“Research constantly. Research your business – or absence of them – to earlier days and even years. Research your merchant offer through. Research your opposition and research their [customers]. Research your [customers] and the [customers] you need to [attract]. Research constantly.”
Tomas Slimas
Founder, Oberlo
Twitter LinkedIn
“There’s no silver bullet to success. Set yourself a target, read blogs, execute ideas, measure results, keep what’s working, and learn from what isn’t. Repeat this process until you crush your goals. It’s simple but it ain’t easy.”
Chris Brewer
Co-Founder, OMG Commerce
Twitter LinkedIn
“You must know enough to understand what they are doing to grow your business and why. Otherwise, you can fall prey to a good salesperson and waste countless hours and capital that you can’t afford to burn. Equip yourself with knowledge that allows you to make good business decisions.”
Oleksiy Kuryliak
Founder, Rioks
Twitter LinkedIn
“Be present and have a purpose. People are no longer looking forward to interacting with faceless large corporations – they are look for a purpose, for a brand with identity and a clear cause. Providing social value is becoming critical in the dynamic environment of millennials and they comprise a huge portion of your favorite customers, regardless of whatever it is that you’re selling.
The best and easiest way to differentiate yourself from the many faceless e-commerce businesses out there is to be constantly present. Work hard on your responses and answer all the questions and queries across all the platforms that you’re on.
Be consistent with the above and you will quickly start building consumer trust, which is ultimately what you must be looking forward to.”
Marketing Quotes
Want to step up your marketing game? We reached out to the top ecommerce experts to share their best hacks. These are their marketing quotes:
Top Marketing Quotes from Ecommerce Experts
Denise Wakeman
Digital Marketing Consultant, Adventures in Visibility
Twitter LinkedIn
“Experiment with multiple media formats to educate potential customers about your products. Blog posts, videos, images, and audio will each attract people who respond based on their own preferences. You’ll be able to cast a wider net for prospective new customers if you “speak” in their language. Repurposing a single piece of content into several types of media will be more efficient and faster than developing the content for each type of media from scratch.”
Tracey Bond
Publicist, Beneficience
Twitter LinkedIn
“Consumer audiences are interested in experience learning about businesses and brands shared-values through earned media (interviews, media appearances), shared media (word of mouth, re-tweets, post re-shares & interactive comment engagement) and third-party (reviews, etc.) quality interactions, long before the transactions. Financially establish a budget … that will build authentic and relevant targeted, audience media, professional & public and relationships that drive ideal marketing outcomes.”
Jason Romero
Software Developer, Etchasoft Inc.
Twitter LinkedIn
“The key is the content. Make sure the content you are providing is relevant and current to what people are talking about. Provide solutions to the problems that are currently being discussed.”
Paul Johnston
President / CEO, Search Gurus Inc
Twitter LinkedIn
“Stay focused, and do regular updates. Take the time to cover the who, what, where, when and why for each product you are promoting. Make sure the description contains the keywords you want to rank well for and add supporting content. Make sure you add alt text for each image and video. If you are lacking video of your product, then make a video and add it. It’s amazing how quickly this tip will help your website stand out above the competitors. Once this is done, rinse and repeat. Make sure you are updating the content regularly. Add more content or additional details. You do not need to have a perfect page when you go live, but you do need to constantly update and refine the page to give your website a ‘heartbeat’ and a reason to be re-indexed. And above all else, stay positive and keep moving forward towards your goals.”
Mark Crosling
Founder, Live Broadcast Inc.
Twitter LinkedIn
“Having an email list of people who dig what you’re selling is the #1 tip for a successful ecommerce store.
It’s taken as a given that you’ll be showcasing what your ecommerce site offers on various social media platforms. This is great for branding and awareness. But the aim is to get them to your store to make a purchase and if they haven’t, to subscribe to your newsletter for the latest product updates.
So, if your potential customer buys from you, they’re put on your email list. If they haven’t quite found what they’re looking for but want to be notified of new products, they subscribe to your email list.
The same goes for the descriptive blogs written about your awesome products and how they can benefit a potential customer. At the bottom of each blog there should be a subscribe form for your newsletter and in doing so, they join your email list.
Creating and nurturing an email list isn’t another “thing” to do in creating a successful ecommerce store. It’s the most important aspect of growing your business.
Here’s the kicker. Your email list allows you to have a “conversation” with a person that’s either purchased from you or is very interested in what you sell. That’s golden.”
Anthony Kirlew
Founder & CMO, Infinion Marketing
Twitter LinkedIn
“Build an email list and use it to develop relationships with those you serve. Social Media gets lots of attention, but email marketing statistically will produce better returns.”
Mike Allton
Content Marketing Practitioner, The Social Media Hat
Twitter LinkedIn
“Your #1 focus needs to be on building and leveraging your email list.
First, you must collect an email address for every customer and have that email in a list where their purchase history is included. This will allow you to keep in touch with that customer over time from a marketing perspective (which means that might mean duplicating the custom info if you have a sales database that cannot be used for email marketing).
Do this even if you only have one product and no possibility for repeat purchases. You never know when you might have more! And the ability to reach out to past, happy customers with new related offers is the best situation.
Second, you have to give website visitors who aren’t ready to purchase an option and a reason to provide you with an email address. Since they’ve been to your site, they are now familiar with you and will be easier to market to in the future.
Techniques for collecting email are varied but will generally fall into one of these buckets:
- Subscribe for more news, information, and insider tips.
- Sign up to have a specific, free resource emailed.
- Participate in a contest or sweepstakes.
- Sign up to receive a discount or coupon.
- Sign up during the checkout process.
I mention the checkout process because as an ecommerce store, this one is particularly applicable and important.
Many of your online visitors will shop your site, select one or more products, start to check out, and then stop. Maybe they got interrupted, or maybe they didn’t like the shipping options, or maybe they started to have second-thoughts about the purchase.
If you can, make collecting their email and basic information as close to the front of the checkout process as possible so that, when your system sees that someone created an account but didn’t finish the checkout, you can email them!
Being able to use email to market to past customers, prospects, and people who at least considered making a purchase will result in huge growth for your store.”
Moosa Hemani
SEO Specialist, Thrive Internet Marketing
Twitter LinkedIn
“After working with quite a few ecommerce businesses in different niches like fashion, office products and more, I can say that content is the powerhouse when it comes to branding, growing and marketing of an ecommerce business.
And content is not limited to text you have on your website, but the way you present yourself on Instagram, youtube videos, image quality, blog tone, quality of written content, how you interact with influencers within the industry, your customer service and more, all are part of your content and if your content strategy in all these areas are defined. You will be able to build a brand like no other within your niche and that will have a significant positive impact on your branding, SEO, marketing and that will definitely increase your sales as well as conversion rate of your website.
Keep creating relevant and creative content that your target audience can love and relate to and keep the content strategies for all channels aligned towards your customers and growth and number will magically go up (especially in the peak times).
Michael Brito
EVP, Technology, Zeno Group
Twitter LinkedIn
“Building an influencer marketing strategy is critical to drive consideration and demand. The sales funnel is no longer linear. It’s dynamic and consumers today are seeking 3rd party validation before purchase. A well planned influencer marketing program will not only provide 3rd party endorsements but it will also help deliver stronger brand relevance, better search engine rankings and an army of brand advocates to use at your disposal.”
Scott A Frangos
Chief Optimizer, WebDirexion LLC
Twitter LinkedIn
“Connect your store to smart automated marketing to follow visitors with messages (ie. abandoned cart emails to entice them back); always be testing your entire shopping cart funnel — learn split testing.”
Kyle Mucha
Co-Founder, Marketpreneurs
Twitter LinkedIn
“New store owners too often focus on customer acquisition without a solid strategy for retention in place. This customer retention strategy should have email marketing at its core. As this is what will drive long-term engagement and increase the average customer lifetime value.
Email automation tools play a vital role in this. As there are several stages of the customer journey where people are more receptive to emails. Examples of this are, on signing up to a newsletter, becoming a new customer, and after purchasing multiple times. The online shopper expects to receive email communication in certain instances. If stores are not doing this it will negatively affect their brand.
By using email automation, stores can send email communications automatically to customers at the times they expect to receive them. This not only removes the negative impact on their brand but increases engagement with the customer and builds a better relationship. This will get more customers returning to their store and buying more.
My number one absolute best ecommerce tip is to create a solid customer retention strategy using email marketing at its core.”
Greg Hyer
Digital Marketing and Media Strategist, Excelerate Digital
Twitter LinkedIn
“Yesterday was mobile friendly. Today is mobile-first. Tomorrow will be about voice. Voice assistant devices like Amazon Alexa, Google Home, and Apple’s Siri are enabling a new buying experience that help customer buy even more than before. Integrating your ecommerce store with voice assistants to help customers shop your store, buy your products, and engage with customer service will not only grow your business, it will also keep you ahead of the competition.”
Adam Watson
Marketing Director,Hollywood Mirrors
Twitter
“My number one marketing tip is having an exit intent pop up on your website with a tempting offer. We have split tested with and without pop-ups and conversion rate increased by 30% and email signups increased by 98%. It is also very important to split test pop up offers to see which your customers find the most appealing and convert the best.”
Sid Bharath
Marketing Consultant, SidBharath.com
Twitter LinkedIn
“The most important thing is to understand your customers and their journey from realizing they have a problem, to figuring out a solution, to purchasing your product as a means to solve that problem. Your customer has different needs and motivations at each stage of the journey so don’t expect them to reach for their wallets the moment they find your store, especially if they’re still in the stage of realizing they have a problem or need.
Once you understand this, you can craft your message and marketing funnel. Whatever channels you use, be it influencers or advertising, remember that they need to go through this journey and very rarely do they skip steps.”
Amir Jaffari
Growth, Shopify
Twitter LinkedIn
“Getting the ball rolling with paid advertising is great, but spend a little bit of time every now and then to tap into other channels for for free and consistent traffic, no matter how small.
These could be creating content and optimizing for search, building a mailing list, creating an affiliate network with the Buy Button, building your following on social channels, and getting link backs on evergreen content like list posts and directories.
This will help you maintain your growth and you’ll not be dependent on a single source for sales.”
Michael Stricker
Lead Consultant, MSDesign
Twitter LinkedIn
“Retain your way to healthy revenue, with Cyclical Win Back Campaigns. Those who have bought from you once, are much more likely to buy again. You have already invested in these customers, through SEO efforts, or Digital Ads. They have gained some brand awareness, even brand affinity, and have manageable expectations about how the buying process works, enough to have developed a level of trust for your store. Use email but don’t rule out Social Ads to Past Customer Lists and old Remarketing lists where you can identify interests. Troll a Past Customer List immediately with:
1) INQUIRE: How did your purchase go? Honestly tell them of your new business, what motivates and inspires you, how much you appreciate their purchase. Seek ratings, reviews, any feedback.
2) BUILD ADVOCATES: Instead of pitching the former customer for a sale, make the smart move: Feed them an offer for Friends and Relatives, to take advantage of the Double Whammy: the “birds of a feather” principle that suggests they associate with people of similar interests and tastes and “the mantle of trust” that envelopes their forwarded offers with their own reputation. This way, you can reach a more targeted audience in the guise of a friend, for better response.
3) ANYTHING THAT IS NOT BUILDING YOUR BRAND, IS ERODING IT: Handle complaints with speed and positive results. Offer to listen (and act on) any suggestions they may have. As Bill Gates said,“Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning.”. So, listen. Reflect. Remedy. Affirm. It has been said that it costs far less to keep a prior customer than to attract and convert a new one. And, the Pareto Principle states that 80% of your business revenue derives from 20% of your customers. Build your profitable business on a foundation of trust.
4) CYCLICALS: Stock supplies, batteries, containers, then, at key intervals, send messages tailored to accessorize, replenish, supply or supplement their prior purchase. Be useful. Mention trends, new models, price changes.
5) CONCIERGE SERVICE: Personalize their shopping experience followup with select offers based on prior purchases. Show them modifications and items that complement the original purchase. Better still, show an item or two, at most, chosen to suit them personally, and make them an exclusive offer (e.g. free shipping for purchases over $X).
In a world of automation, the personal touch can be very impressive to customers, and you can afford to invest in the effort because they have a demonstrated willingness to buy from you, already.
Shelley Walsh
Founder, ShellShock & Content 101
Twitter LinkedIn
“Firstly, my thoughts are that we need to think out of search box and become more resourceful in finding traffic sources. Digital has come full circle and its now all about classic marketing again.
Years ago, if you were in PR your Roladex of contacts was your entire life. If you were in direct marketing you would sleep with your customer database under your pillow. Now, the singular most important channel to embrace is email: you have direct control over your audience through their email address, the conversation and the relationship, neither are you beholden to the whim of algorithm changes that can wipe you out overnight in SERPs or social.
Direct to customer, is always going to prevail. Whether that is through land mail, email or even a new AI mail technology to be developed.
Secondly, the resurgence of print is happening. I believe that users crave a tangible experience of a physical item to read. Reading online is much more difficult and I predict a rise in content being delivered in print. Digital campaigns combined across email, DM and also exclusive printed customer magazines and catalogues. I envisage combining offline print content alongside the digital for richer experience.
Brands such as The Great Discontent, 99U and The Alpine Review are excelling online to their niche audience and shipping highly desirable print magazines that sell out quickly. I see this as an area of growth.”
Gregory Ciotti
Content Marketing Lead, Shopify
Twitter LinkedIn
“I strongly encourage all store owners to consider setting up a basic customer support strategy in the early days. It’s my number one recommendation because it’s so often overlooked. When growing your store is top-of-mind, it can be easy to forget that once you have sales, you’ll also have customers who will need your help. More sales, more customers, more requests for help. It’s that simple.
As an entrepreneur, you’ll feel a strong sense of empathy for your customers, and this is where support can bite you. Because you want to help, you’ll treat every customer conversation exactly the same way; you’ll try to roll out the red carpet for each and every customer. In the early days that’s fine, but as you scale you’ll find this non-strategy breaks down fast. You have to prioritize your conversations and figure out how to reduce the number of unnecessary contacts. That’s not cold-hearted, it’s what customers want! Remember that most people don’t start their day looking to contact a business, so anywhere you can reduce the need for customers to contact you is a plus, for you and them.
And with a basic strategy in place, you’ll be able to keep track of incoming problems and get them fixed, which means customers will stop contacting you over minutiae (“Does this come in blue?”), giving you room to have meaningful, high-value conversations with customers.”
Dean Montandon
Managing Director, MODE Digital Marketing
Twitter LinkedIn
“Keep your message simple! Don’t over complicate things, your site and your marketing message needs to be easy to understand for everyone. The more complicated the message and more complex your site is to navigate, the more it will put people off and affect your sales.”
Usman Latif
Marcom Technologist & Growth Hacker, Digital Marketing Pakistan™
Twitter LinkedIn
“Growing an ecommerce store is like growing a family. The buying cycle has drastically changed in the last few years and with the availability of a lot of screens, platforms, channels and options, it’s really easy to lose a customer to a competitor, if not taken care of. Your product is your guarantee. Work hard on making the product right, then reach out to the right audience at the right time on the right channel. And once you have gotten there, take care of your audience. It’s all interlinked. You can’t win in the long term with a crappy product and you can’t ignore the community if your product is great. So in short, make sure your product is great and that it has a great value proposition. Then grow your community by being available at all the places your target audience can possibly be. Once you have a community, keep them as a family and upsell/cross sell them other products from your inventory. Remember, there’s no right way to do it. Just do it and make sure you are making progress. Benchmark your success and measure continuously.”
Jason Nelson
Principal/Shopify Partner, Ascent Internet Marketing
Twitter LinkedIn
“Optimize for the customer lifecycle and utilize marketing automation to nurture and grow the relationship.”
Badruddeen Naseem
Director Information Technology, Mandhu College
LinkedIn
“Constantly keep an eye on new technology as technology evolves at a very fast pace. Find a way to engage your customers so they would stick and show loyalty to your business. Word of mouth is the most effective marketing tool so make your customers happy and your customers would talk and recommend your business.”
Kin Perry
Founder, Last Hour Media
Twitter LinkedIn
“When building your online store be sure your ecommerce store looks like a million dollar brand. Never underestimate the power of a professional looking product photo or a well-produced video. Everything from your website’s logo, color scheme, mobile-friendliness and security certificate plays into how your visitors perceive and interact with your site. Some of the biggest mistakes made are grammar and spelling. Those are huge turn-offs and screams small careless brand. Use tools like Grammarly and or a copy editor to ensure your brand does not make such mistakes.
Marketing is the lifeline of your ecommerce store. Find what social network sites your audience interacts on be sure to have a consistently branded page that looks similar to your final website and theme. Be sure to fill out all areas of the profile and product/service descriptions. Let’s face it, most of us cannot do it all when it comes to marketing and neither should we. Concentrate on what you do well and let others who are passionate about what they do perform such functions as managing and growing your social media presence, ensuring your site is optimized and search engine friendly and listed on all the major search engines (SEO). Don’t forget to include a newsletter signup form on the most heavily trafficked pages of your website to create your newsletter which should go out at least twice per month.
In my 22 years of building, marketing and growing ecommerce websites, I have come to know that growing your business will take understanding your visitors, tracking their activity, knowing where your audience interacts online most and creating innovative ways to attract traffic to your ecommerce site and it’s products. Aligning your brand with affiliates, influencers and companies who can bring further visibility to your brand will be a key attribute to growing your business. Customer service and the quality of your products will be key in your brands future. Gather as many reviews both on your website and on the social networks your customers frequent will help others feel confident in purchasing your products as well.
As a ecommerce expert, one of the largest mistakes and hindrances to an ecommerce website’s future is lack of marketing and lack of resources allocated to advertising. To many site owners neglect the importance of adding funds from profit on each sale back toward the marketing and advertising of the business itself. Although an ecommerce website may take a sizeable investment to launch effectively, these types of investments usually are recouped within the 1st year of business with proper strategies in place. With an execution of all of the above and a few unique strategies, I was able to launch a t-shirt business online within as little as $500 invested and generating over $20k in profits in just 45 days.”
Greg Shuey
Co-Founder & COO, Stryde
Twitter LinkedIn
“It’s easy to think you can leverage several different marketing channels to drive traffic and brand awareness, but if you’re not careful, you’ll dilute yourself and progress will slow.
Instead, pick 2-3 different channels and apply as much pressure as possible. If one of them starts to take off, put all of your effort on that channel and grow it as big and as fast as you can.
Once that channel is stable and can sustain itself, pick a few other channels and start applying pressure to see where the next big win is. Rinse and repeat.”
Shanelle Mullin
Growth & Content, Shopify
Twitter LinkedIn
“Evaluate your transactional emails carefully because when done right, they are lean, mean converting machines. Welcome emails, reminders and notifications, receipts, order shipped emails, etc. are considered transactional emails. They’re more functional in nature, which makes them easy to forget about or leave to developers.
According to IBM Marketing Cloud, transactional emails are opened 2x more often than promotional emails and have a 3x higher click through rate.
You don’t want to turn your transactional emails into promotional emails, but product suggestions for someone who just purchased something, for example, can go a long way.
Think about it this way. If someone is receiving a transactional email from you, they just took an action. What can you add to that email to move them closer to taking another action that benefits you?”
Greg Jameson
President & CEO WebStores Ltd.
Author, The Influencer Effect
Twitter LinkedIn
“Even though you are the expert at what you are selling, people trust other people’s opinions more than they trust you as a salesperson. Get reviews and testimonials, and most importantly, find Influencers who can write blogs and create reviews for your products. Incentivize people to market and sell on your behalf. Influencer marketing is the best way to engage your audience.”
Suttida Yang
CEO, Fastmarkit
Twitter LinkedIn
“Be clear on who your target audience is as this will be instrumental to your success. Next, don’t be afraid to invest in advertising. Doing so will enable you to test out different CTAs and messaging to see which ones drive the most sales. Also, make sure you have a financial model set up so that you understand how much you’re willing to pay for a lead and a sale. This will help you with forecasting and also understanding what your ROI is.”
Timothy Carter
CEO, Outrank Marketing LLC
Twitter LinkedIn
“Consider the lifetime value of your customer. Successful e-comm businesses are able to regularly influence existing customer and visitors to return to the website on a regular basis and make new purchases. This happens through email. Build your list. Segment out your list.
For example: current customers, former customers, prospects, etc. Then develop a plan on how you will consistently keep in touch with each list.
Provide a downloadable resource that educates your ideal customer to capture visitors contact details (name & email) who are thinking about your product/service so you can then create a series of follow up emails that continues that education, building trust and has a call-to-action in each email to visit your site.
For current customers, start sharing the latest blog article on your site. Have a plan to send seasonal sale offers and/or continuing to build trust or educate your customers you need to regularly keep in touch. These also need to have a call-to-action in each email to visit your site, check out the newest product/service, etc.
Email marketing is vital component in growing your business. Make sure you have a plan in place.”
Michael Doyle
Founder, Top4 Marketing
Twitter LinkedIn
“With the likes of Amazon and other majors getting bigger and better with their ecommerce offerings the one thing to focus on is local and social, simple, focused, targeted social promotions and smart content that get into their customer’s social media feeds.
Know who your customer is. You can boost and target posts to hit that target market that would buy your product. Useful relevant information that helps them will work.
If you have an Adwords budget then put it out there about your product offer and lead the shopper directly to that page or product.”
Deborah Anderson
Doctorate Candidate in Business Psychology, Social Web Cafe
LinkedIn
“Understand the Buyer Persona(s), especially as it relates to your target audience, site visitors, and your eCommerce specialty.”
Zubin Kutar
Head of Digital Marketing Transformation & Social Media, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS)
Twitter LinkedIn
“If you want to double your sales, don’t invest money in doubling your traffic, invest time and thought in doubling your conversions. Conversion is key for any business online or offline. In the case of an online store focus on the conversion funnel. Map the user journey once he comes on to the site till he completes the payment journey. Look at leakages where the users are dropping off in the “shopping cart abandonment” cycle.
Focus on conversions via the ‘Shopping Cart Abandonment’ cycle – A majority of the users will drop off before the payment page is displayed, minor tweaks during the shopping cart fulfillment experiences goes a long way in increasing conversions. The easiest way is to copy what successful ecommerce shopping carts are doing. Use the same route don’t reinvent.”
SEO Quotes
Want to rank higher in search? We reached out to ecommerce experts and asked them to share their best advice. Read their SEO quotes:
Top SEO Quotes from Ecommerce Experts
Matt Janaway
CEO, Marketing Labs
Twitter LinkedIn
“Product descriptions are one of the most underrated SEO tactics and have the power to convert buyers and drive targeted traffic to your website through organic search queries. Product descriptions also offer the unique ability and chance to target new long tail keywords and rank for search synonyms! In their most basic form, product descriptions are used to highlight key product features and the benefits to the customer. Poor product descriptions result in fewer conversions and stop search engines from understanding the product. If you want to seriously growth-hack your e-commerce sales, stop all other marketing tasks and write some awesome product descriptions that answer customers questions and give ‘search bots’ something to feast on. At a minimum, at least write 5-10 bullet points for every product! Read this post to grab possibly the best product template of all time.”
Megan Krause
Content Manager, Vertical Measures
Twitter LinkedIn
“In regards to using content marketing to grow your business, my advice is this: You must have patience. Good content marketing generates brand awareness, drives traffic to your site and keeps people coming back for more — but it takes time. Our clients start to see a major uptick in search rankings and web traffic around the 6-month mark of regularly posting high-quality, search-optimized content that people want to read. Content marketing works, just remember to have a little patience in the beginning.”
Camilo Olea
Director, Olea Consulting
Twitter LinkedIn
“Building the ecommerce store platform is nothing but the first step. If you don’t constantly optimize it for conversions and search engines (SEO), it won’t get much traction. It’s a heavily competitive cyber world out there with millions of other stores, you must constantly review and optimize yours in order to be seen. Track everything – how people come to your store, what items are they viewing, how much time do they spend on each page, etc. All of this can be tracked using a variety of tools; Google Analytics provides you most of this for free, but there are other paid options that provide much more detail. Have a digital marketing budget for paying useful tools; sometimes there are excellent tools that need to be paid for, don’t expect everything to be free. This is your business after all, you need to invest in it to make it grow.”
Geoff Jackson
Director of Search & Operations, Clubnet Digital
Twitter LinkedIn
“Don’t cut corners. Investing the correct expertise, time and money into your project from the outset can save you a lot of hassle and money in the long-run. Ensuring you do your homework first and bring the right people or agency on board from the beginning is critical to the early success and growth of your eCommerce business and there are plenty of failed business owners that will be only to quick to explain the costly mistakes they’ve made, like horrific global SEO mistakes across their store causing timely indexation / performance problems or a lack of branding or conversion paths integrated into the build of a website with proper planning.”
Bryan Young
CEO, Retail Rescue and Digital Managed
Twitter LinkedIn
“You can have the best value for money products, … on earth and still not make a cent if people can’t even find your ecommerce site when they search on Google for the types of things you sell.
A great way of getting found on Google is to set up an info page on your site that gives away free information and tips that relate to the types of offerings you provide. Said page should feature the most relevant keywords for your industry and include an offer which links to another page, (a landing page), where they simply enter their name and email address to get the offer. Examples include a free ebook, free entry to win something, a bonus item or perhaps a discount if they purchase before a set date, and so on.
A blog page works just as well, if each post uses keywords relating to the specific item/service discussed in the post, and you always include the link to the landing page. If you want to have an array of offers, just set up a landing page to match each offer.
Use the info you capture from these landing pages for future email marketing campaigns.
Also insert Facebook and Google Adwords pixels into the landing page; in this way, if someone visits the page but doesn’t fill in the form, they will start to see your adverts everywhere they go, all over the internet.
If you are not sure how to do any of this, engage an expert, like us, to do it for you.”
Fernando Angulo
Head of International Partnerships, SEMrush
Twitter LinkedIn
“The best future strategy for almost any ecommerce nowadays is through the mobile channel.
No matter that the tendency still is very positive for desktop search traffic overall we see that the Mobile organic search traffic is strongest in the electronics (55.22%), jewelry (44.7%), travel (44.11%) and flowers industries. It is just not good enough to have good rankings organically on Desktop devices, it must also be in the mobile results.
Most Internet users, in addition to their desktop computer or tablet, have a mobile phone with access to the network. And unlike the first ones, the mobile phone is always on top of it.
Mobiles are and will be increasingly decisive in the buying process, and those online stores that know how to take advantage of this trend and adapt will have an advantage over their competitors.”
Sean Si
CEO and Founder, SEO Hacker
Twitter LinkedIn
“We all know that the biggest obstacle that e-commerce stores need to overcome is to increase their website’s traffic. If e-commerce stores fail to attract and keep loyal customers, then they fail the very essence of e-commerce – make the lives of consumers easier and hassle-free. So, how do they do this?
It’s easy. Lots and lots of outreach. If you can’t attract customers and build a following, then you can make use of a partnership between you and an influencer that already has a massive following. Bloggers, press, instagram celebrities, and many more. All of these people amass a massive following, and are usually open to partnerships.
So, the best tip I could give e-commerce stores that want their business grow to new heights is to spread their name through different channels. It won’t work all the time, but it will bring in a significant number of traffic – which can help you take off.”
Dan Kern
Founder & Principal Consultant, Kern Media
Twitter LinkedIn
“Ecommerce websites can maximize organic search engine traffic and revenue to their product pages, typically their highest converting pages, by ensuring that product pages have unique content. This helps influence Google and other search engines to give more value to your product pages and will allow them to better compete (rank) in the search results. If you sell products that you manufacture, then ensure that your vendors receive different product descriptions than the ones that you list on your site. If you sell the manufacturer’s products, then ensure that you rewrite the product descriptions so that they are unique to your site. Find more insider eCommerce SEO tips here.”
Tom Treanor
Senior Product Manager, Alexa Internet
Twitter LinkedIn
“The best and most affordable way to grow your business is to rank in Google for Buyer Keywords that are relevant for your products. These are terms used by searchers who are close to a buying decision for products like the ones that you’re selling. These search phrases often include terms such as “buy”, “store”, “coupon”, “reviews” or “price” (e.g. “buy art prints”). I often focus on these terms in my own content and have created a guide (and tool) to help people find Buyer Keywords here: What are Buyer Keywords and How to Find Them.
Once you pick the buyer keywords to focus on, use SEO and content marketing techniques to integrate the most relevant and high traffic phrases into your website’s content. This could take the form of a new blog post or buyers guide such as “A Guide to Buying Art Prints Online” or “A Comprehensive (Product Name) Video Review”. Don’t forget to promote any new, high value pages in social media and to link to them from other, relevant pages of your site. If you want a traffic boost, you can also advertise on these Buyer Keywords using Google Adwords or Bing Ads or promote any new pages or guides you create using social ads.”
Gavin Duff
Head of Digital Performance, Friday Agency
Twitter LinkedIn
“Start preparing your search engine optimisation strategy as soon as possible, whether you [own] a new e-commerce business or an established one. It is absolutely critical to establish strong Google rankings and visibility because this will likely be your biggest channel. The mania of Christmas spending, for example, only comes around once a year and SEO is a long-term play. So even though you may not yield those results this year, it will set the groundwork for higher visibility the following year. The same thinking applies to other seasonal opportunities – create your content now for those audiences in order to rank well when the time is right.
Also, find broken product pages or out of stock items and if appropriate then redirect them to desirable products. This addresses internal linking issues and also external link juice – and should lead to actual sales. Look to your suppliers and other opportunities for strong links to core products so that you’re ready and more visible during those busy periods. Continue these efforts throughout each year to be in an even better place each time.”
Altaf Gilani
Co-founder, Eminent InfoWeb LLP
Twitter LinkedIn
“If you [have] an e-commerce site, you are more or less dependent on search engine organic traffic (mostly Google). And for that SEO is a must-do. SEO for e-commerce websites is quite different from a traditional SEO. In an e-commerce website, technical on-page optimization is a basic necessity. Backlinks are no doubt very important but as you have lots of pages obviously you cannot build links to all the pages, so if you can make your website search engine friendly, you can easily ripe the low hanging fruits (traffic from long tail keywords) as they’re lesser competitive in nature. Few things where I would like every eCommerce webmaster to focus on are, my top 5 tips:
- Keep the URL clean. Rewrite the URL., and for god sake Please keep the “category name” out of URL structure for product pages, as a single product might fall in two or more categories. This will create duplicate pages on your website.
- Don’t copy and paste the manufacturer’s product descriptions exactly same, either rewrite it a bit or add more content on page (may be by adding review section or comment section) to stay away from Duplicate Content issue.
- Write unique Title Tag, Description Tag and Header Tags for each page. If you have a large e-commerce site automate them using variables. Automation is good sometime in SEO 😉
- Deal Smartly with your out of stock product pages, if product has gone out of stock temporarily then just hide it from navigation but do keep page live (with related products showing on that page). But if product has gone out of stock permanently then you should configure 410 status code (gone) to the page which notifies Google that the page has been permanently removed and will never return, or if you already know that product is temporary then set the date the page will expire using the meta tag, unavailable_after tag.
- Use Schema.org tags to show better snippet of your web pages in Google Search Result Page.”
A.J. Ghergich
Founder & CEO, Ghergich & Co.
Twitter LinkedIn
“Use your site structure to tell Google what’s important.
- Identify your top 25 products by sales
- Segment paid traffic and organic sales
- Scan your site with Screaming frog or Sitebulb
- Are your top 25 products receiving the most internal links?
- Are high value paid traffic products lacking internal links?
- Promote these products across your homepage, categories, related products widgets, and blog posts.
- Check this once per quarter. “
Social Media Quotes
These social media quotes will help you drive higher levels of engagement on your online store. If you’ve always wanted to master social media, you’ll want to check out these expert quotes:
Top Social Media Quotes
Anna Vanlandingham
Owner, Pinterest Pro Solutions
Twitter LinkedIn
“When utilizing Pinterest for visits to your eCommerce site, remember consistency, consistency, consistency are the best 3 words of advice.”
Jean-Christophe Lavocat
CEO, Elokenz
Twitter LinkedIn
“Use your social networks to repeatedly share your best-selling products with your audience.
Analyze your past posts (or those from your competitors) and find the most shared/commented. Then try to understand what made it popular (picture, caption, CTA, …). Finally, use this knowledge to schedule several variations about each of your best selling items and recycle them all year long.
You should now have a scalable process to drive traffic all year long from Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and the like.”
Josepha Edman
Owner, Pitchy Tea Delights
Twitter LinkedIn
“Start a video blog and post videos 5 times a week. Upload the video to Youtube and post on Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter and Linkedin. This is the best exposure you will get.”
Michael Kawula
CEO, Social Quant
Twitter LinkedIn
“Here’s a simple 4 step strategy that will drive massive sales for any eCommerce owner. The great thing about this strategy is it only takes moments a day and it can send you massive amounts of website traffic. I know this strategy works, because I implemented this back in 2009, when I had my eCommerce business and we were selling over 200,000 different products.
This strategy still works today and guess what? It doesn’t cost you anything other than a few minutes a day. Let me give you the 4 steps to implement this immediately.
Twitter Marketing for eCommerce
Optimize your Twitter Profile
First thing you need to do is set up your Twitter profile correctly and it only takes 20 minutes to do this.
Here’s the 5 things you need to do to Optimize your Twitter Profile:
Twitter Cover: Create a Twitter Cover that is simple and lets visitors know exactly who you are with some social proof. For example, my Twitter cover was of an office supply room, had our company name and in smaller text stated “Lowest Prices on Over 200,000 Office Supplies” To add social proof, we added to the bottom “Ranked 144th Fastest Growing Business by Inc. Magazine”
Twitter Profile Picture: I recommend putting a picture of your team or yourself over your logo. People connect with people, not logos. You can have your logo over your picture in the corner for some branding, but stick to the face behind the brand.
Twitter Bio: You have a 160 characters to create a message on who you are, use this space creatively. The keywords you use can help you show up in search, so put something crafty together and never use a hashtag in your bio. Lastly, keep it personal also. Remember people connect with people.
Website Link: Include a link to your eCommerce store (obviously).
Pinned Tweet: This is very important for step 2 (so put some thought into this one). A pinned tweet is the first Tweet someone sees when they visit your profile. This tweet should speak to the “pain” your business solves. For instance, if you have a fitness eCommerce store, you could create a piece of content on ways to lose weight. Your pinned Tweet could say: “Lose 20 pounds in 40 days” include a link to the piece of content on your website and a nice image.
Step 2 is all about getting relevant eyeballs to your optimized Twitter profile and you do this by what’s called a Twitter follow strategy.
You can do this either using Twitter advanced search (for free) or use a tool that will help speed up the process.
What you want to do is find people on Twitter having conversations around what your business solves. For example if you sell a weight loss product, listen for people tweeting with the hashtag #Gymrat, #Fitness, #Workhard or countless others.
When you find these people follow them.
When you follow people, they get a notification that someone just followed them.
Since the average person on Twitter only has a few hundred people following them on Twitter, they’ll look to see who followed them.
Twenty percent of these people will follow you back (since you’re following relevant people) and a large percentage will click on your pinned tweet, going back to your website.
Do this daily and if you’re following 500 people, you’ll grow by 2000-3000 followers a month and a large percentage will also visit your website.
See that’s FREE traffic and relevant.
Step 3 is now that you’ve got an optimized Twitter profile and relevant followers, you need to Tweet frequently to stay in front of your current followers.
Once someone follows you, they’ll rarely come to your Twitter profile, so you want to share content that can get in front of them on Twitter.
My current company analyzed over a billion Tweet impressions and what we learned was those who Tweet 40 times or more a day, compared to those who Tweet 10 times a day get not 4 times more traffic, but 40X more traffic. It’s exponential so Tweet away, but keep it good content and relevant.
I know this sounds like a lot, but you can use a tool like either Buffer to schedule your Tweets or a tool like Meet Edgar and automate the process.
The final step is engaging with your followers or people having conversations around your niche.
This works.
Using Twitter advanced search I heard someone complaining about my competition while they were in the office supply store. I jumped in, provided support and got a $27,000 order.
I also heard Gary Vaynerchuk mention he was “moving office” and jumped in a conversation that resulted in several nice size orders.
The success stores from engaging are countless, but seriously this is the one thing I see many skip and yet it’s so powerful.”
Fazal Marakkar
Digital Marketing Consultant & Trainer – Recruiter, FazalMarakkar
Twitter LinkedIn
“Chatbots are going to rock the world of ecommerce. Ecommerce can benefit from a correct use of Messenger chatbots. Messenger chatbots can help ecommerce to improve their customer experience and, ultimately, their conversions.”
Alisa Meredith
Owner, Alisa Meredith Marketing
Twitter LinkedIn
“Use Pinterest Promoted Pins (advertising). While Pinterest is great at delivering website traffic when used organically, advertising can open your content out to a new audience – fast! New options for targeting, including highly-specific interests and the ability to target people based on events such as “add to cart,” put Pinterest ads in the ecommerce big leagues! People are there to plan, shop, and buy, meaning that the activity people take on the platform translates to real dollars for your business. If you have $100 a day to spend for a month, sign up for Pinterest’s “Propel” program and get help setting up your first campaigns for free.”
Spencer Butt
Social Media Content Producer, Shopify
Twitter LinkedIn
“Don’t spread yourself too thin across all social media channels! Test out a handful of them, figure out what’s working best and where your demographic is most active and focus on that. It’s better to have one really good social media channel than five mediocre ones.”
Mark ‘MKWeb’ Hultgren
CEO – President, MKW Industries, Inc.
Twitter LinkedIn
“Create a website/blog and integrate it with your multiple social network pages to ensure when you post something on your website, it also gets added to your social network pages (but only post the excerpt on the networks to draw the people to your website). Blogs work best for this, but it can be done with HTML sites as well.”
Advertising Quotes
Are you struggling to figure out how to create a profitable ad? Maybe you want to take your advertising to the next level. We reached out to the top ecommerce experts and asked them to share their best advertising quotes.
Advertising Quotes from the Top Ecommerce Experts
Aaron Zakowski
CEO and Facebook Ads Expert, Zammo Digital Marketing
Twitter LinkedIn
“As most ecommerce marketers already know, Facebook ads are one of the best ways to grow your store. Here’s are two of the most important Facebook tools you need to be using in 2018 and beyond:
First, make sure that you are running Dynamic Product Ads (DPA) for your store. These Facebook ad campaigns are one of the few effective “set it and forget it” marketing opportunities available today and usually provide the highest return on ad spend of any ad campaigns you can run. Once you set up your DPA campaign, visitors will continue to be shown ads with the exact products that they viewed on your website.
The other opportunity that you need to get on right away, is to start with Facebook Messenger. Did you know that you can build a subscriber list in Messenger that allows you to broadcast messages and offers to your customers very similar to how to you send promotions via email? This is a huge opportunity to take advantage of a new marketing channel before other marketers get in and ruin it. You already know that email marketing is one of the most profitable traffic channels. Messenger is another way to drive traffic in a very similar way.”
Cosmin Daraban
CEO, Silkweb
Twitter LinkedIn
“Start with a limited budget for your online marketing campaigns and scale according to the results you get. See what works, what types of campaigns, which channels are more profitable (Google, Facebook, e-mail) and which message is more appealing for [customers], then increase the budget in that direction. Only this way you will be able to grow your business.”
Ellen Dunne
Senior Product Manager, Kit
Twitter LinkedIn
“Your basic marketing strategy should always include activities targeted to all levels of your customer funnel. Direct response ads (Facebook, Instagram or Google Shopping) will bring new visitors into the top of the funnel. Retargeting campaigns and abandoned cart emails are designed for the middle of the funnel, to re-engage those visitors who have already shown interest.
Consistent email marketing to your mailing list announcing new products, discounts or sales will encourage past customers to come back again to buy. These tactics will ensure that you are consistently driving sales.”
Murray Lunn
Lead Editor & Content Developer, MurrayLunn.com
LinkedIn
“There are thousands of qualified leads within a 1-mile radius of your business. Import your customer list and create lookalike audiences on Facebook. Run local campaigns within this small proximity. Tie in local shout-outs and references to connect with the audience.
Many businesses getting online will overreach — building a global community — and neglect real opportunities in their “backyard.” Who better to own the local market than your business?
Doing so will develop strong business relationships with people you’ll actually meet. Face-to-face interaction is powerful for brand building and enticing referrals. These interactions will provide feedback and capital to radiate (local -> regional -> statewide -> countrywide -> global).
Campaigns are cheaper. There’s less competition. Targeting is greater. You’ll rally locals to become brand ambassadors (and merge with the sales team).”
Adam Willhoeft
Partner, 1UP Media Inc.
Twitter LinkedIn
“Immediately boost your remarketing efforts into overdrive. Remarketing increases your ROI/ROAS and lowers your CPA/CAC. Build a remarketing list for every level of engagement throughout every aspect of your sales funnels in Facebook and Adwords; product landing pages, shopping carts, checkout pages, email submits, product upsells, video views, website visits, button clicks, time on site, # of pages viewed, etc. Think of your remarketing list as email lists that you can constantly advertise to. Aim to create 10+ remarketing list and go as granular as possible. Trust me 10+ is not a lot as I’ve provided you with 10 of them above. One last final KNOWLEDGE BOMB, Facebook and Google rewards you when you start advertising with lower CPCs; up to 50+%. Just think of the advantage you have over your competitors if you are driving traffic to your site at a 50+% discount and think how many more people you can send to your store. Do you see an unfair advantage to start building your remarketing list today?”
Ryan Cruz
Co-founder and Chief Strategist, TrafficSalad
Twitter LinkedIn
“Most eCommerce business owners diversify with too many traffic sources. They try to do Pinterest, Facebook Ads, Google shopping, Instagram, Youtube Ads, etc all at the same time. What I would recommend instead is to focus on only TWO sources of traffic and go ‘deep’ with each traffic source. What I mean by that is to really master these two sources of traffic first before trying to use another traffic source. But one of these traffic sources should be always be EMAIL. When you launch at day one, you want to be capturing email subscribers already whether through optin forms or other forms of lead capture on the website. Research shows that it is still one of the channels that provides the highest ROI in digital marketing. For an ecommerce business, you should have abandoned cart emails, upsell emails, onboarding emails and promotion emails running at least. There are many tools out there that can provide these advanced marketing automation capabilities without spending a lot.
For the other traffic source, I highly recommend Facebook Advertising with video content as this is one of the best ways to reach your ideal customers for as little as $5/day. When you launch your ads on Facebook, you have to use all the arsenals that Facebook is giving you for that unfair advantage. For starters, make sure you have custom audiences setup. Run remarketing campaigns to previous visitors and finally run Dynamic product ads to personalize the shopping experience for each of your customer. And don’t forget to measure and track everything. My final bonus tip is to ensure that you are using Google Tag Manager to implement advanced scripts, event tracking and dynamic remarketing.”
Zane McIntyre
CEO & Co-founder, Commission Factory
Twitter LinkedIn
“If you’re a wantrepreneur or have a great passion and interest in starting your own online store, then the best method of dipping your toes into the water is by drop shipping products and listing them on an existing platform (think Etsy, Ebay etc) or your friends store with broad reach. Combine paid media (FB ads and Adwords) and affiliate marketing in order to test product market fit, instead of spending a lot of time and effort building up your own site.”
Michael Tortorice
SEO and Digital Marketing Manager, Infront Webworks
Twitter LinkedIn
“My biggest tip for marketing and growing an e-commerce business is two-fold. The first, especially for newer stores would be to incorporate an advertising campaign with Facebook and to develop multiple personas to target your typical customers. I have seen many successful eCommerce stores thrive only after understanding their audience and building up your Facebook ads to target these audiences specifically. If you dial in the perfect buyer and match it to your campaign with effective video ads, sales start to pour in and the ability to scale these ads once your Facebook pixel seasons is easy. The success of these types of stores depends on effective social media advertising.
Second to including a healthy social media advertising budget would be the inclusion of proper optimization for the website just like any other website. Ecommerce is no exception when it comes to SEO. Reach out to product reviewers to see if they would like to review your product for the possibility of a good backlink. Make your website great with original content and descriptions and finally, be sure to incorporate best practices when it comes to on-page SEO from metadata to, site speed.”
Ecommerce Quotes
We reached out to the top ecommerce experts and asked them to share their best ecommerce quotes and advice. Here’s what they shared:
The Best Ecommerce Quotes from the Top Ecommerce Experts
Gary Gebenlian
COO and Co-Founder, Butterfly
Twitter LinkedIn
“Early in the tenure of your eCommerce store, you’ll almost certainly be testing, tweaking, and evolving to find your sweet spot. This will happen more often than you think! Need a function or feature? There’s a widget that you can plug-in that probably does almost all of what you need with some configuration. No need to go full-custom on it and build your own. The more standard apps, themes, platforms, and widgets you use to power your store, the more flexibility and speed you will have to evolve and grow.
Click, Click, Click. Don’t assume it all works! Put yourself in your customers’ shoes and do everything they will do. Click links in your customer emails to make sure they work. Click your “contact us” links and submit an inquiry. Click through your site navigation and site search to find a product you would buy if you were a customer. Place an order. Read the confirmation emails. Read the help area documentation. Start an online chat. Click here. Click there. Click everywhere. You own the customer experience and you must experience it to own it.”
Venesha Brooks
Customer Experience Strategist, Surfly
Twitter LinkedIn
“Personalization is the key to customer experience. Many companies are starting to personalize their entire customer journey. Delivering personalized services requires companies to understand their customers’ behaviors. When it comes to selling products online emotions are the only path to winning customers rather than price. Even with advanced digital technology, many customers find it difficult to empathize with a particular brand. Adding a human touch to your customers’ experience can help you distinguish your brand. Visual engagement tools, such as co-browsing and video chat can help build an emotional bond with customers. Instead of focusing on generating leads and sales, its time to think about your customers – those customers who make buying decisions based on how much they relate to your brand.”
Kim Butler
Owner, The URL Dr.
Twitter LinkedIn
“All e-commerce sites need to start with best practices in web design in mind. Use dark, san serif text on white or light colored backgrounds. Make sure the font size is at least 12 points, if not larger, to accommodate mobile devices. Use white space to give your site a clean, uncluttered, and professional look.
Don’t overlook the importance of your images. Backgrounds for product images should be white. Decide on the size you’ll use for product pictures, category pictures, lifestyle shots, and thumbnails, and then stick to them. Nothing screams unprofessional like different size product pictures with different backgrounds next to each other on a category page.
First impressions are critical online, which means you have about 5 seconds to tell your visitor who you are, what you do, convey to them that you’re credible and trustworthy, and help them find a product they can’t live without. Following best practices in web design will help you convert more visitors to customers.”
Casandra Campbell
Founder, Minimalist Marketing
Twitter LinkedIn
“Try to understand the buyers journeys your customers take. Few people buy something the first time they visit a website. Instead, they make the decision slowly over time, often after many brand interactions. Marketing tactics, customer loyalty programs, pricing strategies, and more all play a large role in the buyers journey. The more you know about the how your customers discover your brand and make purchasing decisions, the better equipped you will be to execute on all other aspects of your business.”
Casey Markee
Founder, Media Wyse
Twitter LinkedIn
“AI-powered chat bot services are taking off and should explode in 2018. A recent BI Insider survey showed that 80% of those surveyed said that they had been directed to review chat bot automation and have some sort of solution ready by 2020.
Python, and it’s wide acceptance and ease-of-use should be the programming language of choice for chat bot AIs and I expect that will have a boom in 2018 as well.
Chat bots represent the next evolution in natural language processing. And they provide a cheap and effective way to answer simple questions and provide a 24/7 access point between businesses and customers. Time to embrace our robot overlords.”
Annette Matzen
eCommerce Manager, Christian Brands/Creative Brands
Twitter LinkedIn
“My recommendation is to be obsessive about how your customers “flow” through your website and knock down any barriers that prevent them from purchasing your product or signing up for your service. You don’t want your customers to ever wonder “how do I purchase this?” It should be clear. Any moment of hesitation could mean the loss of a potential sale. Another tip: Write clearly and simply on your site. Again, you want your customers to understand what you are saying and not send them into a mental loop trying to understand what the heck you are saying. Using a tool like the Hemingway App can help with this.”
Arun Kothapally
Digital Optimization Expert, Ecommerce Yogi
Twitter LinkedIn
“Work on your website infrastructure before you scale your Ad spends. I have been part of many Shopify Facebook groups off late and I see new online store owners investing $500-$1000 on Facebook Ads the very next day they launched their online stores! Using digital ads is a great way to drive traffic but doing so without working on your website infrastructure could mean bad conversion rates leading to negative ROI for your Ads.
Having a good infrastructure could mean:
- To invest in a high performing fast website with a user friendly design.
- Make it a priority to have a remarkable mobile web shopping experience.
- Integrate apps which measures your ecommerce metrics and attribution accurately.
- Invest in an email marketing software which automates targeted email based on user behavior.
- Use an email capture system which targets visitors based on intent.
- Buy an A/B testing platform and set up an A/B testing plan for various elements on your site.
- Have an additional payment system to make it easier for your users to pay.
In short, infrastructure is any aspect of technology which increases the likelihood of a purchase once a prospect is on your online store.
Even the best targeted Ad campaign will not deliver ROI if your marketing funnel is broken. So before you go hard on your Facebook or Google Ad spends you want to spend more time, effort and money to see if your website has loose ends.”
Susan Hallam
Managing Director, Hallam Internet Ltd
Twitter LinkedIn
The advances in ecommerce technology are compelling and fascinating: personalisation, machine learning, interactivity. But never forget the single greatest risk to your business is fulfillment. If you are unable to keep your promises when it comes to delivery of your product, if you fail to match the rising expectation of your customers with regards to same day delivery, if you destroy your online reputation when it comes to delivering the goods, then no amount of machine learning or personalisation is going to save your bacon.
Kegesa Danvas Abdullah
Senior Copywriter, Cute Writers
Twitter LinkedIn
“Live chat matters a lot. Some customers may wish to purchase your product but they may abandon the basket because of technicalities. In such cases, they need help. Some may fear calling because of lack of airtime. Emails may also take longer to reply. They need a live chat agent.
You need to make sure that every willing buyer gets the right product. Having a team of dedicated live chat agents can help you close the sale.
Customers don’t want to wait in the queue. Things like “you will be served in 20 minutes” only help businesses lose money. Do not hide the live chat widget too much. Keep it available on all pages. I had to hunt for it a little longer.”
Razvan Girmacea
CEO & Founder, Competitive Business
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“When starting out, forget about big investments in stock or website. Test by getting a Shopify store and start doing some marketing/advertising to validate your product.”
Ashutosh Rai
Assistant Manager Digital Marketing, Igniva Infotech Pvt. Ltd.
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“Always stay one step ahead in addressing your customer needs. Find win-win solutions for your customers and your business. Be loyal to your customers and they will take care of your business over long period of time. Be proactive in addressing customers complaints whichever channel they come through. Quality of products and service offered through your website becomes your brand value better keep a good eye on it always before it’s too late.”
Rachel Jacobs
Head of Content, Pixc
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“When getting started with product photography, don’t over complicate things. My top tips are to keep things simple and be organised. Plan out exactly what you intend to shoot, and organise any tools or equipment you might need.
Getting to grips with natural lighting can be a handful at the best of times. Being organised will help make the most of your time, and keep you on track.
I’d recommend taking up to 12 images per product on a white background, giving a 360 view of the product. As you become more confident behind the camera, why not play with some in-context shots.”
Dhanasekar MJ
Manager – Digital Marketing, Zoho Corporation
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“Store owners should concentrate more on implementing monitoring the marketing activities to understand the better picture of the conversions on the website.
Google Analytics can be set up to keep tracking of things on the store like cart abandonment, transactions, product wise revenue tracking and giving more efforts to which products sell more will bring more ROI.
Make sure your website should go friendly on Mobile, Laptop, Tablet, and Desktop. Need to implement separate Mobile App on Android & IOS play store. Also optimise the app more for buyer friendly, since the world started evolving more on Mobile.”
Gail Gardner
Small Business Marketing Strategist, GrowMap
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“Before investing time and money to grow your e-commerce store, make sure your site is optimized. Add reviews, testimonials, and icons showing methods of payment you accept. Ensure your about page has at least one photo of your store or team. Include an address and phone number on every page – even if you don’t have an offline store. Shipping details need to be complete and on their own page. Upgrade your search function so that it can return quality results for multiple word searches. Display cross-selling and upselling options. These features will increase your conversions and average sale amounts.”
Larry Engel
Director of Search Engine Marketing, OuterBox
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“2018 [is] the year for focusing on user experience (UX) and conversion rate optimization (CRO). Today’s users/customers have different expectations than just a year ago – they expect pages to load quickly, the relevant content they seek to be found above the fold and easily digestible, there to be easy navigation to find other information they may need, and clear calls to action (CTA).
All ecommerce stores should seriously consider switching to accelerated mobile pages (AMP). Proper AMP implementation will improve UX and CRO. One study showed conversion to AMP improved Time Spent on Page by 100% and Sales/Conversions by 20%.”
Jennifer Glass
CEO, Credit Cards NJ
LinkedIn
“There are so many tips that I can share, but knowing how to properly be setup can be a game changer – from being properly secure on the processing (knowing if your site is only using SSL or the more secure TLS 1.2 protocols can mean the difference between being PCI compliant or not). Also, being able to pass along additional data from the sales (using Level 2 or Level 3 data) can mean a much greater savings on the cost of the transaction.”
Shashi Bellamkonda
Chief Marketing Officer, Surefire Local
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“Amazon and Apple have succeeded by thinking beyond the transaction and owning the experience at every stage. Amazon took ownership of the delivery experience and developed expertise in delivery logistics. Riding sharing apps think about the users drive experience and setup systems with drivers accordingly.
As you establish your web presence, think of the entire customer journey.
How do prospects discover you?
Do you make it easy for them to:
- Do business with you?
- Come to you first with feedback?
- Refer other customers to you
Do you follow-up and make sure they are happy?
There are tools available for all aspects of the customer journey- website, chat, email, payment gateways, support. Just make sure you think of the customer first when you setup any system.”
Nirav Dave
CTO & Co-Founder, Capsicum Mediaworks, LLP
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“Assuming you have selected the right platform to build your eCommerce store and created a website that is not only visually appealing but also easy to access and navigate, the next task that should be in your to-do list is to create more brand awareness. The fastest way to achieve this is through paid advertising. However, this is a short-term solution and it requires you to have a substantial budget.
My tip for eCommerce store owners would be to focus more on SEO and Social Media after they have launched their website in order to garner more organic traffic and to gain visibility. Both of these are a cost-effective marketing channels and can provide a far better return on your investment in the long-run.
You need to create social media profiles for your business across all relevant social networks and ensure that you post content on it consistently. SEO is also important in order to optimize your site for users and search engines. And both of these techniques, in return, will help boost brand awareness, resulting in more traffic and increase in sales and revenue.”
Jean Ginzburg
CEO, Ginball Digital Marketing
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“Get to know your customers. No matter how amazing your marketing might be – snappy headlines, valuable videos or solid copy – all of that won’t matter if it’s not relevant to the audiences. Understand your customer and go beyond just demographic information – gender, age, geo location – get to their pain points and frustration and how your product/service solves their pain points and frustrations.”
Heather Cooan
Founder & CEO, HDC Digital, LLC
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“Get a web analytics tool implemented correctly with granular reporting at the product level so you can calculate margins on each product in your inventory. This will inform you of where to focus your marketing spend.”
Aaron Orendorff
Editor in Chief, Shopify Plus
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“It’s not sexy, but focus on your core competency, which — for nearly all merchants — means creating, selling, and delivering an exceptional product. Everything else you’ll ever do flows from that central ingredient. Learn as much as you can from your customers on this front, especially from the returns and exchanges.”
Chris Makara
Founder, Bulkly
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“For me, it comes down to tracking/measuring what you are doing.
And when it comes to ecommerce, it’s critical that you’re properly tracking what you are doing.
The majority of what you need to be sure to track can be done with Google Analytics. However, the most important thing to be sure to set up correctly is ecommerce tracking.
When this is setup correctly, it will not only show the revenue your site is bringing in but also will help you tie this revenue back to various initiatives done to drive traffic to the site.
This is critical in that it will give you insight to what is (or isn’t working) when marketing your business. From there you can make adjustments and focus on more of what is working.
And making these adjustments as needed will help you grow your business moving forward.”
Warren Whitlock
Founder and CEO, TopLine Revenues
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“There is plenty of money to be made in optimizing for a profitable transaction but if that’s your end goal, you are leaving most of the profits on the table. Rather than developing a brand and relationship to make a sale, consider how the first sale just a step toward a profitable relationship.”
Craig Hansen
Founder, Rapid Traction
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“Be responsive. This means a fast loading site on desktop and mobile, a bot-chat system that let’s people know when you are available & gives them alternative communication options when you are not, and ensure same day or no greater than 24 turn around on communication – order received, payment processed, order is shipped and follow-up on satisfaction.”
Erika Feinberg
Phronesis Specialist, ApexOutcomes
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“Watch this short video: https://youtu.be/JSkTq9PTej4. Then, look at your highest costs or pain points. Then, look at the population you are touching. Then, look at how specific stakeholder groups you’re already involved with might benefit from being exposed (meaningfully) to that audience. Then, craft a brilliant program that benefits everyone involved…especially the audience (through every channel…including print…print is not dead). You should be able to transform costs and pain points into innovations and profits if you approach this formula mindfully! This is my superhero power and what got me to where I am today. It works, and everyone wins!”
Sam Hurley
Founder, Optim-Eyez
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“As we head into 2018, my best tip (by far) is to utilize AI (Artificial Intelligence).
The innovative tech of today allows ecommerce businesses to scale by automating and enhancing an array of operations and initiatives to a degree otherwise impossible.
5 key applications for AI in Ecommerce:
- Predictive Marketing
- Hyper-Personalization (at scale)
- Search Results on steroids
- Dynamic Pricing (including inventory automation)
- Chatbots / Virtual Assistance
The customer journey is changing. Consumers want everything, and they want it immediately. Experience matters more than anything else — and the technology at our fingertips enables such amazing experiences, only desired in today’s fast-paced world.
AI is finding its way into every aspect of our professional (and personal!) life — SEO, content creation, Social Media, ads and customer service — to mention only a few areas.
Consumers are constantly exposed to the best of the best, and their tolerance for anything less is diminishing.
“81% of consumers want brands to get to know them and understand when to approach them (and when not to).”
Without AI and machine learning, this is a colossal challenge.
Failure to stay on top of trends places ecomm brands at risk of falling majorly behind in the fierce battle for attention.”
Murat Yatağan
SEO & UX Consultant , Yatagan Consultancy
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“Focusing on ever changing consumer behaviours and analyzing searchers’ intent to build up their strategy to have a better search visibility. In addition to in coming traffic channel optimization, it’s quite significant to drive revenues from these visits. Therefore e-commerce business owners should spend a valuable amount of their time smartly to read and monitor visitors’ footprints on site e.g. shopping cart drop off rate, cohort analysis and conversion rate etc. In general, focus on user and prefer best practices of digital marketing, and the [rest] will follow.”