How to Grow Your E-commerce Business: Experts Reveal Secrets

Anton Kraly – DropShipLifestyle

Act as if your e-commerce business was a thriving offline business – a physical retail store. Act as if it was not just one store, but a conglomerate of stores that are located on all of the busiest shopping streets in the world.

Your e-commerce store IS a real business, and it should be treated with the same respect that the CEO’s of Fortune 500 companies treat theirs.

If you really want to grow your e-commerce business at massive scale, you need to fully commit to your business as if you already had hundreds of employees, dozens of retail locations, hundreds of thousands of unique visitors coming to your online stores, and a responsibility to grow your sales and profits each and every day.

What decisions would you make then? What would your day look like? What hires would you make? Where would you cut costs? Where would you look for new opportunity?

Make a list of things, and start doing them TODAY. If you want to turn a basic lifestyle e-commerce business into an empire that can provide generational wealth, you need to act as if that is what you are already doing.

Anton Kraly is the Creator of www.dropshiplifestyle.com – “The Community That Connects over 3,000 e-commerce Entrepreneurs.” @AKraly
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Nick Eubanks – SEO Nick

My biggest tip to grow an e-commerce business is practically common sense, but I rarely see websites taking it as seriously as they should; remove all friction from the checkout process.

So in a nutshell:

• Don’t require account creation
• Don’t force customers through multiple screens
• Default to the cheapest shipping option (unless there’s a faster one for the same price)
• Create trust through prominent display of active security and social proof
• Minimize form fields and use autofill wherever possible, i.e. city, state, and country
• Save billing and shipping information when possible
• Save payment options when possible
• Offer multiple ways to pay where your customers are likely to already have accounts like Paypal and Amazon

Nick is the Vice President of TrafficSafetyStore.com, Founder of Imfromthefuture.com and blog owner at SEONick.net – @nick_eubanks
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Kai Davis – Double Your Ecommerce

At the end of the day, when you want to grow your e-commerce Business, you need to be focused on one thing: acquiring more customers.

There’s a number of different strategies that help you do that, but if you’re focused on Organic Search, there’s one thing you need more than anything:

Links.

Links are the currency of the ‘net. They’re a vote of trust. High-quality, relevant links are the best way to tell Google ‘Hey, this page is relevant!’

And if you run an e-commerce business, you’re at an advantage: you’re selling something that people want. When you find communities of your ‘best buyers’ online — websites, forums, podcasts, review sites — and build a relationship with them, you can offer them a sample of your product to review.

If they like your product, they’ll write about it. And when they write about it, they’ll link to you. And when they link to you, you’ve just earned a high-quality, relevant link to your site from someone who reaches the same audience as you.

And that, my friend, is a great way to grow your e-commerce business.

Kai Davis writes about Search Engine Optimization, Link Building, and Digital Public Relations / Outreach Consulting at DoubleYourEcommerce.com – @kaisdavis
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Andrew Youderian – eCommerceFuel

In the early stages of growing an e-commerce business, figure out the most effective strategy for getting visitors and customers and double down on that. It will vary based on each market and could be SEO, email marketing, social media or something else entirely. Once you grow bigger, you’ll absolutely want to expand into other channels to diversify your risk and allow you to reach the most customers possible. But when you’re starting out and building momentum is crucial, find that #1 channel and put all your efforts there.

Andrew is an entrepreneur, blogger and founder of eCommerceFuel.com, a private online community reserved exclusively for independent e-commerce merchants. @ecommercefuel
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Linda Bustos – Get Elastic

In growth mode, new customer acquisition is important, and an aggressive digital PR campaign is important for awareness. To get media attention, you need a strong value proposition – what makes you different and special? If you’re in a highly saturated industry, how can you do things differently? Do you have a creative business model (e.g. Birchbox or Manpacks / subscription), a great brand story? (Toms, Warby Parker), a unique app experience?

We’re living in the age of Amazon, so any new e-commerce business needs to stand out. Competing on price isn’t profitable and attracts fickle customers. Get and evangelize whatever makes you different and better than Amazon and all your competition!

Linda Bustos is Director of e-commerce Research at Elastic Path, author of the Get Elastic E-commerce Blog and provides consulting services to some of the most exciting e-commerce companies in the world. @getelastic
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Eric Bandholz – Beardbrand

In today’s e-commerce world, if you want to stand out from the giants like Amazon, you need to do things differently. You can’t compete on price because they have superior economies of scale – so you’ve got to figure out what they don’t have. Amazon, has no “soul” and there is no real connection between the buyer and the seller. Whereas with your store you can tell your story of who you are, why you are passionate about your products, and give them that personal connection to your company that Amazon can’t do.

Go out of your way to provide the best experience possible and make the buying experience unique to your customer. When you build this bond with your audience, then you’ll see word of mouth marketing becoming the primary leader for growth and you can start to incrementally grow your business to new levels.

Eris is an entrepreneur with 10 years’ experience in marketing, sales, and design. Eric successfully built a $40k per month e-commerce business in less than a year. Beardbrand.co.uk – @thebeardbrand
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Richard Lazazzera – A Better Lemonade Stand

My number one strategy for growing revenue is to really zero in on your perfect product/market fit. Channels like Facebook and Instagram can be a goldmine for customer acquisition but you really need to make sure you are targeting the right buyer persona or you’ll just be burning cash.

So how do you find your product/market fit? Many times it will come from a lot of experimenting so make sure you’re always tweaking your ads, the images and the copy, as well as the audience settings and targeting.

Austen Allred wrote an excellent post on how he sold $4,000 in neckties through Instagram in 2 weeks. In it he gives one of the best examples of his thought process to find the right buyers. It’s a must read. Check out the section titled Thought Process.

Once you find that product/market fit, you need to figure out which marketing channels allow you to most effectively hit that particular buyer persona. Where do they hang out and which apps and social networks do they use most? Some critical thought can help you narrow it down to a few channels, but your true answer will come from experimenting. Finally, once you find a channel that works, focus on that channel and keep testing and optimizing.

Richard Lazazzera is an e-commerce entrepreneur, online marketer and founder over at ABetterLemonadeStand.com. @RichardABLS
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Alex O’Byrne – We Make Websites

Make building a mailing list a priority. Add everyone you know, take a clipboard to events, add a pop on your website, add all past and new customers. Emailing your list is an easy to way to generate sales and build your brand. Send useful, funny or interesting content, not just offers.

Bonus tip: Get someone else to use your website and listen for any potential usability issues.

Alex is Co-Founder and Director at wemakewebsites.com, the highest rated web designers on Shopify. @alwaysmaking
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Lindsay Romanelli – JXT Group

Offer endless, quality customer service.
The biggest limitation consumers of an e-commerce business face is the inability to touch, feel, smell and see a product before making a buying decision. For an e-commerce business, one of their biggest limitations is that they lack the advantage of face-to-face customer relationship building. To grow into a successful e-commerce business, the company needs to bridge the gap between the consumer and their business. Providing exceptional customer service is a crucial part of every e-commerce business, no matter what they specialize in. This can be done by giving the user what they want– endless, quality customer support. Customer service should not only consider the established customers, but the potential ones as well.

Consumers are the most important aspect of any business; therefore they should be made to feel that way. Bad customer experiences push them away, so why give them a reason to run? 82% of people have stopped doing business with a company due to bad customer service, reported Harris Interactive. While 95% of customers take action as a result of a bad experience, 79% of them have told others about their experience (Zendesk). Good customer service has the ability to build a favorable brand awareness, be used as a marketing tool, and most importantly for customer acquisition and retention.

With word of mouth becoming increasingly stronger, thanks to the presence of social media and online reviews, a dollar amount cannot be placed on the value of the individual attention given to each customer’s needs and desires. A single tweet, Facebook post, or blog post has the ability to reach an unimaginable number of people, which can be a great marketing tool for you company, if it is positive. If it is negative, it has the ability to ruin a company’s reputation both long-term and short-term. Nowadays, it is extremely common for consumers to find themselves ‘Googling’ a company to discover other customer’s accurate, honest opinions about that company. Leaving a bad taste in a consumer’s mouth will surely make its way down the grapevine, and if you believe in the 6 degrees of separation—consider that an e-commerce’s death sentence. Sure, every business wants to be noticed and develop rapid growth, but more important for the acquisition of new customers are the experiences of existing ones.

Sources: Zendesk, Harris Interactive.

Lindsay is the Account Director at JXTGroup.com, an e-commerce Marketing Solutions provider for all channels of online marketing. @JXTGroup
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Elan Sherbill – Cleverbridge

International expansion is the key for growing an e-commerce business. No matter where your company is based, there are online shoppers in other regions to whom you can sell. However, a primary challenge with capitalizing on these shoppers is that they often speak different languages, expect prices in their local currencies, and tend to use alternative payment methods—not just credit cards.Start

by targeting G7 markets with a fully localized shopping cart: This means using professionally translated copy, setting clean prices in local currencies, displaying appropriate taxes, and offering local payment methods. For example, you must offer German customers an option to pay with direct debit and offer Japanese customers an option to pay with Konbini. Also, don’t forget that form fields need to be localized as well, since addresses are displayed one way in the USA and a different way in Canada. These are invaluable methods for increasing conversion rates in new markets and growing your global revenues.

Elan is a professional e-commerce Blogger at cleverbridge.com – @cleverbridge

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Emily Gimmel – The GRACESHIP

My suggestion would be do not try to go big or go home! Do not try to have everything figured out in order to start your business. You will learn as you grow. The most important thing is to have customers. You don’t have a business until you have customers, so focus on getting those – whether it is one or one thousand. Listen to your customers, and potential customers, and grow your business according to their needs.

Grace is a former veteran TV journalist and network TV personality, she is also Founder and CEO of e-commerce store TheGRACESHIP.com, a line of chic computer bags and accessories exclusively for women. @GRACESHIP
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Leighton Taylor – EcommercePulse

Know what your margins are. The thing that’s tripped me up the most when starting a small bootstrapped e-commerce business is thinking that my margins were good enough to keep the business afloat, but they turned out to be smaller than I had thought. Whether you’re drop shipping, buying wholesale, or manufacturing, a good margin is key to survival and growth.

Leighton is a blogger at EcommercePulse.com and a builder of beautiful websites for small businesses. @LeightonTaylor
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John Larkin – eCommerceLift

My number one tip for growing an e-commerce business is aimed at those of us who also deal with manufacturing. It is vital to have your manufacturing lead times down to a tee so that you can accurately predict cash flows and stock levels going forward. You can’t grow until you are set up to grow, so get those systems in place now while you have a chance!

John is an experienced entrepreneur and digital marketer from Dublin, Ireland. He is passionate about technology, start-ups, marketing, growth, product, analytics and e-commerce. John runs both the eCommerceLift.com blog and growth consultancy. @ecomlift
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Emory Cash – Loft Resumes

The most important lesson I have learned about growing an e-commerce business, is to treat customers the way you yourself would like to be treated. Great customer service and experiences that go above and beyond the customers’ expectations are more helpful than anything else. In any business, there will always be the occasional customer that is less than pleasant to work with. I do not believe the customer is always right, but I do believe they should be treated with respect and we strive to listen with a cheerful heart to all opinions, even negative ones, about the way we operate our business. Listen to your customers, treat them well, and your business will flourish.

Emory Cash is an entrepreneur and designer who loves marketing and problem solving. He is Creative Director of e-commerce store Loftresumes.com and Co-Founder at theprintshop.co, a community printmaking space in Greenville, SC. @EmoryCash
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Katrina Ives – Qtique

Create quality content for social media and your blog. By being active on these platforms and building relationships with users, you are able to gain more fans, followers and readers that can convert into new customers. You will increase your reach to a wider audience in ways that boosts traffic and sales. Also, make sure your site is optimised for mobiles and tablets as this is where the majority of this kind of traffic will be coming from.

Katrina is Founder and CEO of Qtique.co.uk, a pottery company based in the Cotswolds and London. Qtique represents a proud heritage of quality and traditional English craftsmanship, bringing a little luxury to everyday household items. @QtiqueStudios
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Jordan Jones – Packed Party

My top tip for growing an e-commerce company is creating a unique brand personality and being consistent whether it’s on social media platforms or the way you word your website. I’ve done this with Packed Party and seen a lot of other successful e-commerce brands do the same.

Customers should be seeing the same messaging everywhere they experience your brand. For us, this was getting the word “party” out there and conveying fun anywhere and everywhere our customers were living on social and other mediums.

Jordan Jones is Founder and CEO at e-commerce store PackedParty.com, a service that sends beautiful themed care packages that make the perfect gifts. @Packed_Party
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Susan Delly – Zippy Cart

After working with online startups for a while, I learned a lot about spotting needs before they become an issue. Common areas that need attention in SMBs include providing quality content and trying to reach too wide an audience with limited marketing dollars. Luckily, these are easy fixes once they’ve been identified. The real growth killer is when an online store owner is not running the right e-Commerce software for their business. Your e-Commerce software should be scalable, secure, user-friendly, and have a solid set of conversion and marketing tools. Unfortunately, there’s no single ‘best’ shopping cart software for everyone but there are a lot of great ones to choose from, such as PinnacleCart or CoreCommerce. It all depends on the exact needs of your e-Commerce store. If you don’t have time to do the necessary research yourself, find a company like ZippyCart that will lay it all out for you!

Susan is the Owner of zippycart.com, an e-commerce software review platform that was created to help online merchants find the best shopping cart for their online store. @zippycart
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Jessica Geier – Raw Generation

My top tip would be figure out where your customers are as quickly as possible. We started off promoting on social media and that got us nowhere fast. After about 6 months in business we were connected with someone at a deal site, ran our first deal and it was a success. After that I spent an entire month searching out every deal site I could find and contacted all of them until we got on their calendar. That was the catalyst for our early success and I have no doubt that it is the reason we are still in business.

Jessica is a certified Holistic Health Coach and President at rawgeneration.com – @RawGeneration
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Graham Charlton – Econsultancy

Go the extra mile with customer service. New e-commerce companies can differentiate themselves from competitors by providing the best possible customer service. This turns customers into advocates, increases the number of positive reviews, and helps to establish consumer trust in the business.

This can be done in a number of ways – under promising and over delivering in areas like delivery, responding quickly to customer queries, easy returns, little treats in packaging, and so on.

Graham has worked in the digital industry for more than ten years and is Editor in Chief at Econsultancy.com. He blogs about e-commerce, mobile commerce, email marketing and more. @gcharlton
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Michelle Michalak – Slyde Handboards

The most powerful tip we could give in growing your e-commerce business is allowing your customers to be your brand ambassadors. Make it easy to compile and share testimonials and reviews from your customers. After all, there’s nothing more powerful in growing your e-commerce business than endorsements from happy customers.

For the past 15 years Michelle has actively helped Small Businesses, Entrepreneurs, and Start-up e-commerce businesses create legendary brands. Her clients include Slydehandboards.com – @slydehandboards
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Steve Watts – Slyde Handboards

I have learnt so much over the past 5 years Slyde Handboards has been in business and online, it would take me a day to go through them all. E-commerce is still in its infancy when you compare how long it has been around to brick and mortar business, even the so-called pros are learning new thing all the time. However, one thing in my opinion stands true regardless of what form of business you start, from e-commerce through traditional, you have to find what motivated you to get up in the morning and succeed, find your passion! The tough times (and there will be many) will destroy you if you do not have the drive and passion to keep on swinging for the fences.

Steve is the owner of e-commerce store Slydehandboards.com – @slydehandboards
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Gail Go – Punchdrunk Panda

Stay relevant regardless of what state your business in. Whether you’re generating profit or burning through your capital, if you truly believe in your business, you need to ‘fake it until you make it’.

You can stay relevant by launching product innovation (very important in fashion category), content marketing, social media or CRM. E-commerce business doesn’t benefit from face-to-face interactions to build relationships with customers.

So these tools will make customers feel that you’re not a (for the lack of better term) scam.

Gail is the Co-Founder of e-commerce store PunchdrunkPanda.com – @punchdrunkinc
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Michael Ugino – SellBrite

Be engaging. Have an engaging product, compelling descriptions and site content, and a clear call to action for your brand that your target customer can relate to. E-commerce is all about creating an experience for the shopper, and if you do your job well, they will return to experience your brand again.

Michael Ugino is the Co-Founder & CMO of sellbrite.com the #1 multi channel e-commerce platform on the market. @Sellbrite
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Jesse Gaddis – Bedford Slims

My advice borrows from a zen philosophy. It isn’t a tip per se, but if you think this way I can guarantee e-commerce will make more sense for any beginner.

We all know the meditative question:

“If a tree falls in the woods and nobody is there to see it, does it make a sound?”

OR For the internet generation:

If you tweet something and you have no followers, did it have any impact?

In online retail your shop will be buried miles below thousands of other shops and no one will know it exists unless you make yourself known. What will you do to get people to find you?

Welcome to e-commerce.

Jesse is CEO of Bedfordslims.com an e-commerce store selling rechargeable and portable vaporizers that mimic the cigarette smoking experience without the harmful toxins. @bedfordslims
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Sarah Gross – Rescue Chocolate

Get to know your niche on social media! Whichever platform(s) you choose to engage in, be sure to find the accounts in your space which are loud, prolific, and considered tastemakers already. Join the conversation with them, and be sure to include their names in conversations. Figure out the popular hashtags in your niche and use them for each of your posts. You’ll grow your audience this way, and customers will organically float into your shop.

Sarah is a former professional ballet dancer, animal shelter volunteer and self-proclaimed “dark chocolate fanatic”. She is also Founder and President of RescueChocolate.com “the sweetest way to save a life” @rescuechocolate
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Eva Jorgensen – Sycamore Street Press

As soon as you can, start to delegate the busy work so that you can focus on the creative, big picture stuff that really helps your business grow. (And it’s always a leap when you first decide to hire someone — we’ve never felt 100% ready, but we’ve always had a gut feeling it was time and have never regretted it!)

Eva Jorgensen is Founder, Co-owner & Creative Director at sycamorestreetpress.com, a company that sells beautiful prints and paper goods made in the Utah Mountains. @sycamorestreetpress
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Justin Heister – MSTRMND Collective

My top tip for growing an e-commerce business has to be to genuinely engage your customers, and potential customers, through social media. Be SOCIAL with your social media channels. Don’t just post, sell, and advertise your vision or products… But rather listen, reply, and truly join the conversation with those will to engage you.

Justin is the Co-Founder and Art Director at MSTRMNDCollective.com – @TheMSTRMND
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Mike Honoré – Reactiv Supplements

Adapt quickly to industry changes. The e-commerce environment is constantly evolving. To continue to grow your business you must change with it, preferably ahead of it. The more streamlined your business processes are the easier this job will be. A focus on simplification is paramount.

An e-commerce business with a good model, will be faced with a flow of copycat businesses appearing, and attempting to chip away at the market. The younger, duplicate businesses can be quicker to take advantage of and adopt technology. Predicting, and staying ahead of change, is the best way to maintain position as a leader – ahead of competitors.

Mike is the Owner at Reactivsupplements.com – an online presence for fitness, weight loss, body building, nutrition, and supplements.
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Tamara Mack & Kaitlyn Ortberg – ShopMACK

As we evolve our e-commerce site, MACK, into an e-commerce marketplace where we will offer free interior styling services to anyone, we face a multitude of decisions along the way. Surrounding ourselves with a team of expert advisors has been tremendously helpful in guiding us through the process. Work with your advisory team to specifically define roles for each of your advisors; and select advisors who will challenge you, provide actionable solutions, and those who wholehearted believe in your idea.

ShopMACK.com is a two sided e-commerce platform connecting customers with personal home stylists. MACK blends real stylists with technology and high style products to create a personalized shopping experience. Think Stitch Fix for your home! @shopMACK
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Zain Sehgal – Ayegear

This tip applies to all business, regardless of the nature – have passion for your product / brand. When you walk, talk and sleep – your brand needs to be on your mind. For example; how can I make the product better, what are our customers telling us, how can we do X process better. It’s all down to passion – this is what will drive your hunger for your brand.

Zain is the Owner of AyeGear.com, a website manufacturing innovative and high quality travelling aids to meet the demands of the modern tech-savvy traveller. @AyeGear
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Anikka Burton – Not Another Bunch Of Flowers

Get some good website analytics set up, and then have the confidence to be brave and experiment with your marketing spend and marketing mediums. You won’t know until you try which channels are going to work for you, so experiment and then take the time to analyse that activity and the ROI. Eventually you’ll find the sweet spot for your business.

Annika is the Owner of NotAnotherBunchOfFlowers.com a beautiful get well soon gifts business she created after her diagnosis with breast cancer in 2011. All of her products are safe for use during illness and treatment. @notanotherbunch
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Drew Sanocki – DrewSanocki.com

When I think about growing a business, I think about two key facts:

Key Fact #1: Mathematically, there are only three ways to grow a business:

1. Increase average order sizes (AOV),
2. Increase frequency of purchase per customer (F), and
3. Increase the overall number of customers.

If you increase each 30%, you’ve doubled your business (1.3*1.3*1.3 = 220%)

Key Fact #2: Almost every business has multiple customer segments that exhibit vastly different behavior:

1. Best customers have high AOVs, high F. They typically also don’t take up a lot of customer service time. These are your Whales. For most businesses, Whales make up 20% of all customers but contribute 80% of revenue.
2. Poor customers have low AOVs, low Fs, and they cut coupons, return crap, etc. These are your Minnows.

Given Key Fact #1 and Key Fact #2, if you increase your Whale percentage from 20% of overall customers to 40%, you…

• Will see your AOV go up
• Will see your average F go up
• Will see your revenue double off the same total number of customers.
• Won’t see any change in customer acquisition costs as Whales often cost the same amount to acquire as Minnows.

It follows that one of the highest leverage things you could to do to grow a business is to target Whales. There are three ways to increase your Whales, two of which matter:

1. Acquire more Whales — think SEO, SEM, referral programs, whatever.
2. Keep Whales around and buying longer — think email marketing, remarketing ads, social media, developing product they want, developing a site that displays that product, content they like, etc.
3. Turn Minnows into Whales. This rarely works. There’s an expression “good customers are born not bred”. So focus on the top two.

This isn’t my theory by the way — Drucker talks about it, Jay Abraham does, Wharton professors, and at the end of the day it’s basic 80/20 math that is born out in case after case. But this is a great strategic way of thinking about growth.

Drew Sanocki is now a full-time writer in the fields of digital marketing and e-commerce retail at DrewSanocki.com – @drewsanocki
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