Marketing trends are always on the rise. When you look through business magazines or blogs you always see the appearance of new marketing trends and strategies. Of those, the one that is popular and has proven to be effective is one that is termed “growth hacking”.
Growth hacking is using unconventional and less costly strategies to increase your visibility to potential customers and fuel sales. There are a few simple methods under the growth hack strategy that you can apply to enhance your website and its engagement in pulling in and retaining customers.
This article will help you acquaint yourself with 7 effective and powerful growth strategies to rocket your e-commerce business.
Collect and Display Customer Reviews
The charm of your website in terms of marketing may be the ads that you display or the brands that you hold. However, how are your customers going to invest their trust in you? Persuading them to conduct business with you by buying your products can only happen when they’ve established trust in you. And something like that is only possible through physical evidence which manifests itself in the form of your buyers’ experience with you.
When you showcase customer reviews on your website and display them for other potential buyers to see, you are essentially allowing them to understand that you are a worthwhile and trustworthy organisation. This will enable them to more confidently shop through your website.
Posting testimonial from established individuals and organizations and showcasing them on the website for your customers to see is also an effective and fool-proof way for you to gain their subconscious trust.
Therefore, when you highlight the experiences of your previous customers and physical testimonials, it adds a more human and trusting touch to your site thus, building your credibility and pulling in a flow of new customers.
Conduct the A/B test on your product pages
An A/B test is a trial and error method where you find out what type of site display garners more buyers. By monitoring the customer activity after you make a particular change on your site, you will be able to find out what kind of characteristics of your site appeals more to your buyers. This type of changes can be something as huge as an ad display or something as trivial as the colour of the ‘Add to Cart’ button. Other kinds of changes may include the size of the text you use on your site, the font style, the size of the product picture that you display, displaying trust badges and even displaying the limited availability of stock.
Conducting the A/B test will help you determine what unconsciously attracts your buyers the most and persuades them to make purchases on your site.
Personalize the Homepage
Customers like to feel and know that they are being cared for. One way of doing this is by showing them that you know them, or rather, that your site knows them. When you personalize the homepage for the viewer it persuades them further to purchase items on your site.
Personalizing the homepage for a customer may include activities such as displaying to them items they had previously viewed but had not purchased or displaying items based on their similar searches. Such an effort will allow the customer to be more fixated upon the item that they are contemplating upon buying and will further persuade them to make the purchase.
Personalization will require you to do research and monitor your
Create an urgency to rocket sales
When customers feel like they’re running out of time and about to miss out on a huge opportunity, they will be more driven to make a purchase. Creating urgency is of utmost importance to sway the customer to purchase since it will make them feel like they wouldn’t get another chance to purchase an item.
You can create this urgency by various statements throughout your website and the purchasing processing. Displaying the time left for the end of sales, free shipping, number of stock left for an item are all techniques you can make to make your customers feel like they have to hurry in making their purchase.
To know what kind of urgency drives your customers, you can employ the previously mentioned A/B experiment to figure out the urgency statement that leaves the most impact. With the help of this, you can often display that statement on the site of the customer and thus, allow them to make a purchase that will leave them feeling relieved.
Display Trust Badges
Credibility is necessary. Your customers feel the most comfortable shopping with you when they know they can trust your site’s portals. Trust Badges will help you show them that you have them covered in terms of online security.
Purchasing items will require your customers to put down sensitive and personal information, especially when making the payment. It is during this stage that you must show them that your site and its portal are trustworthy and that their information is safe.
Offer incentives during Checkout
Who doesn’t love a discount? Customers get addicted to purchasing items on your site when they know that there’s a discount coupon waiting for them at the checkout page.
Incentives like discount coupons help increase purchase rate from the buyers. Other kinds of incentives that you can offer your customers are referral codes for discount, a discount on upgrade, a shopping price limit for free delivery and other such initiatives that will allure the customers and make them fixate upon purchasing from your site.
Market these coupon codes on your main page so the buyers will be motivated to checkout to view the surprise that awaits them. This will most likely end in them making the purchase instead of abandoning the cart.
Turn Existing Customers To Return Customers
The most valuable of customers are those that have already purchased on your website. These customers, however, still need a push to keep making purchases.
An e-mail can be sent after the purchase has been delivered to show appreciation, offer them a discount on their next purchase or give them a referral bonus. Using incentives in these e-mails works wonders. They create curiosity in your buyers to make further purchases from you.
Using growth hacks is about trial and error. There’s no set system or methods for you to work with. Different things work for different websites. So you just have to find which hack works for you and which doesn’t. With growth hacks, you have to be consistent and open to trying new things until you find the best fit to help you increase sales. Keep doing your research and be attentive to what your customers react most to, you’ll be all set to drive your sales up.
Author
Rushin is a finance geek and a small business owner. He started FranchiseKaro.in where he blogs about starting and running franchise businesses.
