I can guarantee you’ll have heard an enormous buzz about growth hacking recently so I’m jumping on the bandwagon and joining two of my favourite topics; eCommerce & growth hacking. People who want to start a new business often opt for an eCommerce store. Why? Because it seems like a simple business model and one that can yield substantial profits. However, there will be a lot of competition out there, so you need to learn some tips to help you drive your company forward.
Growth hacking is a term that’s thrown around a lot, and many people are confused by it. Growth hacking simply refers to doing anything you can do to grow your business. It differs from marketing in the sense that you use any means necessary. I’ll be telling you how you can ensure that your business sees substantial growth, fast!
Achievable Goals to Assist in eCommerce Growth Hacking
The first step to seeing growth is setting achievable goals. You may be reading this with a quizzical look on your face. Surely if you want to see growth, then growth is your goal, right? Well, yes, growing your business is the ultimate aim. But, you can’t make one giant leap and get there with ease. Growing a company is a process and one that requires you to achieve many smaller goals. So, my first tip for all eCommerce store owners is to set achievable goals for yourself. You need a plan. You can’t just set a goal without a strategy of how you will achieve it.
Focus on smaller tasks that you can complete, and they’ll further your business. For example, look at your site statistics and see how many visitors you get each day. Take the average number, and make it your goal to keep this average for the coming weeks. It’s a small goal, but it shows you’re retaining visitors. And, you won’t experience growth if your customers keep leaving you. See, a small goal, that has a significant impact.
Focus On Your Strengths
One of the rules of growth hacking is to focus on what makes your business tick. No doubt there is something that sets your eCommerce store apart from the rest. These companies learned early-on that their strengths were their best chances of growth. You might offer flexible delivery methods that competing stores don’t. Or, you sell products that you can’t find easily elsewhere. Find something that your store does (or could do), or sells, that others can’t compete with.
What you need to do is focus on the strengths you have as a business. Make the most out of your strengths and you’ll soon see growth. If you have a product that has the potential to sell successfully, make sure it’s on the front page of your site and promoted where possible on other pages. If you offer free delivery, then make sure everyone knows about it. You should plaster it everywhere on your eCommerce store, so people are aware of it. Do whatever you can to make your store strengths stand out.
Use Google Analytics
I touched upon analytics and statistics earlier, but now we’re going to dive slightly deeper into it. At its core, what is an eCommerce store? It’s just a website. And, all websites have data that you can analyse. This ranges from the number of visitors per day to the average time people spend on your site. If you want to hack your way to business growth, you’ll need to use Google Analytics. Chances are, you created your store using a web design program or a platform like Shopify, Magento or WordPress. Moz has a great piece of content explaining some things you should track with new eCommerce stores. If you are a bit of a techy, you could take this one step further and make some Analytics custom variables to extract more data from your visitors.
You’ll be given access to all of your site stats and data by the company or platform you created your site with (if not, make sure you get it set up quickly!). But, you can also get your hands on additional apps that help you see things in more detail. It’s important that you have a detailed view of all your stats so that you can analyse them. The purpose of web analytics is to look for patterns and track your progress. You can see how well your eCommerce store is moving along. You’re often given graphs and charts that clearly show you the progress you’re making. By tracking your progress, you can see what things are increasing growth. If you try something new and notice it makes no difference, then you may as well stop doing it. But, say you use one of my previous tips and see that it boosts your progress, you know to keep doing it.
Growth hacking is all about finding solutions to improve your business. If you want to set your eCommerce store on its way, you need to think about growth. The more you grow, the more successful your company will be.
