How to Grow E-Commerce Revenue

By Geoff Crain

Canadian e-Commerce enjoyed a massive spike in 2020, with 20.7-percent growth accounting for a $39.2 billion upswing. With forecasts predicting the continued growth of online businesses, brands are shifting their models to web-friendly infrastructure. It can be a daunting task to complete to optimize your brand’s online presence and increase revenue. However, by following these four steps, brands can grow their e-Commerce revenue with ease.

1. Optimize the Mobile Purchase Flow. As businesses pivoted to the pandemic’s new normal last year, a focus on direct-to-consumer marketing is demonstrated in prioritizing website functionality to allow brands to profit from online conversions. Following the skyrocketing rates of social media usage in 2020, brands that supplemented this with a social media strategy, such as Facebook and Instagram’s built-in storefronts, benefited from increased web traffic. However, online conversions depend heavily on optimizing mobile purchasing flow. When it comes to online marketing, you must have proper audience targeting. Commonly, improving the conversion rate by creating compelling and diverse content for segmented audiences can be the distinction between securing click-through rates and ROI — or being scrolled past. It's best to practice A/B testing between different graphics, product pages, and calls-to-action to find the proper creative that suits a specific audience. Further optimizing the brand’s website and store page for mobile devices, while also conducting a website and social profile audit, allows for every touchpoint to be updated to more accurately reflect the brand's voice and most importantly, drive revenue.

2. Improve the Average-Order-Value (AOV). Improving your brand’s AOV allows the online store to sell more products and make more money with each transaction. Though most customers only visit a brand store to buy the item(s) they want or need, using key AOV strategies to present customers similar or supplemental products for prospective sales is vital for profitability. Test specific upsells on smaller products as add-ons or even limited-time combination (combo or bundle) offers. After collecting the results, review how these offers or price changes impact conversion rates for AOV and look to promote reiterations of these offers for better optimized AOV.

3. Build Out Post-Conversion Flow. Due to most small brick-and-mortar stores continuing to operate solely online or in-person at a limited schedule, it is important to build recurring sales to loyal, frequent customers. Create a flow for emails from past orders. Sharing new information such as offers and new products to this newly created email flow establishes a steady stream of sales. Analyze the lifetime value (LTV) of your customers and test ways to increase it based on creative content, best-selling items, the frequency of their purchases, and other metrics.

4. Analyze Data. With every campaign, it is important to set timely goals, particularly to analyze the data to establish a strategic optimization plan for growing e-Commerce revenue. Analyze all parts of the purchase funnel, noting key performance indicators (KPIs), and build strategies to better improve the conversion rate for each.

Geoff Crain is digital media director at Toronto-based Kingstar Media, which is experienced in website optimization, building content for niche brands, and driving profitable e-commerce campaigns. He can be reached via email at geoff@kingstarmedia.com.