How to Prepare Your Ecommerce Store for Growth in 2022

January 28, 2022

Grow Your Ecommerce Brand with These Strategies

The eCommerce industry has been growing at breakneck speed for years. The word ‘eCommerce’ itself was first coined in 1984 by Dr. Robert Jacobson, but the industry didn’t really get off the ground until 1999 when Amazon became one of the first major players to go public.

Since then, eCommerce has evolved into a multi-billion dollar industry, and it shows no sign of slowing down. In fact, the ecommerce sales in the US are projected to grow to $523 billion by 2022.

This exponential growth has prompted the need for businesses to adapt their business models accordingly. This process requires constant assessment and change — both of which can be challenging without virtually no industry experts.

ecommerce growth


In this guide, you’ll discover what you need to do in 2022, and learn some of the best ecommerce marketing strategies that can make a big impact on your online brand’s revenue.

1. Leverage the Right Technology

The first step towards a better eCommerce business is to use the right technology. Your brand needs to be equipped with a number of custom integrations and apps that will help you improve your sales numbers.

For example, if you’re in the clothing industry, you’ll need custom integrations with apps like PushOwl, Klaviyo, or Shopify in order to integrate your store with services like Push Notifications, Social Media Marketing (SMM), Email Marketing, and Order Management.

You can also use apps like Google Analytics to discover what pages are causing customers to drop off. This information is crucial for streamlining your store’s user interface and user experience so that customers can easily find what they’re looking for.

The fact is that consumers are no longer limited to the products they can find on Amazon. Nowadays, consumers have an entire world at their fingertips, and they’re more than capable of finding better deals on the hundreds and thousands of Shopify based online brands.


2. Use Machine Learning & AI to Help Improve Your eCommerce Store’s Performance

Machine learning is the future and will revolutionize online shopping for both sellers and buyers alike.

Let’s say you want to find the best way to spend your advertising dollars. How would you go about doing that?

In the past, this was a very time-consuming process that involved manually sorting through piles of data from various marketing channels. You’d have to track things like bounce rate, as well as session durations before creating segments that would allow you to compare different marketing channels and define the best one.

With machine learning, this process becomes a lot easier:  in fact, all you need to do is feed the system enough data in order to train it. Then, simply choose your desired outcome—in most cases, “reduce cost per purchase” — and let the machine do the rest.

There are now actual bots that can conduct customer service on your behalf, helping you save on operational costs. Bots can answer simple FAQs while also answering customer service queries in real-time!

You also have advanced AI tools such as Recom.ai that helps you cross sell and upsell. It helps you provide tailor-made recommendations, offer customized cross sell offers and boost your average order value.

Simply put, machine learning and AI offer a lot of potential benefits for businesses that want to stay ahead of the curve. And luckily, there are plenty of platforms that offer these services free or at a very low cost.


3. Boost Your Social Media Marketing Efforts

Did you know that 71% of shoppers are more likely to buy from brands they follow on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram??

This is why it’s important to increase your social media presence. More so, you need to create online communities where people can engage with your brand on an ongoing basis.

You’ll also need to use visual content in order to keep the audience’s attention. This means that you’d have to focus more on high-quality images rather than traditional text posts.

You can also reach out to influencers who have a high number of loyal followers and ask them if they’d be willing to promote specific products. This is an excellent way of increasing brand awareness in a very short span of time.

The best part? Influencers don’t charge as much as you’d expect them to, and they can actually increase your sales significantly.


4. Make Use of Abandoned Cart Emails

One way to increase your sales is by recovering any items that were left in a customer’s shopping cart but never purchased, via emails.

This is a technique known as “abandoned cart emails,” and it’s been proven to be highly effective. You could recover up to 70% of your lost sales by making use of this strategy.

However, for abandoned cart emails to work best, they should include additional information about the product that was left behind in addition to an updated price or sale offer. This way, you can incentivize more people into buying your products while also increasing brand awareness through some word-of-mouth marketing tactics.

There are many different approaches when it comes to creating these successful email campaigns—some stores even track which products were browsed before being abandoned so that their shopping carts will contain similar items on future visits.

If shoppers don’t feel like they’re being spammed, then there’s a good chance that they’ll actually open your email and consider buying the product.

Just make sure you personalize and deep segmentations in each email campaign so that it feels more tailored to the individual customer. This will help increase your chances of converting them into paying customers.


5. Make Sure Your Site Loads Quickly

If people have trouble navigating around your website because pages are slow to load, then chances are, they won’t stick around for too long.

According to recent research, 40% of ecommerce customers expect a web page to load in two seconds or less. If it takes more than three seconds, then there is a high chance that they’ll leave your site and look for alternatives elsewhere.

You can boost an ecommerce store’s speed for mobile phones by taking steps like product page optimization, reduction database requests, WordPress caching plugin setup etc. This will allow shoppers to access your pages quickly even if their internet connection isn’t the greatest.

The bottom line? Ecommerce sites with faster load speeds tend to have a better engagement and higher conversion rate. Make sure you’re not losing sales because your pages take too long to load or they start buffering halfway through the process.


6. Optimize Your Site for Mobile Devices

More people are using their smartphones and tablets to shop online than ever before. In fact, according to a study by Google, 61% of users are now shopping on their mobile devices.

If your ecommerce store isn’t optimized for mobile devices, then you’re missing out on a lot of potential sales. This is because people tend to shop more impulsively when they’re using their smartphones or tablets.

Make sure that all of your pages are properly formatted for smaller screens and that the text is easy to read. You should also consider using a responsive design template so that visitors will have an optimal experience no matter what device they’re using.

It’s also important to test the ecommerce store design on different devices before launch. Use emulators or real-world devices to see how everything looks and functions. This way, you can catch any errors or layout issues that need to be fixed.

In addition, you should also use Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test to see how well your site fares. If it doesn’t pass the test, then there are a few things you can do to improve its mobile-friendliness.

The key takeaway is to make sure your e-commerce store is optimized for mobile devices so that more people can buy from you.


7. Create High-Quality Product Videos

People love watching videos online, and this is especially true for ecommerce customers. Videos show exactly what they can expect from your products (whether it’s the size, functionality, or some other important detail).

In fact, according to a study by Wyzowl, 84% of shoppers said that they were more likely to buy a product if they could watch a video about it first. This is because videos help to solve potential issues, such as size or color before they can get in the way of a sale.

If you’re not already creating product videos, then now is the time to start. They don’t have to be long or complicated — just a short clip that shows your products in use can be enough. You can also create “unboxing” videos to show customers exactly what’s included in their purchase.

To create top-class product videos for your ecommerce store, you might need to invest in a professional camera and tripod. If you don’t have the budget for that, then look into using your smartphone or tablet instead.

The bottom line is that high-definition videos can make a huge difference when it comes to growing ecommerce conversions. You should definitely start creating them as soon as possible.


8. Focus on Upselling and Cross-selling Opportunities

Upsell and cross-sell opportunities are a great way of increasing the average order value for each customer. They’re also something that can be easily implemented in your store.

When you offer upsells and cross-sells, you’re suggesting related products to customers that they might be interested in. For example, if someone buys a pair of sports shoes from your store, then you might suggest a higher-model of the shoe with better features as an upsell.

When you are upselling this way, you can increase the average order value by 20%. This is because people are more likely to buy additional items when they’re already considering making a purchase.

You can also use cross-selling to introduce customers to new products. If someone buys a dress from your store, for example, then you could suggest a jacket or some other accessories as a cross-sell.

To determine what products to upsell and cross-sell, you can use your analytics data to see which items are most commonly purchased together. You can look at what’s being searched for on your site to get an idea of which related products people might be interested in.


9. Be Socially Responsible at Your Ecommerce Store

It’s becoming increasingly important for businesses to be seen as being socially responsible, and this includes ecommerce companies. Consumers are more likely to buy from stores that they know are doing good in the world.

There are a few ways you can make your ecommerce brand more socially responsible. You can start by choosing ethical suppliers who produce sustainable products. You can also donate a portion of your profits to charity, or offer products that benefit a good cause.

If you’re not sure where to start, then there are a few resources available online that can help. The Sustainable Brands website, for example, is full of articles and case studies about how businesses can become more sustainable.

You don’t have to do everything at once — just start with one or two things that you feel comfortable with and go from there. Being socially responsible is something that’s always evolving.

It gradually builds trust and makes the customer feel that they are connected to a bigger cause which would ultimately benefit your brand.


10. Include Customer Reviews on Your Product Pages

Customer reviews are a great way of showing potential customers what other people have thought of your products. They can help to persuade people who are on the fence about making a purchase.

Ideally, you want customer reviews to be as honest and unbiased as possible. This means that you should avoid asking customers to write positive reviews, and instead focus on getting genuine feedback from them.

There are a few ways you can go about getting customer reviews for your ecommerce store:

  • You ask customers to leave a review the product in exchange for a discount code or some other incentives for future purchases

  • You run customer reviews through your email marketing campaigns

All these are proven and effective ways to get the customers to give you feedback on your products, and you should make sure that they’re displayed prominently on your product pages. You can take it to the next level by following Warby Parker––a brand that does customer reviews really well. They have a whole page on their website dedicated to customer reviews, and they make it easy for customers to leave feedback.


11. Measure Everything

The saying “if you can’t measure it, then how do you know if it’s working?” still rings true in the ecommerce world today. Without measuring what works and what doesn’t, there is no way to improve any part of your business—let alone grow!

There are a number of metrics to measure that will help with this process: for example, Google Analytics allows you to track things like traffic sources (i.e., where customers come from), average time spent on site, and page views per visit, conversion rate, etc. 

But don’t limit yourself by just using these metrics — get creative and think of other ways to track how your business is doing.

You can send a survey to your customers every few months, asking them about their experience with your store. This will give you valuable feedback that you can use to improve your site and increase sales. There are plenty of useful resources for analytics out there, so make sure you take advantage of them.

To conclude, growing your ecommerce brand in the year 2022 is going to be a challenge for most retailers. However, if you follow the above steps and keep up with changing trends over time, there’s no reason why your brand can’t achieve significant growth within this timeframe.

Ready for success?

Book a free consultation with one of our retention experts today &
discover how we can create a winning marketing program for your brand.

Book a free consultation with one of our retention experts today & discover how we can create a winning marketing program for your brand.