Daily ArchivesMarch 10, 2022

You might have heard that we recently released StoreBuilder here at Hostdedi. And it’s going to make the process of creating your online store much easier. You’re going to answer a couple questions and StoreBuilder will use its algorithm to create a home page based on your products, the assets you already have, and your industry.

In the past you would have needed a designer to help you with the layout and a developer to build your storefront for you. With StoreBuilder, we’ll do all of that for you, saving you dozens of hours of research & work.

What Does a Designer Do?

To really understand what StoreBuilder does for you it’s helpful to think about what a designer does. At a high level, any type of designer (web designer, graphic designer, architect, fashion designer, sound designer, game designer, etc) takes whatever the larger goal of the project is and presents it in a format to achieve those goals.

So if your goal is to have a really spacious and open feeling home an architect will take the goal (spacious & open) and make sure it’s carried through all decisions large and small. They’ll likely have tall ceilings, open floor concepts, skylights, bay windows, etc. They take the goals of the project, understand the industry best practices, and carry the larger goal through the hundreds or thousands of small decisions.

Designing A Storefront

The same is true when you’re designing your storefront. You likely want to sell your product and get it in front of as many people as possible. Does that mean you start with a video, photo gallery, a story about the creator, or just show a grid of products? Well, that actually depends on the industry you’re in.

For fledgling businesses customers care quite a bit about the creator. We like to hear the origin story in addition to the product features. One of my favorite small creators is the designer behind the Roost. Right after a picture of their main product they have a video that tells the story about why they created the product in the first place.

While customers generally love the founders story for small companies for larger companies and for some industries like clothing. Just show us the goods! Companies like Anthropologie start with an offer or with a grid of products.

So different industries and different types of customers behave differently…but what do YOU do with that information? You can spend hundreds of hours researching your industry and the biggest players in your space. Or you can use StoreBuilder where we’ve already analyzed hundreds of websites in each industry and thoroughly (sometimes mind-numbingly thoroughly) documented how the home pages are built and in what order they place the different elements.

StoreBuilder takes industry best practices along with existing assets and builds the first draft of your site for you.

Can You Still Use a Designer?

Of course! We love designers and I’ve done some part-time design work. There’s always a place for design. But when there’s enough data to make smart defaults that can save dozens of hours – and thousands of dollars we think that’s the best place to get started. Take what StoreBuilder creates and tweak it, modify it, personalize it for your brand.That’s what a designer or you would be great at.

Time to First Sale

Ultimately our goal with StoreBuilder is to help merchants get closer to their first sale. If we can speed that process up by days or weeks or even just hours we’re going to take it. That first sale is the first piece of financial proof of a business for most merchants and it’s hard to build a store when you don’t have the financial proof.

We want StoreBuilder to help you get there. And once you start getting real customer feedback then it might be time to tweak your home page, your product page, and the look and feel of your site with a designer.If you’re looking to get started quickly, StoreBuilder is here to help.

Imagine for a second you discover a magical lamp, you rub it, and a genie pops out and says I’ll give you any car you want. You’re probably going to get a Tesla, a Porsche, a ginormous truck, or my personal favorite – a Lotus Elise.

Now, imagine you get the same genie but instead, he says he’ll give you any car you want but it’s the only car you’ll have for the rest of your life. Some people might still go for the exotic sports car, but others will get sedans, minivans, or SUVs. That’s because you’re considering the car in the context of your whole life. Not just the next 5 minutes.

Access to a Huge Network

Imagine now, instead of a genie, a massive marketplace like Amazon where 1 out of 100,000 visitors is interested in your product and 1 out of 10 will buy it.

With numbers like that, you can get your product in front of a large audience for almost no work, start selling quickly, and get some cash in your bank account. And if that’s how you want to start your business, kudos to you! It is a great way to make extra revenue.

But for just a second, consider the full context:

Back to that genie.If you’re purely looking at horsepower, you might choose a sports car. Similarly, if you’re just looking at sales numbers, you might pick a marketplace. If you’re just getting started I understand wanting to list your products on a marketplace. This is a great place to start creating & releasing products without ever touching a website.

But there is a certain point in your business – usually once you proved there’s “product-market fit” which is just a fancy way of saying that people want to buy your product. And that’s when all of the above reasons become more important.

Building a Customer Base

One of the important aspects for any business is predictable revenue. You want to know that every month you’ll bring in a certain amount of sales and you try to keep your expenses below that number generating a profit.

In ecommerce the key to predictable revenue is repeat customers. Sure you can try to get a steady stream of new customers but they’re so much more costly to acquire (LINK). Instead, you’ll want to have a product line where customers keep coming back to buy more.

One of the best tools to do that is email. And you can build incredibly powerful and complex autoresponders with email clients like Klavio that are designed specifically for ecommerce stores.

Do you know the biggest weakness in marketplaces?

Not having a connection to your customer. On the two largest marketplaces: Amazon & Etsy you can’t get people’s email addresses and let them know about new products, about bundles, sales events, or a product that would relate to one they already have.

It’s hard to get returning customers without a way to reach out to them. So if you want to have an audience outside of the marketplace you need to get their contact information.

Predictable Rules

Sales and marketplaces are great. But they also come with fees. Huge marketplaces don’t let you list products for free. You’ll have to get up a percentage of each sale to these marketplaces.

That’s all fine and good – but what if the rules suddenly change? Say you pay a 10% fee on a $100 product and after the fee you keep $20 in your pocket. If they increase the fee to 20% you’ve lost ½ of your profit. Who can you talk to or get in contact with?

And even if you do get in contact with someone do you think they’ll be able to change the rules just for you? Ultimately they have their own business to run.In the content management world there’s an expression:Don’t build your brand on rented land.

And the same is true for your business. You never want to rely on someone never changing their rules.

A Hybrid Approach Can Work

I don’t want anyone to think marketplaces are horrible places. They aren’t. I use Amazon… a lot.

But you never want to completely give up the ability to reach your customers. So feel free to use marketplaces to boost numbers. But you also want to have a home base – your website. You’ll want to make sure to have your own products on your site, your own reviews, your own policies, etc.

That way should a marketplace change their rules or should one of their restrictions hamper your growth you can always do that through your own website. And worst-case scenario you can abandon that marketplace and rely on your own site entirely.

Whether you decide to use WooCommerce, Magento, or some other product there are products that let you sync details and inventory levels between your own store and a marketplace like Amazon. So there’s not much extra administration and you can build your own website while you get some bonus sales from marketplaces.

There’s a lot of competition for ecommerce business, and rightfully so. Ecommerce sales were $4.28 trillion in 2020 and are expected to continue growing.

Businesses vying for those dollars have to develop an ecommerce marketing strategy that gets their business seen and generates interest for their products.

Types of Marketing for Ecommerce Businesses

There are a lot of marketing strategies — creativity is the only limit. The various strategies fall into overarching categories by type. Here are four types of marketing strategies to consider:

1. Cause Marketing — Links a company and its products to a social cause or issue.
2. Relationship Marketing — Focuses on fostering better relationships with your customers and increasing their brand loyalty.
3. Scarcity Marketing — Makes customers think there is a product shortage or limited amount available, encouraging them to purchase now for fear of missing out.
4. Undercover Marketing — Marketing activities that consumers don’t realize are marketing. Product placement in a popular television show is an example of undercover marketing.

You can use any or all of these approaches for ecommerce marketing.

Key Marketing Strategies Every Ecommerce Business Should Use

Businesses use a ton of different ecommerce strategies. There is something for every business and every situation. And there likely are strategies that even the most creative marketers haven’t come up with yet. Here are some marketing strategies that every ecommerce business should use:

SEO

The majority of your website traffic likely comes from online searches. Optimizing your ecommerce site and all of its pages for SEO means more people will continue to become aware of your business and your products will be more visible on Google.

Product Reviews

People want to buy products they know will work well for them. Recommendations from a trusted friend are the best form of advertising, for sure. But did you know that 84% of people trust online reviews as much as they trust friends’ recommendations? Encourage site visitors to buy your products by including reviews on your eCommerce site.

Content Marketing

There’s a reason the majority of companies today use content marketing. It works. About 90% of customers see the benefit of ecommerce content marketing in making them aware of products. Awareness leads to purchase consideration.

Guest Posts

Blogs are considered the most effective way to turn casual readers into customers. You can extend your reach beyond your own site by publishing guest posts on other blogs. This drives traffic back to your site and exposes you to new audiences.

Social Media Marketing

There are about 3.8 billion people on social media. You don’t want to miss direct communication with those of them who are in your target market.

Influencers

Reach out to influencers who you know your target market follows and ask them to promote your brand. Product reviews work. Influencer endorsements work even better.

Email Marketing

More than 4.1 million people in the world use email, with more than 90% of people in the United States using email at least daily. Your target audience is already using email, so why shouldn’t they connect with your brand? Email has a 1.22% conversion rate, making it the best way to turn prospects into loyal customers.

Google Adwords

Target specific keywords with Google AdWords, to help ensure your products show up in relevant searches.

Social Ads

Facebook and Instagram ads allow you to target users based on categories like age, interest, and location to help them find your products. Promoted Pinterest pins allow you to place ads that pop up in users’ feeds or appear in relevant searches.

Every ecommerce business should use these marketing strategies. Many of them are so common that potential customers notice if you aren’t doing them (for example, social media and email marketing). Others are affordable, simple ways to create awareness for your brand.

Tips to Create a Stellar Ecommerce Marketing Strategy

You probably know how to create a marketing plan. You may even have created marketing plans in the past. That experience helps in creating an ecommerce marketing strategy. Ecommerce marketing is much like traditional marketing, but there are some key differences.

Those differences are mostly due to the change in medium and how people behave differently online. Here are some tips to consider when creating your ecommerce strategy.

Seek Advice

There’s no reason to reinvent the wheel. Seek out people you’re connected to in your industry who implemented ecommerce marketing plans. Ask for their advice. What do they wish they had known beforehand? What are they glad they did? What do they wish they had done differently?

Consider Experts

Time you spend on one thing within your business is time taken away from something else. Consider whether it’s worth your time to learn all about ecommerce marketing plans or if it may be better to hire a freelance expert or agency.

Start Small

You won’t be able to accomplish everything with your first ecommerce campaign. Don’t expect everything all at once. Start small and make measurable changes. Let campaigns build on themselves over time.

9 Steps for Building an Effective Ecommerce Marketing Strategy

Understanding everything you need to know about your ecommerce marketing strategy includes building an effective strategy. Follow these nine steps to build an effective ecommerce marketing strategy:

1.Establish Goals

What do you want to accomplish with your ecommerce marketing plan? Establish a few realistic goals for a certain timeframe (i.e., six months or a year).

2. Develop Buyer Personas

Take the data you gathered on your target market and create a fact-based story about your perfect customer. You’ll use this customer profile as the foundation for all of your marketing decisions. This is the person you’re marketing to.

3. Identify Your Unique Value Proposition

What is it that makes your product different or better than the competition? Why does your buyer persona want your product instead of a different one in the same category? Focus your marketing communication on this value proposition.

4. Create Strong Product Descriptions

Write detailed product descriptions for your site that sell the features and benefits of each product and why the reader should purchase it instead of another option.

5. Create Offers

Offer first-time customers free shipping and/or a discount, especially if they sign up for your email list. These types of promotions will encourage the initial sale.

6. Simplify Checkout

Make the checkout process as fast as possible for customers. The less information they have to enter, the more likely they are to complete the process. Think three to five steps at most. Consider showing them a progress bar or steps to completing checkout so they know when they’re almost done.

7. Make Recommendations

Recommend other products that the customer might like in a buyer’s guide. Or, try recommending products that work well with those they plan to purchase.

8. Optimize the Site

Make sure your site loads quickly and is accessible from any device (smartphone, tablet, desktop computer, etc.). You want visitors to have a good experience, regardless of screen size.

9. Establish Trust

Establish trust with shoppers through site security measures, offering free returns, and avoiding extra fees (shipping, tax, handling fees, etc.) that they weren’t expecting.

How Hostdedi Can Help with Your Ecommerce Marketing Strategy

That’s everything you need to know about making an ecommerce marketing strategy. Now that you have the basics of a marketing plan down, ensure that your ecommerce site is in the right hands.

You could fret about setting up a site that would support your marketing goals, or you can add Hostdedi to your team. More specifically, StoreBuilder by Hostdedi could be the right choice for you to get your ecommerce site up and running quickly.

StoreBuilder is an intelligent website assistant that helps you start and launch a WooCommerce store faster than any other solution in the market. Getting started is simple. Hostdedi’s easy tool helps you build an ecommerce site in four steps.

You just answer a few questions about your products, industry, assets, and whether you’ve already started an online business. StoreBuilder then uses industry insights to build a customized ecommerce site in minutes. You don’t need templates, coding experience, or any technical web knowledge.

Contact us to learn more about how Hostdedi’s StoreBuilder can help support your ecommerce marketing strategies.

Entrepreneurship isn’t always about starting the next Tesla. Many times it’s about recognizing a need and having the instinct and drive to provide a solution for it.

Take RaeShawn and LaShone Middleton whose journey to business ownership started with a community need. They are professional chefs who were laid off at the start of the pandemic. They were sitting at home binging Tiger King when they wanted to order a crab dinner, but realized there weren’t any local restaurants around that delivered.

And right in that moment, a new business went from concept to rollout. They used their contacts to buy crab wholesale, prepared delicious dishes, and put fliers up to get the word out about their venture. And in their first-week of business they received 20 orders. A dream realized.

On-the-ground, Guerilla marketing is awesome and an important part of your marketing plan. But, getting your store online isn’t just nice-to-have – it’s must have. But it’s all too common that the fear of not knowing where to start can keep you from getting going.

So we’ve made it easy. Super easy. Really.

Introducing StoreBuilder

StoreBuilder is an intelligent website assistant that helps you get your store started and launched faster than any other solution in the market. Getting started is simple. By answering 4 questions about your products, industry, assets you have (content, images, etc.), and whether or not you’ve already started an online business, we’ll use industry insights to build your storefront for you. In minutes.

Not hours. Minutes.

And it’s your store, customizable the way you want it. Instead of choosing a theme or template that looks like everyone else’s, StoreBuilder uses research, insights, and artificial intelligence to create a custom design for your store.

So, if you’re a clothing store with 500 products, we’ll layout your store in one way. And if you’re a pet store with 10 products, we’ll lay it out in a completely different way.

You’ve built out your ecommerce template. You’ve added content to sell your products. It’s time for the grand finale.

Now that your online store is set up and ready to go, it’s time to show it to the world!

To make your store live, you’ll need to connect it to your domain name (yourshopname.com). If you’re handy with updating domain name settings, the name servers are listed below.

If you’re thinking, “what the heck are name servers?”, you might want to contact your domain name registrar to make the change.

How to Make Your StoreBuilder Store Go Live

Step 1

Login to your domain registrar dashboard or get in touch with your domain registrar’s support department to change your name servers and connect your domain with your StoreBuilder store (geek speak for this process is “updating name servers”).

Note: Not sure who your domain registrar is? Some common domain registrars are Namecheap, Hover, GoDaddy, Google Domains, Cloudflare and domain.com.

Still haven’t purchased your domain name? Register your domain with our free tool.

Hostdedi StoreBuilder Name Servers

• ns1.nexcess.net
• ns2.nexcess.net
• ns3.nexcess.net
• ns4.nexcess.net

Step 2

Update your StoreBuilder URL from the temporary domain (a URL like xxxx.nxcli.net that was automatically generated when your StoreBuilder site was created) to the real domain for your site (a URL like yourshopname.com). Just head over to your Hostdedi portal, click on Domain Options from the left menu and press the, “modify master domain” button to make the change.

You already have an online store. Now you need to figure out how to market your business to as many people as possible. But with so many types of digital marketing available, it’s easy to get lost in the labyrinth.

Where do you start?

According to Datareportal, at the beginning of 2021, there were 4.66 billion internet users globally — which is 60% of the total world population. More people can access the internet than ever before.

The internet has become the best place to connect the broadest customer base to your products or services. It’s time to start devising ways to reach them on the multitude of online channels available.

Ready to take your online business to the next level?

Read on to learn:

• How digital marketing works.
• How to use different types of digital marketing channels for your online store.
• How to make your digital marketing strategies work for you.

Traditional vs. Digital Marketing for Your Ecommerce Store

Traditional marketing is a semi-targeted method of reaching potential customers.

The offline advertising strategies of traditional marketing include:

• Postcards
• Billboards
• Newspapers
• Radio

Though some businesses still use these traditional methods, online marketing is steadily advancing in popularity. It is an easier, less expensive, and less wasteful way to create brand awareness and drive traffic to your business.

There are plenty of compelling reasons to move toward digital marketing. It is a form of inbound marketing, which means instead of searching for prospects, they can search for you.

Traditional marketing is also limited by location. Digital marketing empowers you to reach out to the right target market and spread brand awareness to a large number of people.

As of 2019, Statista reports indicate 1.92 billion people bought goods and services online. In 2021, that number is expected to jump to 2.14 billion.

That’s a whole lot of potential customers.

5 Types of Digital Marketing Channels For Your Ecommerce Store

In the fast-paced world of technology, you have to stay ahead of the curve — especially if you run an ecommerce store that lives in the online space. If you’re not using the latest digital marketing methods, there’s a good chance your competitors will.

Let’s get into the most popular online channels to market your online store.

1. Social Media Marketing (SMM) for Ecommerce

Over the years, ecommerce merchants, designers, and developers have experimented with thousands of homepage configurations and these 8 elements are widely understood to be essential to a successful homepage that converts visitors.

• Your logo
• Navigation
• Headline
• CTA
• Social Proof
• Photos
• Page copy
• Footer

8 Basic Elements of A Homepage

Logo

First, your logo. Your logo is the face of your brand. It’s the visual representation of everything you want your customers to remember about your business. It should be displayed consistently and often. Most brands develop guidelines for how their logo should be used so that customers see what they expect to see whenever they encounter your branding in the wild.

Navigation

This is the bar at the top of your website that contains text links to the pages of your website. Designing effective navigation means taking into consideration the journey of each user and audience that frequents your website.

Headline

Your headline is the first line of text a visitor to your website will encounter. For example, on Hostdedi.net our headline is “The (Truly) Managed Commerce & Content Hosting Platform”. Creating a compelling headline is harder than you might think. Summing up the mission and character of an entire organization in one sentence takes time and expertise so don’t be afraid to hit the drawing board over and over.

Call to Action (CTA)

A call to action is a simple phrase, usually displayed on a button, that instructs your visitors on which action to take. On the nexcess.net homepage, for example, our CTA is simply “Speak with an Expert”. Other common CTAs include:

• Buy Now
• Learn More
• Read More
• Chat with Support
• Submit

Social Proof

Social proof is any user generated content including reviews, photos, and testimonials that speaks to the quality of your product or service. By adding social proof to your homepage, you’re demonstrating to prospective customers that your products and services live up to their promise because you have evidence that real people have purchased your goods and are satisfied.

Photos (& Videos)

High quality, well lit product photos of at least 1000px by 1000px are essential for any ecommerce business. Any product photography or videography must be of the highest resolution so it can be displayed on either a desktop or mobile platform.

Page Copy

Words! Other than your headline, what information is displayed on your homepage? This element of homepage design will depend largely on your industry vertical and the number and types of products and services you sell.

Footer

The footer section of a website contains essential information a customer might need to contact either corporate or support. Common elements of a footer include:

• Company address
• telephone number
• email address
• About Us
• Customer Service information
• Links to important pages that aren’t in the Navigation section
• Privacy policy
• Return policy

An Effective Ecommerce Homepage Without Coding

We’ve covered the 8 basic elements that make up a basic ecommerce homepage and there is still a lot to learn about each element, much less how to put them together in the most effective manner.

Now you can take the guesswork out of designing your ecommerce website with StoreBuilder by Hostdedi.

StoreBuilder delivers a fully customized, industry-focused ecommerce homepage template in just a few minutes, using a proprietary AI engine, with no coding required.

If everything is important, then nothing is. That’s why you need to determine the best ecommerce success metrics to measure for your business.

To make sure your ecommerce business is as successful as possible, you need to understand which metrics to measure and why. Then you make all of your business-related decisions based on data, not just instincts or casual observations.

What are Ecommerce Success Metrics?

Ecommerce success metrics are data you track to determine the performance of your online business. These numbers tell you whether your business is doing well or not. You then use this data to make marketing, promotional, and other business decisions.

Why are Ecommerce Success Metrics Important?

Without the data, you don’t know what’s working, what needs adjustment, or where you should redistribute resources. To grow your eCommerce business, you need to:

• Set measurable goals (known as key performance indicators).
• Understand how to measure those KPIs.
• Monitor KPIs, making adjustments as necessary.

The 10 Most Important Ecommerce Success Metrics

There is a lot of business-related data you can measure. While you may determine that additional ecommerce success metrics are essential to monitor for your business, here are the metrics you should watch closely.

1. Sales Conversion Rate

The most important metric to monitor, sales conversion rate tells you what percentage of your site’s visitors make a purchase. Most analytics tools provide the conversion rate. You also can manually calculate it by dividing the number of customers who purchase a product by the total number of site visitors. A good conversion rate is 1-5%.

2. Email Subscriptions

Email marketing is an amazing tool for eCommerce stores because it allows you to stay in contact with customers who already purchased or showed interest in your products. You’re able to contact them with future promotions and encourage purchases. Marketers who use segmented campaigns see a 760% increase in revenue. The easiest way to track your email subscription rates is with the analytics built into your email marketing tool.

How to Grow Your Email Distribution List >>

3. Customer Lifetime Value

This is a measure of how much you earn from a typical customer during their life. This number tells you how much you can spend to acquire a customer and to retain them. To determine this number, add up the revenue earned from a customer (annual revenue multiplied by the average customer lifespan) and subtract the cost of acquiring them.

4. Customer Acquisition Cost

A measure of how much it costs on average to acquire a new customer. You want your acquisition costs to be less than your average order amount, so you make money off each new customer. Calculate this metric by dividing your total marketing expenditures by your number of active customers.

5. Repeat Purchase Ratio

You want to retain your existing customers. The repeat purchase ratio measures how many times a customer comes back to your store to make another purchase. To determine this number, divide the number of repeat customers by the total number of customers.

6. Revenue By Traffic Source

Some traffic sources convert more visitors than others, which is where you want to spend your money. Track sales from each medium and determine how many sales you get per 1,000 clicks from each source.

7. Average Order Value

This metric is the average value of each purchase. To determine it, divide your overall sales number by the number of carts. The goal is to increase the amount each customer spends.

8. Product Return Rate

It’s only helpful to make a sale if it’s permanent. The product return rate tells you how many units are sold vs. returned. You can measure the product return rate for overall sales and individual products. These measures help you understand which products are more successful and which ones you may want to remove from your offerings.

9. Loyal Customer Rate

Your loyal customers are your most valuable customers. They’re the ones who love your products, will return for more purchases, and will recommend your products to their friends. Your loyal customer rate tells you how well you’re engaging and motivating customers to return. To determine this rate, divide the number of repeat customers by the total number of customers.

How Do I Increase Sales and Loyalty with eCommerce Lifecycle Emails? >>

10. Shopping Cart Abandonment Rate

A measure of how many shoppers add items to their online carts but never make a purchase. You can track this number with Google analytics. You want to reduce the percentage of people who leave items in their carts as much as possible.

How to Choose the Right eCommerce Metrics to Monitor Your Business

While you could measure many things related to your business, it’s important instead to consider which metrics are important to the business outcomes you desire.

You could monitor the metrics above, determine which areas you want to increase or decrease (depending on which means improvement), then set KPIs in those areas. Then you would continue to review and monitor those metrics at least monthly, adjusting your goals as necessary.

If you’re still trying to figure out which metrics are the most important for your business to track, consider:

• Impact — If the metric changed, how big of an impact would it make on your company’s bottom line? If improving the metric isn’t worthwhile, neither is monitoring it.
• Goals — You should have strategic goals for your company. Focus on changing the metrics that support those goals.
• Scale — Some metrics are interconnected, which means improving one will automatically improve others too. If you can improve multiple metrics through small actions, it’s probably worth doing.

How to Use Ecommerce Success Metrics to Manage Your Business

Once you measure your metrics and determine where you want to make changes, you need to know how to make those changes happen. Here’s how to improve each metric listed above:

1. Sales Conversion Rate

You want 1-5% of the customers who visit your site to make a purchase. Of course, the higher the percentage, the better. To increase this percentage, use content marketing to make more people aware of your company and its products, build an email marketing list, or use promotional pop-ups to make shoppers offers when they visit your store.

2. Email Subscriptions

To grow your email list, promote joining the list via pop-ups on your site and social media accounts. Offer a promotion (like 10%) if a shopper signs up to receive future emails.

5 Successful Email Marketing Campaigns and Why They Worked >>

3. Customer Lifetime Value

You can improve how much your customers spend with you during their lifetime by building relationships with them, asking for their feedback, and eliminating concerns or pain points for them.

4. Customer Acquisition Cost

You can reduce the amount it costs to acquire new customers by focusing marketing on those people most likely to become customers. Personalize the customer experience for your target market. And, of course, the more customers you retain, the fewer you have to acquire.

The Cost of Customer Acquisition vs. Customer Retention >>

5. Repeat Purchase Ratio

You can encourage repeat customers by getting them to sign up for your email list, messaging them about recent purchases and future promotions, and encouraging loyalty program membership.

6. Revenue By Traffic Source

Don’t spend all of your time trying to build an audience. Instead, go to where your prospects already are. Monitor where you get the most traffic from and spend your resources there.

7. Average Order Value

Increase order value by offering free shipping at a specific price point, giving product discounts for a minimum spend, suggesting other products, encouraging savings with bulk orders, and promoting a loyalty program.

8. Product Return Rate

For fewer returns, make sure your products are quality and are accurately represented on your site, encourage customer feedback about products, and be transparent about shipping times.

9. Loyal Customer Rate

Customers are more likely to stay loyal if you offer them quality products at an acceptable price while building relationships with them and rewarding them for their loyalty.

10. Shopping Cart Abandonment Rate

Reduce shopping cart abandonment by being upfront about pricing and costs, allowing customers to edit and save carts, and making sure your site runs well, and your checkout process is simple.

Measuring What Matters

The correct ecommerce success metrics are the ones that move your business forward according to your goals. The mix of metrics will be slightly different, depending on your business and its needs. It’s also typical for your KPIs to fluctuate, depending on where you’re focusing your resources and what’s happening with your business at any given time.

For example, you may see more cart abandonment during the holidays, but you also likely have many more visitors making purchases. So, both of those statistics would increase, but one makes up for the negative of the other.

The most important thing is to start measuring and adjusting KPIs to accomplish your business goals.

Start With a Site Optimized to Sell

KPIs may tell the story, but a successful online store also requires the right foundation — a site that’s optimized for selling.

To get your store online quickly without coding, and using one of the strongest ecommerce platforms available — WooCommerce — check out StoreBuilder by Hostdedi today.