Worldwide we’ve seen ecommerce going from strength to strength, hitting an all time high in the last 12 months – showing no sign of respite. And, as always, with growth comes opportunity.

 Focusing on the Complete Customer Journey

Accompanying this increase in growth, and wealth of opportunity, is a market saturated with competition, and an increase in customer expectations.

To succeed, brands need to focus on the complete customer journey, and sustaining growth is fundamental to this success. Regardless of the services they provide, growth is integral to any business, and can be achieved through an increase in customers, increase in AOV, and increase in repeat purchases – subject to profitability.

Translating this to ecommerce, growth can be achieved through the following formulas:

New Customers = Sessions x CR

Revenue = Sessions x CR x AOV

Profitable Growth = Customers x Repeat Purchase

The Pillars of Ecommerce

A businesses ecommerce strategy should be following the three pillars, or principles of growth:

Customer Acquisition: Sessions/CR

Conversion & UX: Conversion/AOV

Customer Retention: Repeat Purchases 

When underpinned by measurement and insights, focusing on customer acquisition, conversions & UX, and customer retention means you’ll have a full scope and focus on the complete customer journey.

The boom in ecommerce has changed consumer behaviour. Consumers expect more each time they shop, and to succeed, we need to be one step ahead of the game at all times. 

The Threat to Success

One of the greatest threats we continuously see within the three pillars of ecommerce is the user experience baseline. 

We need to be asking ourselves if we’re truly meeting the needs and expectations of our consumers. User experience is one of the largest threats to a successful ecommerce strategy, and brands need to be identifying exactly how their consumers are interacting with, and reacting to their site. 

You should be experiencing your own experience, becoming your customer and testing the waters of your service. What better way to measure the success of your user experience than becoming a user. 

We know what we expect, and we know what we want. So apply that knowledge to your website, meet consumer expectations, and offer the experience you’d expect as a customer. 

Insight Sources

Moving into 2021, data is only as useful as the resource and energy you apply to analyzing and actioning. Of the numerous insight sources available, brands should be focusing on; Usability Testing, Voice of Customer and Google Analytics as the most integral to success.

As ecommerce businesses, we’re trying to provide the best experience possible for our consumers – triangulating insights, ranking them based on effort and potential return.

Looking to the future and simplifying outputs, we can identify three streams of action to take to optimize your eCommerce strategy:

Direct: Updating, and improving product data and site content, using thresholds, fixing bugs and addressing feedback

Website Roadmap: fixing broken or ill-performing features, adding updates and/or changes

Conversion Optimization: UX improvements, creating urgency, scarcity, clarity and trust, and building custom landing pages to improve product / service messaging

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Click here to watch the full recording of Mark’s presentation Upgrade Your Growth with Mark Lilley or learn more about Incubeta Groundswell, the latest addition to the Incubeta Family. To access the full recording of our global Upgrade Your Growth event, register here. For more information on how Incubeta can drive performance for your business explore our solutions and get in touch today.