Renee Theron, Negosentro | If you would like your business to reach its full potential, you need to make sure that every strategy, tactic, and initiative revolves around growth. While traditional marketing may seem like the most commonsense approach, growth hacking takes marketing to an extreme and helps you to laser focus on the things that are most important and will be most productive. The good news is that there are many tools, methods and best practices that make growth hacking much easier.
Bradley Shaw from seoexpertbrad.com put together this eight growth hacks for any Ecommerce Business below:
A/B Testing
If you want to be successful in online marketing and ecommerce, you’re going to have to go through a significant amount of trial and error. It doesn’t matter what kind of content you’re planning to release — a new website, newsletters, or video advertising, you need to figure out what works. An excellent way to do this is through A/B testing.
A/B comparison testing is the process of testing two distinct versions of a website or page to find out which converts better. More specifically, it’s a process which helps you to decide which option will convert the most customers. This means that there will be two separate groups: the control group, which is typically the first site that you designed, and the variation group, which is the other option.
Even if the differences in your two groups are small, such as the color, wording, or certain positioning it can still have a profound impact on how your audience responds. So search for a/b testing tools that give you the ability to identify the most profitable version of your website, newsletters or ad campaigns. Leave nothing to chance.
Provide Social Proof
One of the most popular time-tested e-commerce growth hacks is social proof. This is a strategy in which you convince people to do something because others of have done it. In this case, you would be convincing others to become your customer because others have become your customer.
When potential customers are provided with social proof, they are usually led to follow the herd. They assume that others possess more knowledge about a certain topic or business than they do and so they follow their lead.
In most cases, merely showing the number of customers you have served or securing celebrity endorsements is enough to establish credibility. You may also consider posting testimonials from satisfied customers,
Use a Sense of Urgency
Your products and services may be excellent, and you may have all of the social proof in the world. However, if your potential customers wait too long, they could move on without actually buying. This is why creating a sense of urgency is a great strategy.
This strategy requires you to create an urgent situation in which the potential customer must act quickly. This gives your customer less time to think about reasons they should not buy. Instead, they focus on the limited time that they have left.
In fact, according to one experiment using urgency with follow-up instructions that called for people to take action increased conversions by 25 percent. So use the sense of urgency on your landing page or sites. Create a call to action that spurs them to do what you need them to do on this page. Try asking for some form of conversion.
Offer Upgrades
One of the best ways to build further rapport with your audience and generate more leads is to provide newsletters and E-books. However, these strategies pail in comparison to offering upgrades–specifically content upgrades. Content upgrades are simply bonus content that you provide at the end of the article.
For instance, if you post a blog post about the importance of cardiovascular health, at the end of the article you would link an offer for a free report which lists the 25 best cardio exercises. This will boost your leads significantly.
Trust Symbols
A big part of growing your e-commerce business is creating a strong sense of trust between you and your users. And sometimes it’s the most simple things that can make a huge difference. Using trust symbols is one of those e-commerce growth hacks that take minimal effort but can have a huge payoff.
Trust symbols help to reassure visitors that their personal information, such as their credit card number, email address, or phone number, will never be compromised. These symbols let them know that everything is secure. So place badges on your website which makes this clear.
However, this does mean that any badge will do. You must be careful about the badges you choose. Not all are trusted and could cause some visitors to be suspicious of your business.
In 2013, Baymard conducted a study to determine which symbols, or seals, are most trusted. He was able to conclude that the top three trust symbols were Norton, McAfee, and TrustE. So make sure you’re choosing a symbol that has credibility.
Offer Live Chat
Sometimes it’s not about how much a customer trusts your business. In some cases, it is just a matter of their being unanswered questions. This is why it’s an excellent idea to use live chat features on your website. If the only thing preventing a potential sale is an unanswered question, then live chat will boost your conversion rates significantly.
Fast Loading Website
One of the quickest ways to lose a customer is by having a website that does not load quickly enough. It’s important to remember that people’s attention span is becoming shorter and shorter. So if you would like to get the most lead possible, you must ensure that your website loads quickly.
If your site loads slowly, luckily this usually not a complete fix. Search for tools that help you to measure your site performance and offer suggestions to speed it up. A simple tip is to make sure that all images on the site have been compressed.
Reduce Steps to Purchase, Reduce Form Inputs
Another aspect of ensuring that you do not lose a customer due to timing is to make sure that your steps to buy aren’t long and drawn out. Your customers may want your product, but there are very few who are willing to fill out endless forms to get it to shorten the process. By reducing the steps that it takes to get your products or services, you are getting that much closer to a final sale.
Growth hacking is more than a trend; it’s the future.
