It’s no easy feat to sustainably scale your ecommerce site. Growth brings new customers and revenue, but it also presents unique challenges. How do you stay on top of inventory management and order fulfillment? Is your site optimized for increased traffic? Does your shopper experience hold up as your store expands?
Sustainable growth is all about continuous innovation and forward planning. So, how should your ecommerce strategy evolve as you scale?
4 Ways to Optimize Your Ecommerce Site For Business Growth
Build on your current success by focusing on these key areas of your ecommerce site.
1. Provide Accurate Inventory Data
A surge in order volume can only be a good thing, right? Well, that depends on your inventory management. If your website can’t keep up with your warehouse, shoppers can buy products that are no longer in stock, and order fulfillment quickly descends into chaos.
As your business scales, make sure your inventory systems update in real-time and use live indexing on your site so shoppers have an accurate view of available products. When products go out-of-stock, instantly remove them from view with dynamic boost rules.
If you regularly sell out of the same products or styles, it’s time to revise your inventory forecasts and stock orders. Do your search reports show shoppers repeatedly encounter “no results found” for certain queries? Factor these insights into future stock planning and product development.
Lime Lush Boutique uses boost rules to push out-of-stock items to the bottom of product pages
2. Optimize Product Pages and Descriptions
A steady stream of sales is a good sign that your product pages resonate with customers. But, there’s always room for improvement. If your site content performs well now, some minor enhancements could give your conversions an extra boost.
Start with your site reports to identify pages with high bounce or exit rates. Are they missing important information? Is the imagery stale? As you scale and add new lines or suppliers, it’s critical that the small but important details remain consistent on product pages. High-quality imagery, videos, and descriptions all help to eliminate customer hesitation and drive down return rates.
» Bonus tip: For a conversion-boosting upgrade to your product pages, add personalized recommendations. With an intelligent tool, you can surface hyper-relevant suggestions as shoppers browse, and fuel new revenue growth with cross and upsell opportunities.
Peltz Shoes keeps product information and display clear and consistent across product pages
3. Audit Site Performance
Experiencing an influx of new visitors and orders? Make sure your site has the capacity to handle the increased traffic. Perform regular site audits to maintain healthy page load speeds and avoid broken links as your inventory changes and expands.
Keep an eye on your search reports, too. Shoppers who use your search bar are more likely to convert, so it’s essential they can find accurate results, quickly. Search queries also offer valuable insights into product trends, naming conventions, and even common FAQs.
Of course, periods of growth are also an opportunity to double down on the tactics that have gotten you this far. If your site analysis uncovers above-average conversions from certain merchandising campaigns, for example, use this knowledge to inform future strategies.
Search insights reporting from Searchspring
4. Build Loyalty and Engagement
One of the many perks of ecommerce growth is an increased base of satisfied customers. Your success is a clear sign that shoppers are happy with their purchases, so don’t be afraid to build on their loyalty and ask for feedback.
Include customer reviews on product pages for added authenticity and credibility. Add star ratings on category pages so customers can quickly scan popular results. Even better, equip shoppers to sort or filter results by review ratings. Purchasing decisions become effortless when you incorporate user-generated content throughout the buyer journey.
As well as adding social proof to your growing business, reviews also lend a sense of community to your brand. Incentivize customer feedback as part of your loyalty program, and offer exclusive rewards and personalized offers for repeat buyers.
Skims provides a link to product reviews at the top of product detail pages with expanded, full reviews at the bottom of the page
Power Continued Growth with Ecommerce Site Optimizations
As your business grows, your ecommerce strategy must expand and adapt accordingly. Heightened demand for your products brings new opportunities to scale, but it also presents challenges for your website and shopper experience.
For more advice on how to achieve sustainable growth, check out our webinar, Scaling Your Ecommerce Business!
