ROI or Return on Investment is a metric that businesses use to evaluate their profits over their investments. When we have a precise report on ROI, we can check what resources we need, what strategies are working and what is not, and more data about demographics, resources, and evaluation performances.
Return on Investment (ROI) helps e-commerce businesses grow while maintaining their resources, evaluating profits, optimizing budgets, evaluating performance, and making data-driven decisions.
In this article, we'll look into the best tips for increasing ROI for e-commerce businesses. So, let's get started.
20 Tips for Better ROI for E-Commerce Business
For better ROI for your business, we have curated the best tips you can use. These tips will help you stay on top of the competition and productively grow your business. So, let's see the 20 tips for increasing ROI for your e-commerce business.
1. Optimize Website Performance
Optimizing your website performance is crucial for any website. If your website is slow and its content is taking a lot of time, your visitors may close your website or switch to another website, which leads to a loss of conversions. Optimizing website performance includes compressing images, using fast-loading themes, setting up browser caching, reducing HTTP requests, mobile optimization, amplified mobile pages (AMP), lazy loading, website speed testing, monitoring server uptime, and more.
2. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is essential for bringing organic traffic to your website, which means when a visitor searches for a specific term related to your content on Google, Bing, or any other search engine, your website shows on the first page. SEO traffic helps businesses attract more natural clients than any other method. Some key SEO strategies and best practices include keyword research, on-page SEO, high-quality content, mobile-friendly interface, page loading speed, internal linking, meta tags, avoiding duplicate content, user experience (UXP), and more.
3. Paid Advertising
Paid Advertising helps businesses attract targeted clients to their e-commerce websites. If your targeted audience is those who want to buy Sneakers from your website, then you can pay advertising platforms to bring visitors directly to your shopping website.
You will need to follow some tips & tricks to get the most out of your advertising campaigns. Some of those tips & tricks include choosing the right advertising platform (such as Google Ads, Facebook Ads, Linkedin Ads, etc. ), setting clear objectives (website traffic, generating leads, boosting sales, or raising brand awareness), audience targeting, keyword research, A/B testing, Ad design & creatives, Ad Scheduling, Ad quality score, and more.
4. Email Marketing
Email marketing is a powerful tool for growing your e-commerce business with an increasing ROI. Many email marketing tools like Mailchimp, Aweber, and Active Campaign help e-commerce websites collect emails and send notifications to your email contacts whenever you add something new to your website. Email Marketing is also important for sending promotional emails to your contacts so that you can sell your products more easily.
You can consider the following best practices and tips for getting the most out of your email marketing: build and segment your email list, create compelling subject lines, only create high-quality content, personalization, mobile optimization, A/B testing, email automation, optimize landing pages, clear call-to-action (CTA), social sharing, and more.
5. Content Marketing
Content Marketing is a way to create and share valuable and relevant pieces of content consistently so that more and more visitors are attracted to your e-commerce business. Content marketing is helpful in building brand awareness, driving traffic to your site, and ultimately converting individuals into regular customers.
For content marketing, you need to focus on your audiences' needs, set your goals clear, make content strategies, focus on quality and quantity, consistent updation to your business, attractive visual content, social media sharing, content SEO, proper call-to-action (CTA) for redirecting visitors to your sales page, and finally, location-based and local SEO. All these best practices will help you increase ROI for your e-commerce and shopping business.
6. Social Media Marketing
Social media marketing is one of the best practices of digital marketing that involves promoting your e-commerce business, connecting with your targeted audience, building brand awareness, and driving traffic and sales. For social media marketing, you need to choose the best platform where you can find the right audience for your products.
The visual content like images and videos should be of high quality, be consistent at your work, schedule your posts so that you won't miss posts on any day, make a content strategy that aligns with your audience, and also use relevant hashtags to increase the visibility of your posts. E-commerce businesses can also run contests and giveaways to increase their brand awareness, engage more audiences, and expand their reach. Make sure you create shareable content so that your followers can easily share it with their friends more often.
7. Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO)
Conversion Rate Optimization is the process of improving your e-commerce website or landing pages so that visitors don't just visit but make a purchase, sign up for a newsletter, or fill out a contact form. Several strategies for a successful CRO include putting a visually appealing clear call to action (CTA) buttons, for example, "Add to cart", "Buy Now", or "Subscribe". Businesses can also perform A/B testing to compare which CROs are working and which are not.
Improving your website loading speed is also a great metric for better ROI for e-commerce businesses. To improve conversion rate optimization, you need to make sure that the website has a user-friendly and responsive interface for the visitors to find information & products easily. Finally, the website should be fast, responsive, mobile-friendly, and have appealing CTAs, and exit-intent pop-ups.
8. Customer Reviews and Testimonials
It is very important to include customer reviews and testimonials on your website. Customer reviews and testimonials play a significant role in building trust, credibility, and confidence in your e-commerce business. To increase business credibility and trust, you have to provide a simple and user-friendly review system as well as encourage customers to leave reviews. Collecting reviews from various websites, third-party platforms, and social media will help your business grow more.
9. Loyalty Programs
Loyalty programs help businesses attract loyal customers by rewarding them for continued support and encouraging them to make a purchase again and again. E-commerce businesses stand out not only by new customers but also by repeating customers. Loyalty programs help businesses understand their customers' demographics, behavior, and preferences.
Businesses can reward customers by giving them discounts, cashback, free products, early access to sales, or exclusive content. Businesses should communicate with their visitors about their loyalty programs through their website, email, and other marketing channels.
10. Cross-Selling and Upselling
Cross-selling and upselling an essential techniques used by many e-commerce businesses, which are mainly used for increasing revenue by encouraging customers to purchase additional products and services. Users can purchase what they want as well as the products businesses suggest as per the customers' requirements and browser cookies.
Businesses must understand the customer needs and provide clear recommendations so that most of the visitors purchase through their website. Attract new customers by offering them "Buy 2 and get 40% off on your next purchase." The cross-selling and upselling methods increase ROI for e-commerce businesses at a large scale.
11. Personalization
Personalization is an e-commerce business strategy for attracting more customers through new offers, content, products, and recommendations. In simple words, personalization means designing your business in such a way that most of the visitors who come to your website become your regular customers.
Some best practices for improving the personalization of your website are 1. customize website content such as banners, images, texts, etc. 2. personalize your email marketing 3. personalize landing pages, 4. implement recommendation engines and AI tools to analyze customer data and make real-time recommendations 5. customize product pages 6. personalize push notifications 7. social media personalization, and more.
12. Shipping and Fulfillment
Shipping and fulfillment are essential for the success of e-commerce operations that directly impact customer satisfaction. Choosing trustworthy carriers or partners for your business is important for delivering products on time. You can also choose multiple carriers to provide more shipping options to customers. Choose the best shipping service that also offers affordable shipping costs and fast delivery times.
Offer shipping options such as standard, express, etc., and provide automated shipping rates, and a shipping calculator is also important for shipping and fulfillment. Excellent customer support is another big requirement for a successful e-commerce business. You can provide flexible customer support while offering email or phone support. You, as an e-commerce business, should also provide your customers shipping insurance options against any damage or loss, shipping labels & documentation, an order tracking system, address verification, returns & refund policy, cost-effective and eco-friendly packaging, and feedback & improvement center.
13. Inventory Management
Inventory management is one of the best practices for a successful e-commerce business. You must know what resources are in stock, and what should be refilled so that you can minimize the cost, and provide the best shopping experience for your customers. You should implement a real-time inventory tracking system to get updated on your stock levels whenever sales and returns happen and businesses can easily prevent stockouts.
You must maintain a safety stock for unexpected growth in demand. You can create categories of different products so that customers can easily find the products they need. Inventory audits are also important for verifying resources.
14. Customer Service
Customer service is important in every part of the business. Eventually, users get issues from e-commerce businesses such as bad loading speed, unable to open products, couldn't return or cancel deliveries, etc. Providing excellent customer support to your customers can increase customer satisfaction and positive reviews for your business. You must provide customer support using various channels such as email, live chat, phone, and social media.
Fast and responsive UI will also help your customers resolve the problem faster. Offer your customers 24/7 assistant support. E-commerce businesses can also provide chatbots so that their customers won't have to wait for any private assistant. Provide clear and customer-friendly live chat support, especially during the checkout process when the customers may have questions.
15. Data Analysis
Data analysis is a great way to increase ROI for e-commerce businesses while understanding the needs of your customers. It involves collecting, processing, and interpreting data to get to know more about customer behavior, business performance, and market trends. For proper data analysis, make sure the data collected is accurate, complete, and up-to-date. This data includes customer demographics, purchase history, website traffic, and more. You should integrate customer relationship management (CRM) systems and e-commerce analytics platforms to get more insights about your visitors.
Data analysis tools like Google Analytics, Microsoft Excel, etc. are also useful for this purpose. Your data analysis processes should also cover key performance indicators for your e-commerce business, such as conversion rates, average order value, customer acquisition cost, customer lifetime value, etc. Monitoring market trends, and competitors' performance will help you find more opportunities to grow. Finally, perform A/B tests to compare different websites, and marketing strategies, and provide new offers that will help you choose what's performing the best.
16. Cost Control
Managing profitability and sustainability is essential for any successful e-commerce business. It includes effectively managing your expenses and making effective decisions to improve business ROI and maximize profits. Maintaining a full record of all your expenses, and creating a regular budget as a roadmap for cost control is another important factor for growing a business.
To control costs, you can also use energy-efficient resources that will reduce your utility bills such as optimizing lighting, heating, and cooling systems. Use a clear and efficient return policy to reduce the cost of handling returns and refunds. Businesses should manage their debts by reducing business loans or refinancing at lower interest rates if possible.
17. Mobile Commerce
Mobile Commerce is a growing category in the e-commerce business segment. It involves buying and selling products and services through smartphones and tablets. Optimizing your e-commerce business with mobile-responsive and user-friendly can increase your sales and ROI after all.
Make sure your business has an e-commerce app, that loads fast, provides simple checkout, and offers multiple mobile payment methods such as credit/debit cards, digital wallets, and buy now pay later options. Use mobile-friendly push notifications to send timely updates, promotions, and personalized recommendations. with the growth of voice assistants like Siri and Google Assistant, you may also optimize your e-commerce business with these voice assistants for voice search queries.
18. Market Research
Market research is essential for knowing your customers and competitors better. Market research involves collecting and analyzing information about your target market, customers, competitors, and industry trends. All this information helps businesses make better decisions and strategies for effective e-commerce business.
Create clear objectives so that you can understand what's working for your business and what's not. It will also help you develop detailed customer personas to understand their demographics, preferences, pain points, and shopping behaviors. With market research, you can stay updated on industry trends and emerging technologies.
19. A/B Testing
A/B Testing, also known as Split Testing, is a very popular method used by businesses to compare different versions of a web page, emails, offers, and other business strategies. This is the best method for businesses to choose what strategies working the best.
While performing A/B testing, you must have clear goals such as increasing conversion rates, improving click-through rates (CTR), and boosting revenue. You can also try to change the "Buy Now" button colors, put attractive headlines, images, product descriptions, call-to-action buttons, pricing, layout, etc.
20. Customer Retention
Customer retention is another factor that can be considered to increase ROI for e-commerce businesses. Customer retention focuses on rewarding existing customers and encouraging long-term relationships with them. Loyal customers not only play the role of repeat buyers but also become brand promoters. You can send personalized emails and offers based on customers' behaviors, purchase history, and preferences.
Your e-commerce business can also create loyalty programs to reward customers for repeat purchases. Sending follow-up emails after purchase to express gratitude, request feedback, and offer assistance is a decent strategy for customer retention. Businesses can also run referral programs to encourage more people to make a purchase from your e-commerce store.
