Online marketing

Many online stores use multiple online marketing channels, like search engines, email campaigns and marketplaces. To create impact with your marketing, you should not focus on the amount of channels, but on how you use them. Gain insight into your results and improve the marketing of your online store with the right tools and KPI’s like conversion rate and customer value.

Content:

• Marketing software
• Analyzing campaigns
• Design and conversion rate
• User behavior
• Customer value and repeat purchases
• Automating steps

Improving online store marketing

There are many marketing channels available to online retailers. Getting started is usually easy, which means that even a small online store can quickly launch multiple marketing campaigns.

Think of Google Ads, Google Shopping and marketplaces like Amazon or Allegro. These are often supplemented with social media or email marketing. Each plays its own role in the customer journey. Search engines and ads often drive new visitors, while emails tend to generate repeat purchases.

However, the greatest profits often do not come from adding new channels, but from improving campaigns that are already driving traffic and revenue to your online store. Typically, you will have insights into the amount of visitors, the cost per click, or the total costs for each channel. But as long as you do not have any data on conversion rates or customer value, you will not know if your budget is delivering the best possible results.

The biggest profits often come from improving campaigns that are already driving traffic and revenue

Looking for ecommerce software to start selling in Europe? Webador and Shopify are platforms that are well optimized for cross-border ecommerce.

Marketing software for online stores

For online retailers, key data is often scattered across various online dashboards and tools. Ecommerce marketing software can consolidate this data, allowing you to view the most important ecommerce KPI’s in one central location. Well-known solutions for ecommerce stores include:

Without knowing conversion rates and customer value, you can’t determine what is generating a return

Analyze existing campaigns

By measuring campaigns and channels individually, you can see where your online marketing is really contributing to your online store’s growth. Start with the areas where you spend the most of your budget. For many online businesses, these are Google Ads or Google Shopping, for example.

Identify which keywords, ads, or products get a lot of clicks but generate few orders. You could pause underperforming keywords or campaigns and shift your marketing budget to ads that have better conversion rates. This will lower your cost per order and allow you to achieve better results with the same ad budget.

Before you make any changes, you will first need to make sure the problem is actually the ad and not on the product page, or your price of your product. Often, on marketplaces, you can also get insight into product that incur costs, but yield few results.

Improving design and conversion rates

Before you start trying to attract more visitors, it is important to make sure your online store has a good conversion rate. This is the percentage of visitors that actually make a purchase. It varies by industry and product, but on average, you can expect around 2 to 3 percent.

Small improvements to your online store’s design or user experience can boost order volumes more effectively than attracting new visitors. Start with improvements that apply across all channels. A product page with good product photos and a detailed product description helps. Also, review your checkout process, prices and shipping costs.

After doing your own initial check, you can also use tools to measure where visitors leave your website, which pages convert well and where doubts arise during the ordering process. These tools often use heatmaps, session recordings or user feedback to give you these insights.

Small improvements to the design, product pages or the checkout process can significantly boost conversion rates

Measuring user behavior

Some commonly used tools for analyzing user behavior include:

These tools provide insight into the points where visitors drop off, or hesitate during the ordering process. By analyzing this data, you can implement targeted improvements without having to pay for ads that will increase your traffic.

Increase customer value and repeat purchases

Acquiring new customers is usually more expensive than getting existing customers to place repeat orders. In addition to the amount of orders and conversion rates, it is important to clearly understand customer value or average order values. If you can increase these metrics, your revenue will grow without having to pay for additional traffic.

Email often plays a key role here. A newsletter can be a first step, but also consider emails with product recommendations or automated messages after an order. If you can segment your audience, you can target customer more effectively and, for example, send emails based on previous purchases or interests.

If you can segment your audience, you can send more targeted emails to your customers

Automate marketing steps

Many marketing activities for online stores are recurring. Think of emails sent after an order, ads for products a customer has previously viewed, or campaigns targeting abandoned shopping carts. By automating these tasks, you can reach customers more often, which boosts brand awareness and encourages repeat visits.

Sometimes your ecommerce software can handle this on its own; otherwise, marketing software can help. Think of automatically sending an email after a purchase, reminding customers of products they have viewed, or showing offers to returning visitors. If these work well, you can also send automated emails to customers who have not ordered in a while, or send price and stock notifications to customers who have previously viewed these products.

Looking for ecommerce software to start selling in Europe? Webador and Shopify are platforms that are well optimized for cross-border ecommerce.

Constantly measuring results and making adjustments

Ecommerce marketing ultimately revolves around three metrics: traffic, conversion, and customer lifetime value. More visitors increase your reach, conversion determines how many of them actually place an order, and customer lifetime value shows how much revenue each customer generates over time. Together, these three metrics determine the performance of your marketing.

However, more traffic is of little value if your conversion rate is low. At the same time, a high conversion rate yields less revenue if customers only place a single order. Only when traffic, conversion and customer value are well balanced, can you turn a profit and truly scale up.

Ecommerce marketing ultimately revolves around three metrics: traffic, conversion, and customer value