While e-commerce is often more affordable than traditional brick-and-mortar companies, it still comes with its costs.

Setting up an e-commerce store is relatively easy. All you’d need are the right products and platform. Actually growing your e-commerce store, however, is much more complicated. It takes a lot more time and effort, while also seeming much more confusing than it should be.

Where do you even get started with this? Thankfully, there are multiple ways to grow your e-commerce store, many of which are relatively straightforward. While they’ll still need some time and work to get done properly, they’ll significantly impact your future growth.

They let you build the foundation for your future success, so there’s no reason not to take a look at them.

Importance Of Growing Your eCommerce Store

Before diving into how you can grow your e-commerce store, it’s worth looking at why it’s important. To put it simply, you mightn’t be able to generate a profit without growing. You’ll need to get a certain amount of sales and revenue to generate a consistent living out of it.

These revenues won’t all equate to profit, however. A significant amount of it goes to running your e-commerce store. While e-commerce is often more affordable than traditional brick-and-mortar companies, it still comes with its costs. You’ll need to cover these expenses somehow.

If you don’t generate consistent and relatively high revenue, you’ll start cutting into your savings. Eventually, that’ll mean running out of money, and your e-commerce store ends up failing. You’ll naturally want to avoid that.

In short, growing your e-commerce store lets you:

  • Generate more sales and revenues
  • Cover your expenses and make a profit
  • Bring in new customers
  • Expand your operations

As great as all that seems, getting there can seem difficult. It’s already trickier than starting your store, so where do you even start? Seven practical ways to grow your e-commerce store are recommended. They’ll let you build a solid foundation for your growth and overall success. It’s worth diving into each of them.

Ways To Grow Your eCommerce Store: 7 Top Options

1. Grow Your Email List

One of the core ways to grow your e-commerce store is to keep generating repeat business. As obvious as that sounds, it can be relatively difficult to do. One of the main tactics you can use to do this is email marketing. It lets you directly reach previous and existing customers and keep your brand in mind while encouraging sales.

Start growing your email list as early as possible to properly use this. Making customers input their name and email address when they’re buying anything from you is a great way of doing this. Once you have these emails in hand, you can craft an email marketing strategy that encourages them to buy again.

Since email marketing can be free or low-cost, it’s one of the more cost-effective marketing strategies you can use.

2. Be Open To International Customers

The beauty of e-commerce is you have the whole world as potential customers, as long as you know how to ship abroad. Since this seems daunting, you could end up focusing on a relatively small local market. As understandable as that is, it hinders your growth.

At some point or another, you’ll have to consider expanding your potential customer base. Going international is one of the more obvious ways of doing this. While you’ll need to spend time getting the infrastructure in place for this, you can outsource shipping and similar areas to make it easier.

It could be less daunting than you’d think, and you’ll grow your ecommerce store significantly once you do it. There’s no reason not to go international.

Working with an international freight forwarder uk can be a great way to take your e-commerce store global, allowing you to expand your customer base and the products and services you can offer. By partnering with an experienced international freight forwarder, you can easily set up your existing infrastructure for global shipping. They will provide comprehensive solutions that can allow you to expand and increase sales opportunities even further. In addition to this, they will also help manage any complex customs procedures that may arise when shipping internationally.

3. Look Into Google Shopping

When most people are looking for something specific online, they first go to Google. They’ll start searching for the best option they can find, which is why search engine optimization is always a necessity for online stores. Something related to this is Google Shopping, which has become increasingly popular.

In short, this is where listings for your products appear in Google search results, making it quicker and easier for people to buy. They could even bypass your actual website when they’re doing this. Since the process is much easier for them, they’re likely to buy through these Google Shopping results.

That makes it vital you look into this and take advantage of it. Setting up a profile and listing your products here isn’t too difficult, and shouldn’t take too much time. Since the people who end up seeing these listings will already have the intent to buy, it drastically increases your chances of making a sale.

There’s no reason not to take advantage of this visibility.

4. Invest In Customer Service

Customer service is vital for any business to succeed, as it encourages customers to come back and buy from you again. It also makes sure you develop positive word-of-mouth about your company. That’s as true for e-commerce companies as it is for brick-and-mortar ones.

You’ll need to invest in this and make sure your employees treat customers adequately and give them amazing service. The better your customers feel when interacting with your store, the more it’ll pay off. This goes beyond simply offering high-quality service over the phone.

It’s also worth investing in chat apps for your website. With the best UK website chat app, you shouldn’t have a problem offering great customer service all the time. Since this keeps your customers on the website, you could generate quick and easy sales.

Since high-quality customer service is non-negotiable, it’s vital you put the effort into this from the start. Make sure you go above and beyond for your customers every time you deal with them.

5. Learn Lessons

If you’re a first-time entrepreneur, then you’d be surprised by how much you don’t know about running a business. There’s a decent chance you could end up making more than a few mistakes when you’re starting out. That’s especially true when you’re trying to grow.

As unwanted as these mistakes can be, it doesn’t mean they can’t be opportunities to learn and grow. When they happen, take the time to understand exactly what happened and why. The better you can do this, the better you can avoid making the same or similar mistakes in the future.

You can use these mistakes to inform future decisions and make sure they’re much more effective. While it can be unpleasant to go through them in the first place, it doesn’t mean you’ll have to suffer for long. See them as a way to learn and prevent anything else that could hinder your long-term growth.

6. Use Social Media

There are quite a few marketing strategies to choose from when you’re growing your e-commerce business. Many of these can be complicated and expensive, however. One of the more notable ones to pick is social media, which offers multiple benefits. Perhaps the most notable is that it can be completely free.

While sponsored ads will cost money, the rest of it shouldn’t cost a penny. You can start growing an ever-increasing number of followers for almost nothing. The more you grow your social media presence, the more chances you have of selling to customers. It can be one of the more cost-effective ways of advertising your e-commerce store.

Social media also lets you develop a personal relationship with your customers and show off your personality and brand. In time, that encourages repeat business, and you’ll see more and more sales. Consider this a vital marketing strategy for your e-commerce company.

7. Conduct Market Research

Do you know exactly what your target market is? Who are your perfect customers? The ones most likely to buy from you? What about the best ways to get in front of them and persuade them to buy? If you don’t have the answers to these questions, you’re not likely to grow your e-commerce store.

Market research is a vital part of starting and growing your store, and is something you’ll have to focus on from the start. It lets you make vital decisions going forward so you can properly generate business. With social media, for example, market research shows you exactly which platforms to target.

The more detailed and comprehensive your market research is, the more informed your decisions will be. These decisions will then benefit your business much more, letting you grow steadily and sustainably.

Ways To Grow Your eCommerce Store: Wrapping Up

Growing your e-commerce store is much more complicated than actually starting it. There’s a reason why so many companies struggle with it. If you want yours to succeed, you’ll need to use various ways to grow your e-commerce store, some of which are more recommended than others.

Since growth is vital to your long-term success, you’ll need to put a lot of effort into it. Finding the most effective ways of going about this doesn’t have to be difficult, however. Doing your market research, investing in customer service, being open to international customers, and similar strategies helps with this.

Though they’ll still need time and work to pay off, they’ll be more than worth it.