We are more than half way through the year 2014 and it is time to turn back pages and understand how you have done month by month. No matter how good, there is always capacity for improvement when you want your online business to grow further.

There are so many mechanisms that can be implemented to accelerate your present online sales statistics directly or indirectly. You could write in more blogs, write better content in the blogs, enhance the SEO, multiply office headcount, trigger off Instagram promotion, leverage social media presence to greater heights and devise more such publicity stunts, include PPC advertising, integrate guest blogging and do great at Email marketing. They are all effective, but what should be done? Where should you channelize your energies for maximum output for the online business growth?

Important to Understand

• Multiplying online sales does not take place by one single activity. It is a continuous process of implementing a set of techniques, testing them, recording the results, amending processes to optimize their yield and then reapplying them.
• It is also imperative to move away from implementing one-off tactics and adapting flexible approaches according to changing habits of online customers, which effectively lifts conversion rates throughout the lifespan of the ecommerce website.
• Once the conversion rates of strangers to visitors is manifesting within the website, it is now time for vital steps of winning them as customers, keeping them in the loop of company’s sight for all time and making them return customers, and operating for referral customers by means of the current customers.

Being maladroit at any of the aforementioned functions will jeopardize the entire e-business process.

Identify the under-performing areas

There could be multiple areas of concern that are keeping the sales down; but do not throw in your towels yet. Let’s walk through the range of actions that are performed for escalating an online business growth to pinpoint where the snag is and identify with its solution.

Acquisition

Acquisition refers to attaining eye-balls. Plenty of traffic is necessary to run any ecommerce store.

• Time: If it’s low now because you’re new, give your site time.
• SEO and Content Marketing: If you’re not new and still it’s low and not growing by double digit month-by-month, check the calculations and start working towards traffic multiplication by not only using immediate-impacting PPC activity but also investing time and effort in slow-but-very sure channels like SEO and content marketing.
  • A little tip, introduce content during post-holiday season when everyone actually slows down during the period.
• PPC Ads: Check targeted ads and landing pages. Usually the clicked ads do not land on relevant pages and even if they do, the experience from ad to site to end of deal is not consistent or satisfactory. Ensure it is.

Conversion

Conversion refers to turning the visitors into end users of your products/services or paying customers.

• Data: The conversion data in hand needs to be used wisely; often minor tweaking to conversion process can increase the sales volume effortlessly.
  • Statistically speaking you have a lot of scope for improvement if less than 3% of your visitors are customers.
• Subscriptions: It is always a good sign if people approach your site either by subscribing to your newsletter or communicating with you over your social media channel or by adding items to the site wish list.
• Analytics:
  • Test visitor flow using tools like Google Analytics so you know the areas where visitors are dropping off. Is it between order 1 and order 2? What are the habits of people who bought a second time and those who didn’t?
• Targeted Promotions: Pick up abandoned shopping carts and use this huge opportunity to lift online sales by finding the perfect time and approach to send follow-up emails to prospective customers.

Retention

Retention is important because it ensures you always have customers repeatedly buying from you. But how do you keep it in place?

• Set Benchmark: Different e-businesses have different retention rates. Identify your benchmark, challenge it, and set a new benchmark every time.
• Analyse, Target and Improve: Measure your revenue and customer churn regularly. Customers who have purchased from you in the past and then never return have basically churned. Identify if it is due to website difficulties, shipping delays, etc. For increasing sales it is important to fix those issues and approach these customers again and invite them to try your business again.
• Personalize: To retain customers, it is important to use customer touch points such as profile, purchase history, and support history, perform root-cause analysis, and update product, pricing, and customer support processes accordingly.
• Big Data: Analyse purchasing habits of customers—whether they are one-time buyers or repeat buyers. Identify your best customers and nurture them. Email marketing with frequent follow-ups and strong subject lines helps maintain this value.

Win Back Analysis

If customers came back to buy from you based on one of your strategies, study it. But if it was due to discounts, you may have discount-hammered them and they might not return without offers. Use customer data, test, and retarget with smart offers and messaging.

You now know what could go wrong in your selling techniques and how to fix it. Go ahead, face the numbers with valour and emerge victorious.

Try new things, learn what works, and keep those tricks ready to use at the right time—and see the magic happen.