8 Tips to Improve Your Ecommerce Growth Strategy in 2024

We’re tired of hearing generic advice on improving your ecommerce growth strategy–and we bet you are, too.

That’s why we’ve collected these eight tips, which have been tested and proven by us and the brands we work with at Social Cat.

That’s right–every tip on this list has worked for a real ecommerce company, just like yours.

Let’s get right to it!

How to improve your ecommerce growth strategy

You might already be doing some of these, but if not, each idea will make a big difference in your ecommerce growth strategy.

1. Leverage ads effectively

There’s no way to say this nicely. You're missing out on customers if you’re not running ads in 2024.

We get it–ads are hard to run and can be messy. But they’re worth it.

Here’s what you need to run great ads:

• A good understanding of how social media ad platforms work and how to set up and optimize ads.
• Top-notch creative. That means you’ll want high-quality images and videos of your product’s benefits and features. (By the way, you can get these from influencers on Social Cat, with licensing included for ads!)
• Copywriting skills–which are an art in their own right.

We made that list based on running ads on social media platforms, but don’t forget about Google–search ads are also a great addition to any ecommerce growth strategy.

You can learn how to run ads yourself–there’s a lot of information and training out there, and we recommend you figure out the basics before outsourcing this to an agency. There are a lot of agencies out there, and not all of them are good at running ads. So, you need to know the basics to spot the bad ones.

We recommend focusing exclusively on running ads with the goal of “sales.” Many people, including Meta reps, will tell you that you need to run engagement and awareness campaigns, but from our experience, those don’t make much difference. You care about sales, so focus all your advertising resources on them. There are other, better ways of getting awareness and engagement. (We’ll talk about them later!)

The good news is that you don’t have to spend thousands of dollars to create super high-quality ad creative. That’s only for big brands who have nothing better to spend their money on. For smaller companies, it makes more sense to pay influencers to create content for you at a fraction of the price–because it’s not like spending thousands of dollars on ad creative will get you more sales.

Imagine spending $1,000 on a video and having it not perform well in ads. What can you do at that point? Not much, except put it on your organic social profiles and move on.

A better option is to put $900 in ads and use the rest to work on gifted collaborations with influencers. For $99 per month, you can get five images or videos that you can use in ads on Social Cat. Plus, influencers post about you on their profiles.

1. Use influencers

You might not expect us to say this because we help connect brands with influencers, but influencers are not the best option for quickly increasing your sales.

It’s too big of a job to ask any influencer to boost your sales on their own. Sure, some of them can do it, but it’s often a case of how well your brand fits their audience and style. That’s not the kind of thing you instinctively know. You have to work with hundreds of influencers before you find the best ones for your brand, and that takes time.

So be smart: Use influencers to create premium UGC that you can use in ads or on your website. (See tip #1)

Influencers are GREAT at creating brand awareness and engagement, however, so having them post about your brand is still a good idea. People often need multiple touch points before they buy, so if they see your brand on an influencer’s feed, then see an ad, then get email marketing offers from you… They’re going to convert sooner or later.

1. Incorporate reviews on the right pages of your website

Reviews are SUPER effective at increasing conversion rates–but they must be in the right place. As an ecommerce brand, you want to put them on your product pages.

PRO tip: Try turning reviews into images and using them in ads. This won’t work for every brand, but it’s a great idea to experiment with it and see if it works for your brand.

1. Invest in proper customer service

Ecommerce is tricky–things don’t fit, customers receive their items late, or your products get damaged in shipping. You can’t control many things once your product ships, but you can control the support your customers receive when they reach out. Train your customer support team to give your customers the best possible experience. This is a key part of creating returning customers and loyalty.

Think about it: When it comes to customer service, it’s not enough to “do the right thing,” is it? You could refund a customer and have them return the product, but if their experience with customer support to get that refund is terrible, they won’t come back. But if you treat them well, show empathy, and offer a discount for future orders, they’ll probably still think highly of your company and want to order from you again.

If your company is on the smaller side, you’re probably unable to offer a live chat where people get responses in 1-2 minutes. But make sure you have some way the customers can easily send your team a message on your website. Something is better than nothing.

Why? Customers on your website have a high purchase intent–so you want to do everything you can to convert them.

1. Utilize user-generated content (UGC)

We’ve already touched on this–after all, reviews can be considered user-generated content.

But, in this case, we’re not just talking about reviews but about social proof in general. If your customers are saying good things about your brand online, you can use that to establish trust with new audiences.

UGC is one of the most effective methods for building trust and brand awareness. So, if you’re not getting enough UGC from your customers, you can use UGC platforms like Clip to get it. (Or see #2 and use influencers at Social Cat!)

1. Optimize for mobile

If your website isn’t optimized for mobile phones, get on it. Pronto.

This is one of the most important tips on this list. Most people are browsing and clicking links from social media ads on their phones. So, if your website isn’t mobile-friendly, potential customers won’t stay long enough to buy from you.

There’s really no point in investing in ads or other ecommerce growth strategies if you’re not offering a great mobile experience. If this is a problem for you, fix this first–it’ll make everything else more effective.

1. Use top-notch product photography

Earlier in this article, we mentioned that you can use content from influencers on your social media and in ads.

But you probably don’t want to use it on a product page unless it’s stunning.

Why?

Because your product page is where you convince potential customers to buy your product, all of your images and videos need to be of the highest quality.

Again, this is one of those things you need to consider when running ads and trying to get people to your website. Why go to all the work if you just show them product photos with poor lighting? People will be annoyed that they can’t see the product and click away.

1. Use email marketing to convert more customers

Finally, keep growing your email list. It’s your secret weapon to convert casual browsers into paying customers.

Email marketing is personal and intimate because it feels more like a one-on-one interaction than a post on social media does. Plus, people check their emails multiple times daily–it’s like their virtual home! You can get your brand into that space–all you have to do is offer real value.

To do this, you can create campaigns based on cart abandonment, promotions, sales, and more. You can also use UGC to make the emails more enticing and interactive.

What have we missed?

This isn’t a complete list–we’re sure tons of other strategies work for ecommerce brands, but these were what we know and love to use. Since we have proof that they work, we wanted to include them.

But we’d love to hear your perspective, too! Leave us a comment telling us what’s worked for you that you’d add to this list!