30 Top Experts Share Their #1 Secret For Successful Online Store

You might be just starting your eCommerce store or have already been running your store for the last few months.

Or even has been a few long years since you started your online retail store!

But are you still struggling with sales?

Well, there could be various reasons for you not getting enough sales. It could be :

Lack of exposure to the right audience for better conversion
High average cart abandonment rates
Poor marketing strategy
Not able to drive more repeat business

And other numerous reasons as well.

Hundreds of tips, strategies, and ideas are floating in the market about how to increase your sales or run your business.

But doing so much at a time can be overwhelming!

It is better you listen to the retail experts and successful businesses who made it in the market.

So we brought you all the secret sauces of these successful businesses and experts in online retail.

And since we got one from everyone, these are the best ones they truly believed in and worked for them dramatically. So here you go.

Contents

Reward Your Customers – Richard Lazazzera

Richard Lazazerra, the owner of a successful Shopify store Better Lemonade suggests online retailers reward their customers.

You need to develop a loyalty membership for your online store. It helps you to increase the conversion rate of your current customers.

And when you reward your current customer base for repeat purchases, they are more likely to come back or retain with you longer.

Richard suggests creating your own reward program can be as simple as offering rewards for just a second purchase at your store.

Utilize your online store analytics and reports to actually determine who are your best customers as per the total number of orders or by the expenditure.

Build Customer Trust – Glori Blatt

Focus more and more on building the trust of your customers. According to Glori Blatt, it is the glue to any successful long-term relationship.

Trust also naturally develops from honesty and consistency with the person.

So if you want to earn customer’s trust, you need to be honest, consistent, and valuable to your consumers.

Have patience because this does take time to build, especially when you demand a higher level of trust and loyalty.

Also, earning customer trust is essential to create your brand advocates who further share positive experiences about your product or brand with their friends and family.

In fact, according to a recent study by Forbes, 81% of the participants indicated that their purchasing decisions are directly influenced by their friends and family.

Glori Blatt from GoGrit, tells how essential it is for a brand in order to gain momentum in sales and returning customers.

Know When It’s Too Early Invest In Paid Ads – Ryan BeMiller

Ryan BeMiller, the proud owner of Shopping Signals, talks about the timing of when businesses choose to go for paid ads and how it affects the overall results.

As per him, once you are having consistent traffic on your website, you can further focus more on improving these aspects first of all :

User Experience
Conversion
Capturing Emails

But most of the small businesses make this mistake. The next step is going for Facebook Ads or Google Ads.

Ryan suggests not focusing on paid ads for your online store at first.

It is great for generating business leads that further convert you into your customers.

Rather you can choose to go for the search engine paid traffic which helps in furthering the purchase intent funnel for better results.

Get Your Ecommerce Masterplan – Chloe Thomas

Chloe Thomas suggested getting yourself an Ecommerce masterplan that suits your business.

To get this, you have to crack the right marketing mix for your brand. It does a fair number of trials and errors to reach such clarity with proof.

However, you can always determine at the beginning of the business what marketing channels would be ideal for the product you are selling and who you are targeting.

Also, depends upon what kind of branding you want to put out there in terms of long-term strategy.

Which platforms are ideal for lead generation? Where can you get more reach?

Even not all platforms would be ideal to get your ideal customers, some might not be suitable but you still want to be there for brand exposure.

You have to find the cost-effective way to reach out to your target audience so they would know you exist.

There are numerous ways to increase your sales!

You can do search engine optimization (SE0), search engine marketing (SEM), content marketing, PR, social media marketing, video marketing and so much more.

But you cannot do all of this together with optimum quality unless you delegate a lot or put a lot of money into it.

And more importantly, you don’t need to! All you have to find is the right marketing mix that works for you from the available methods.

You Have To Think Like A Customer – Katie Melissa

Katie Melissa, an ecommerce expert, known for selling product categories such as sunglasses and watches.

Melissa talks about how you should train yourself to think like your prospective consumer.

It is essential to make your business customer-centric because what you like or doesn’t is irrelevant to your business.

All it matters is what your customer likes or prefers. So you can full-proof your strategies by ensuring making your strategies fulfilling for customers.

Melissa also dropships various products and understands what is a good design. She enforces the ideology of business owners being in customer’s shoes.

She also suggests assuring that businesses have their inventory sorted.

Make sure you always have your inventory stacked to prevent the backlog of unfulfilled orders.

Blogging Helps Brand Develop Trust – Ryan Biddulph

Ryan Biddulph, a successful blogger at Blogging From Paradise, recommends eCommerce stores to start blogging on their website as well.

He tells about blogging establishing your authority in the industry and develops trust between the audience and your brand.

Since you help them with content and value your provide, and offer an expertise, they are more comfortable with you investing.

People buy from ecommerce stores when they trust them. Blogging very well makes you authentic and trustworthy.

In fact, there are higher chances to buy from your website or store.

Start offering content through different mediums and available in different formats such as video, blog posts, podcast, ebooks etc.

Create A Reward Program – Kala Linck

Kala Linck suggests small business and online retailers offer a reward program to their existing customers.

It is very aligned with other advice given from various experts which is about customer satisfaction, return sales, user-experience and leveraging the customer network.

Kala talks about how credit card companies have been already doing this for years, rewarding their customers to use the product.

The point system in credit cards is extremely beneficial for credit card companies as it encourages customers to purchase more through credit cards.

Reward programs also create loyal customers and are always connected to them.

There are many reward programs you can choose online to start launching an automated system to your business.

You do have to see what rewards make more sense to your customers or potential customers and how you can facilitate without affecting your profit margins..

The benefit of the reward program is also getting these brand advocates who are encouraged to talk about your product.

Respond To Questions On Every Platform – Rachel Daley

Try to answer all the questions related to your platform on all the platforms accessible to you.

Make sure you respond to all the comments quickly before it gets along due or becomes irrelevant for the response.

It is essential to come to the top of your social media, emails, messages and comments to develop a more fleshed-out relationship after the sale.

This is what Rachel Daley from MadeFreshly highly suggests to all online retailers and small businesses to do at early, in fact, all the stages of their business journey.

She also highly recommends tools like Hurrify, a Shopify plugin creating a sense of urgency for customers, so buy immediately.

Double Down On Your Audience Profiling – Kai Davis

Audience profiling is about understanding of who is your customer, more specifically who your customer is.

Knowing your audience is a common trope in marketing, and you must be already aware of it.

But Kai Davis, an ecommerce expert further talked about how you can double down on this approach for better results.

Audience profiling, target audience or buyer persona is all about defining your target potential customers.

Trigger & Target Person

But here you need to take a step before and understand these two factors about your audience :

Trigger
Target person

Trigger is that particular life event that just happened in the life of your customer, something that inspired the potential customer to get out for the product.

Image Source: Sellbrite

Target Person, on other hand is specifically the person, who is buying your product or wants to buy your product.

There is more to see here, like what other product your target person buys or how old they are?

Understanding these two factors about your customers will make your conversion easier.

There can be different triggers for your target audience that inspire them to buy, and you can utlize them to buy from you as well.

For Example :

Suppose, a woman of age 35, a mother started gyming recently, and they are dieting and counting calories, reading fitness blogs and watching fitness videos.

She might be looking to lose weight or even put up some muscle.

So, she is your target person as you know who she is, what she wants, where she is front etc.

The trigger you can use to make her buy your product can be taking control over her health, losing weight faster and so on.

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So when you know these two pieces of information about your customer, you will be able to double down on everything!

You can improve your marketing strategy, custmize your ads more accurately, retarget accordingly and approach with lazor-sharp content strategy as well.

Especially now, you can craft your blog content and landing page copy accustomed to your audience’s requirements and motivations.

The messaging of your marketing can be more clear and to-the-point while targeting specific target audiences with known common triggers.

The visual concept and imagery of the product or brand can also be targetted that will be capable of luring the target audience.

Utilizing And Maximising The Funnel Approach – Terry Arsenault

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Terry Arsenault is known for running multiple e-commerce stores such as Leafwood along with a leading digital marketing agency named Shopidd.

He is also the founder of the Shopify Ecommerce Group on Facebook with more than 10,000 members.

So when he says that it is crucial for ecommerce businessmen to go for the funnel approach when it comes to selling your products online, you must consider.

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Dan Dasilva, another seasoned entrepreneur who successfully runs Ecom Dudes, also suggests the same.

You need to educate yourself on how first to utilize and then maximize the funnel system into your sales strategy.

Figure out your customer avatar, map out your funnel, prepare your copy, and strategically create your funnel to make the sale.

They also said how rarely customers would buy the product from your site in their first interaction.

So by not using the retargetting strategies, you are, in a way, leaving money on the table.

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Arsenault also suggested a Shopify plugin called Shoelace for creating retargetting ads.

Dasliva recommended a funnel creation tool Trifunnel to new business owners and suggested mapping out your funnel strategically in order to get more sales.

Develop A Habit To Over-Deliver – Valentin Radu

Valentine Radu, the owner of Marketizator, shares a secret to skyrocketing your customer engagement and branding.

He suggests always under-promise and over-deliver where you will see in result the retention rates and net promoter score go up high.

Valentin asks small businesses not to interrupt their brand with remarketing campaigns and promotions constantly.

You don’t have to keep bragging and advertising and putting out more to create a ‘brand’.

Rather focus on developing the habit to over-deliver will eventually lead to better branding.

Be Selective With Your Design – Glyn Lewis

Glyn Lewis, the owner of Kent Streeet Apparel talks about how he always wanted to feel creative and not salesy about his work.

So he was very selective with the designer he hired and the kind of style he wanted, and resonated too.

Glyn gives the advice to all of their small business owners about being selective with what designer to work with, and what design you prefer.

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The design you select must represent your vision for the website and the brand’s objective.

Gyn suggests entrepreneurs to use the power of imagery to propagate your branding to your potential audience.

It is essential to make visual choices that help your brand come more to the limelight in the way you want.

So you can collaborate with photographers, designers and influencers with similar taste and vision, and also hire them for their services for better engagement.

Simplifying The Shopping Experience – William Harris

William Harris, popularly known for his brand Sellbrite highlights how a better shopping experience brings you more sales.

He says if businesses want to drive repeat customers, they have to make it really easy, fun, and exciting for people to buy again from their site.

So you need to optimize the shopping experience for your customers and include them landing on your home page to post-purchase.

William also adds that this optimization includes various steps, such as :

Provide an excellent mobile experience to your customer when they visit your store through mobile devices.
Sending personalized coupons to your existing customers

Send a hand-written thank you note to your regular customers
Make your website user-interface easy and simple to navigate.

Try To Get More Customers Through Your Loyal Fans – Sujan Patel

One of the best ways to get an ideal customer is to make it easy and worthwhile for your customers to refer to their friends and family.

Sujan Patel from SujanPatel.com suggests business owners utilize the leverage of a network of ideal people their customers have to tap in.

Your customers already know a lot of people who will like to buy and buy again from your online store.

There are plenty of referral programs to optimize this for your website.

These referral programs come with automated features and streamline the procedure to initiate required referral programs.

Sujan Patel summarizes the best by saying that the right customers can help you get repeat sales like nothing else.

So, focus on the deliberate leverage you have on the network of these potential customers.

Build A Brand Out Your Business – Neil Patel

Neil Patel, the SEO genius from NeilPatel.com, talks about the significance of branding, especially for e-commerce websites.

He says that being just an e-commerce site is not going to help you set your company apart from the competition in the long run.

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Competitive prices, free shipping, and good quality are even quite common everyone can offer that to their customers.

So how do you stand out? Especially if you do not want to consistently put efforts into customer acquisition and putting out money to be seen.

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So Neil suggests creating a brand out of your business that will help you stay longer in the game.

It will help people trust your brand and be more likely to buy from you than just another e-commerce website they see on the internet.

Neil Patel also gives examples of businesses going out as brands, such as Zappos and Amazon.

Learn and Grow Your Skills – Greg Mercer

Greg Mercer from Jungle Scout advises new entrepreneurs and small business owners to keep investing in themselves.

Let us put the way he shared it. One of the most important factors for the success of an e-commerce business owner depends upon their ability to learn new skills and keep growing.

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He also mentioned how technology and the internet are constantly growing and evolving.

So if you do not keep up on what’s new, what’s trending, what’s really working and what doesn’t, you are going to be left behind.

Greg shared his secret for consistent learning and growing himself. He said he learns everything, most of all, through podcasts.

He has been an avid reader of blogs and even consuming online courses as well.

Image Source: Entrepreneur

Greg shared that 20% of the time he has spent on learning more, whereas 80% is on working on his business.

And that’s the ratio he suggested for growing as well as newbies in entrepreneurship and e-commerce as well.

He further mentioned the importance of optimizing time for better content consumption and how you consume more in less time.

So to start from, one does not need to go to content that is around them but rather focus on learning something new.

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Also, use “wasted” times such as while travelling or on the commute, doing dishs, cutting the lawn, clearing the house, walking down the road for listening to the podcast.

He gave his pro tip on listening to this content on Podcast and Youtube as in 2X speed and also suggested skipping intros and outros.

You can definitely adjust the speed like 1.25X or 1.5 and gradually move to 2x, in case it seems too fast for you while starting out.

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One of the best pieces of advice from Mohammad Harake from Stray Digital to engage your audience is sharing 10x content, not creating it.

Focus on offering the best content through your social media channels.

Now, it doesn’t have to be yours all the time. Content curation is also a great tool to increase audience engagement on social media, and it’s also recommended for brands.

When you share real high-value content, your audience can see your vision, objectives, information, and things you believe in.

More than that, they would love to follow social media channels that give them consistently great content from all around.

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What more we can take from this advice from Mohammad is this can actually do good to people in your niche or your target audience.

In fact, it does make things more than just about you, about helping others and sharing helpful content.

Harake further says how this elevated engagement maintains you on people’s feeds giving you more exposure.

Even better, now when you post a promotional post or branding post, they are more likely to get interested in and make a purchase.

First Provide Value, Then Sell – Ann Handley

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This is one of the most remarkably excellent pieces of advice you can get from an expert like Ann Handley.

She is a digital marketing pioneer, Wall Street journal best-selling author, and writer.

She talks about how businesses should help their prospective buyers first and then go ahead to sell something.

Also, customers do not buy products to do a favor to your company. They do it because your product resolves their problems or improves their lives.

So, the best sales pitch should be about how your product can really help them.

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Explain them, demonstrate and do everything to make your case stronger on the part that your product is what the prospective customer needs.

You cannot sell your product by just saying, “it is the best in the industry,” “ it is high-quality,” or “it has this feature..”.

Work on the part telling them how the product helps the customer, what it brings to their lives, what problem, and how it does resolve.

They should relate to the product and believe in the solution as you struck the chord with them by understanding them and showing empathy.

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Mike Allton, who is known to be the Founder of a full-service digital marketing agency, The Social Media Hat, shares his number one advice for entrepreneurs.

He has been known for his highly qualitative content pieces published in almost most of the industry-leading blogs, such as Social Media Examiner, BusinessGrow, Marketo, MarketingProfs, and more.

Mike suggests small businesses connect, communicate, talk to and learn from their audience.

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The more they engage with the audience and keep connected, the easier it will be to develop a trustworthy brand over time.

He made a really good point saying if businesses can be a part of the process which customers go through in their journey and help them in the way, it can be the most successful social media marketing strategy ever.

This journey can be anything like gardening, earning more money, dating, having a commute, or anything where you can help with it and further add your product to resolve it.

Also, social media shouldn’t be just about likes and shares, engagement goes beyond it, and there are various creatives to develop further connections.

He also pointed out how essential it is to select a better social media platform according to the product you’re selling or the target audience you are aiming for.

Removing Friction – Michael Aagard

Michael Agard from Content Verve speaks from his 4 years of research and hundreds of split tests.

He talks about conversion optimization, and one of the greatest villains that kill conversion is friction.

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So reducing the friction for your customer in their decision-making can really increase your conversion dramatically.

Friction impacts prospective customers and their decision towards purchasing or taking a CTA for your product.

And the rebound is always negative, and a ‘No’ for the product, as Michael defines it.

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So make sure you de-clutter your website, take strategic decisions in design, copy and sell funnel of your product, everything to reduce the friction.

One of the tips to do that easily is to make things simple and easy for your customers.

Do not overcomplicate or give conflicting choices, which surely drives conflict and friction to prospective customers.

Frank Hatchett gives a go-to tip for business owners to cross-targetting through their social media platforms such as Facebook and email.

He suggests intertwining these two to bring a higher conversion rate.

The combination of social media reach and engagement with the retargeting option you can use through emails is extremely powerful.

For example, as Frank suggests, you can use Facebook, where you are targeting cold traffic, and from there, you use retargeting through personalized emails.

Building A Business Model To Generate Return Sales – Kunle Campbell

Kunle Campbell shares this insightful knowledge, especially having great success with 2 X eCommerce with small business owners and retailers.

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He differentiated what successful e-commerce businesses are capable of doing where other ventures usually fail.

It is essential you build a model that helps your business sustain longer. A business model that focuses on generating return sales.

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As Kunle defines, it is the ability of businesses to convince their existing and first-time customers to return on a regular basis and make consistent or frequent purchases that determine their success dramatically.

He suggests this happens only if the business model enables such a system in place.

The key idea to propose here is having a whole streamlined procedure where you focus on acquiring a potential long-term returning customer from the first-timers.

This procedure includes personalized email communication and, every once in a while, to the first-timers.

It can also include customized offers for these customers to encourage them to re-purchase.

He further adds the use of customer loyalty offers and reward programs, which Richard Lazazerra also suggested.

Maximizing The Email Marketing To Boost Conversion

Susan Bradley, an experienced e-commerce businesswoman, scaled her business to a brand named wee Squeak.

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She even runs a program called The Social Sales Girls that teaches e-commerce to people.

Susan talks about how maximizing email usage in your primary marketing strategy is essential.

Especially the focus should be to utilize email to convert prospects into customers.

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Also lead generation can also be something you can aim your email marketing to achieve.

She highlights the significance of using powerful lead management for effective results in email marketing.

Susan also recommends a tool named Infusiosoft, an automation tool for small businesses.

Focus On Selling The Experience, Not the Product – Doug Stephens

Doug Stephens from Retail Prophet brings something really transformative for your business through this.

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He talks about the abundance of goods and services available now. Understand How it is no anymore about pitching your product as a requirement for your customers.

There is only too little stuff to sell in the world that a customer cannot get elsewhere.

Especially in the case of a retail store, convincing customers about your product is not advisable.

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Rather focus on selling the experience of the product, even the whole buying experience.

Give priority to how to sell instead of what you sell. First, recognize what customer experience you are providing and then put a deliberate effort into boosting it.

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Doug ends with the fact that plenty of products are available for customers, and for them, it is like “ product comes and goes”.

So to get their attention and further the sale, and even return sales, is providing them with an experience that they do not forget or overshadows others.

Using Universal Marketing Strategies & Tactics – GaryVee

You may be living in the rock if you haven’t heard about Gary Vee, especially when you are into business space.

He is the chairman of VaynerX, a media giant, and also the active CEO of VaynerMedia, a leading Advertising agency.

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Also, he is a public speaker and a personal brand in business, communication, and social media marketing.

He gave great advice, especially for B2B businesses struggling for more social media engagement and better exposure.

Gary Vee suggested that B2C marketing tactics or strategies can also be applied to the B2B environment.

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Then, there are various marketing tactics that are more universal as B2B companies are true, at the end of the day, humans behind businesses.

So, creating content for people isn’t much different than creating content for businesses on social media.

You surely have to tilt your targeting perspective differently, but the tactic or strategy would be the same.

For Example :

Hubspot is a popular B2B company, but they put out content that seems meant to be for customers or people.

They put out fun and informative content and never shy away from using memes, videos, tiktoks, and reels to connect to their B2B people.

Never Underestimate “Want It Now” Of A Potential Customer – Graham Charlton

Gramham Charton, a successful retailer known for his brand Clickz Global suggested the importance of rapid fulfillment.

He says retailers should not underestimate the power of any potential customer’s “want it now” mentality.

If potential customer knows that the product can reach them quickly as they order, they are more likely to buy it instantly.

Even further, higher chances of him or her returning to your website as compared to others with long-dated deliveries.

Search Engine Marketing Is Most Effective For Ecommerce Stores – Janice Wald

This is coming from an experienced author, blogging, writer, speaker, and blogging coach, Janice Wald.

She was nominated for various blog awards, such as the 2019 Best Marketing Blog. Her marketing tips are so helpful and effective.

Janice talked about how she considers search engine marketing the most effective marketing strategy, especially for eCommerce stores.

She said that since there is an income dependence on eCommerce stores, SEM becomes even more critical as you cannot wait to get such exposure or visibility through organic mediums.

Longer you wait, the more money you will bleed out for sustaining the system up and running without any incoming money.