There are thousands of e-commerce sites both linear (single branded store) and platform (marketplaces) business models emerging from the region. Ambitious merchants everywhere are hustling to setup stores and take a slice of the currently US50 billion market (projected to grow to US$ 200 billion by 2025 as per market research by Google and Temasek)
Though the journey to even secure a mere 1% or 2 % of the market share is arduous as this is far from just a business of cloistering products on a web page. Traffic similar to foot traffic in physical stores must be generated, the hullabaloo traffic had to be converted to real deals, product qualities must be safeguarded and customers must be retained for a positive lifetime value in order to extract satisfactory returns on various customer acquisition investments. This includes resources pumped into sales, marketing, loyalty programs and customer experience.
There are many aspects to growth hacking that needs to be considered from the technological architecture that supports the business to strategy and execution method. Though there are some foundational measures that can be adopted, practised, improvised and assessed universally for most business models.
Here are some growth hacking tricks and channels to consider when running an e-commerce site, especially B2C sites.
SEO
Though the journey to even secure a mere 1% or 2 % of the market share is arduous as this is far from just a business of cloistering products on a web page. Traffic similar to foot traffic in physical stores must be generated, the hullabaloo traffic had to be converted to real deals, product qualities must be safeguarded and customers must be retained for a positive lifetime value in order to extract satisfactory returns on various customer acquisition investments. This includes resources pumped into sales, marketing, loyalty programs and customer experience.
There are many aspects to growth hacking that needs to be considered from the technological architecture that supports the business to strategy and execution method. Though there are some foundational measures that can be adopted, practised, improvised and assessed universally for most business models.
Here are some growth hacking tricks and channels to consider when running an e-commerce site, especially B2C sites.
SEO
Try and visualise how your audience are searching for your products or services on Google. The objective is to get the relevant page/s ranked at the top of the SERP (Search Engine Result Page). Attempt at creating dedicated landing page for each of the critical search results. Ensure to use the right text and keywords in page headers, sub headers and descriptions as these will be used by the search engines to rank the pages. Pack the site with good referable content and build backlinks through collaboration with other relevant sites and businesses. (This article from Forbes provides detail on some excellent backlinks tactics )
PPC
Pay-per-click search advertising is a great way to attract the right traffic to your site. Entrepreneurs has the flexibility to decide on how much cash really gets burned in the process, as some advertising campaigns may take time to divert the expected traffic towards the business. However, it is highly recommended to pre-allocate budget according to timeline aligned with major campaign outcomes. Assess results routinely so that future campaigns can be adjusted for extracting more values from ad investments.
TV COMMERCIAL ADS
For businesses with VC or PE funding take advantage of the financial freedom and execute brand strategies through TV ads or even YouTube channels especially during a seasonal event. While not mandatory, this helps to accelerate and strengthen branding and outreach programs to a broader audience.
PROMOTIONAl CAMPAIGNS and Business DIFFERENTIATION
Asian shoppers are great bargain hunters and love to shop during special campaigns with great deals, products and experiences. Build partnerships with major credit cards, e-wallets, partners or supplier companies to compose campaign buzz that lifts customer experience with your brand. For instance if you are selling cakes and other bake goods, complement it with party pack services. Sell customers a party experience which includes your bake products and differentiate the business from rivals.
FOCUS ON ONE VERTICAL
Focusing in one vertical such as beauty, education, electronics or healthcare refines customer offerings while standardising backroom processes such as inventory, order fulfillments and etc. Streamlining specialisation enables the business to amass customer base faster and optimise operation in primary segments prior to expansion.
A GREAT SITE with GREAT PRODUCTS
The UI must be simple, slick and easy to use. It should help customers to search, find, bookmark, share, cart, buy or review products seamlessly. Products must be presented with crisp pictures, accurate descriptions, impartial reviews, references and ranking based on past sales. Payment process must be glitch free from any backend data/API connections that verifies, scrape, process, analyse data during transactions. It's all about making it look easy, simple and ergonomically sophisticated - all at the same time.
Finally tracking site performance using sites such as Similarweb and SERP can provide sufficient visibility to traffic performance and isolate SEO measures with highest or lowest impact. In addition, the data gathered is a great asset when having conversations with digital marketing or web design vendors.
If you have a cool tip on how to improve site traffic – you are welcome to share it with us!
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