8 Top Tips for eCommerce Growth in 2023 (episode 420)

Welcome to one of our famous expert mash-up episodes! Each of our guests have been asked for their top tip for eCommerce Success in 2023. We’ve been doing these episodes every January since we started – and this year the answers are even more useful and inspiring than normal. 

Tune into this expert mash-up episode as we find out how to improve your post-purchase activity, ways to boost ROI from your ‘lower cost’ channels, some powerful AI tools to deploy in your eCommerce store, how we respond to the cost of living crisis – and so much more.

8 top tips for eCommerce success in 2023

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Rytis Lauris from Omnisend

For context, Rytis presents two challenges that online retailers will experience next year:

  • Acquisition will become more expensive
  • There will be fewer spontaneous purchases

To address these challenges, Rytis says the focus should be on improving customer experience for customer retention and increased customer lifetime value.

He gives two pieces of advice on how to do this:

  • Focus on the overall customer experience, starting with your website and going all the way to post-purchase communication
  • Launch or improve post-purchase communication

Sue Monhait from Gift Biz Unwrapped

Sue says her advice may sound counterintuitive, but it’s going to give you results, especially during this time. Her tip is:

  • Focus on individual customers versus going for the big play, and the key is one-to-one contact

Take care of your existing customer base because they’ve already purchased from you. Some activities you may consider doing are:

  • Sending personalized emails
  • Creating an exclusive group with special offers
  • Having a loyalty program for them
  • Auto-restock programs

Chaya Oosterbroek from Yoast SEO

Chaya talks about optimising your low-cost channels, such as SEO. Her advice is:

  • Make sure to invest in getting your structured data right to improve your normal SEO results

Structured data is what you use to describe your products in normal search results, whereas Google Merchant Center is what’s used for Google Shopping.

Meghan Stabler of BigCommerce

Meghan says being able to stand out based on the search arguments is going to be critical this 2023, so her advice is:

  • Get your product listing absolutely correct, and consider taking away the manual process by using AI technology to improve your product listings, categories, and variants.

Derric Haynie of eCommerce Tech

There’s so much technology can do for your business, and Derric’s tip is:

  • Implement AI in different aspects of your business to streamline operational efforts, increase conversation rates, and improve customer experience.

Some areas where AI can be used are live chat, personalization, shipping, multi-attribution modeling, and creatives.

Chris Dawson of ChannelX

Because 2023 is going to be a challenging year due to the cost of living crisis, Chris’s top tip is:

  • Think about what your value proposition is and the services you can actually give to your consumers.

One way to do this is by putting different products together to create value bundles, but Chris adds that you have to really think carefully about how you convey the value proposition to your customers.

Jessica Totillo Coster from eCommerce Badassery

There are three things Jessica mentions for continued growth:

  • Having a clear niche and building a community around it
  • Investing in things like expert help, their team, and paid advertising
  • Leaning heavily into and taking advantage of email and SMS marketing

Jessica also references her Black Friday tip in episode 118 where she mentions focusing on list growth in Q1 and Q2. You can do this with the following tactics:

  • Product recommendations quiz
  • Product pre-launches
  • Social media messaging automation
  • Creating events that matter to your customers and are related to your products

Kelly Barner from Dial P for Procurement Podcast

Kelly’s focus is on reverse logistics, and her top tip is:

  • Manage your returns and be purposeful about it

Recognize returns as a part of your operations worthy of attention, and handle them with numbers as your driver. Your return policy should make your customers happy while costing you as little as possible.

Chloë Thomas from eCommerce MasterPlan

Because the eCommerce environment today dictates that you can no longer rely on just one channel to bring in sales, Chloë’s top tip is:

  • Diversify and have a mix of sales channels, and get these channels to work better together

Be consistent with your messaging, targeting, and promotions, and do explore some of the more “blue ocean” channels to drive growth for your business.

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