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Well-defined and successful eCommerce strategies have become less of a supplement to traditional sales methods and are more vital than ever to your company’s overall sales goals. It’s simply not enough in today’s market to say, “I sell products on my website,” or, “My products are on Walmart.com and Amazon.” Don’t get me wrong; it’s great to give your customers the options to find your products without having to visit brick & mortar stores. At the same time, you should be aware of four major signs that your eCommerce strategies may be holding your sales back.

#1. Your eCommerce Product Pages Aren’t Painting a Full Picture

It’s been said that selling online is the hardest sales job in existence. In short, your product pages are bearing the full weight of each sale without any assistance. Any questions, thoughts, concerns, worries, or trepidation from the customer must be addressed within the confines of your product page before a customer eventually converts.

How many product pages have you come across that have a couple photos of a product with some explanatory bullet points for descriptions? These types of pages wholly rely on customers bringing pre-existing knowledge of the product to fill in the gaps. While these types of customers are making sales, it can present a notion that your campaigns are doing fine. When, in fact, you’re missing out on customers who would simply like to know more about the product that you’re unwilling to share.

#2. The 80/20 Rule and How It Applies to eCommerce

Most of us are familiar with the Pareto Principle (or, the 80/20 Rule), which states that for many outcomes, roughly 80% of consequences come from 20% of causes. Applied to our sales world, we typically see 80% of our sales revenue through 20% of our products. This is all well and good, but how can we leverage this in our eCommerce strategies?

The best starting point is to take stock of what products in your catalog are truly driving your sales. To clarify, we’re not looking for products you want to account for the most sales; we’re looking for which products actually are doing the heavy lifting. 

Usually, this 20% of your catalog is the most important driver to your overall sales success. Time and time again we see equal attention and budget spread across all of a client’s products. Why? 

If you have five products, and one is responsible for 80% of your revenue, why would you give the same attention to the low-selling products as you do to the high-selling product? Push your budgets into your sales drivers.

#3. Relying on a “Wait and See” Approach to Results

When starting new eCommerce campaigns with a new agency, how often are you told results can’t be tracked, measured, or reported on until months down the road? We’ve come across this idea pretty often, but would like to debunk this notion for one simple reason:

If customers are interacting with your products online at any point, you are able to track, measure, and report on that data.

Simply put, you can always see results in the eCommerce world. That’s the beauty of these types of sales: dynamic, real-time information. The desired results may not be realized immediately after launch, but that doesn’t stop any agency from reporting on it. Once a product is live and available to be sold on an eCommerce product page, your agency should be measuring data. This data should then be used to optimize the page for better results.

#4. Bottlenecking Your eCommerce Campaigns with Low Budgets

Yes, we’re diving back into the old notion of “spend more to make more,” but it’s accurate, especially when looking to maximize your eCommerce sales strategy. It’s great to have highly optimized product pages with clearly defined CTAs and useful customer-centric information, but it can be an uphill battle if you’re mostly relying on potential customers to find your products organically.

If you’re keeping an eye on your metrics, it could also feel like you’re excelling by noticing high conversion rates from the traffic landing on your pages. This is a great sign that your pages are set up in the best way to succeed. Meanwhile, you’re left wondering how to get more traffic to your page. Our answer? Optimizing the budget you have to drive the right kind of traffic to your product pages. 

What is “the right kind of traffic?” Simply put, your advertising dollars should be spent targeting the types of customers you serve. Define this audience, and advertise your products to them through Social Media, Email, and Pay-per-Click campaigns.

Are Your Current Strategies Holding Your eCommerce Campaigns Back?

On top of these main points, there can be a number of other roadblocks inhibiting your eCommerce strategies from living up to their potential. The Kelly Brand Management team has worked with a number of eCommerce clients within many different industries. We’d love to take a deep dive into your eCommerce strategies and help figure out where you could be increasing your revenue. Give us a call or sign up for a consultation, and we’ll get started.