Ecommerce Brand Growth

User Experience

Usually the most overlooked area when it comes to building a great brand. The term "User Experience" or "UX" refers to the overall experience a customer receives from your brand. It's important to have a UX team that constantly puts themselves in the user's shoes in order to fix, build, and enhance your UX.

UX examples include: 

• Ease of website use
  site speed, navigation, search
• Checkout options
  apple pay, google pay, paypal, cc, etc.
• Security & Trust
  https, SSL, third party certificates

Where to start
Look at your brand reviews, ask customer service for feedback

Brand Awareness

Most think of brand awareness simply as "marketing," and they would be half right. Running ads on Google, and social media platforms is the easy part - it's how you tell your brand's story through non-traditional avenues that will set your brand above others in a very saturated world of ads.

Awareness examples include: 

• Paid
  facebook, instagram, tik toc, influencer, google
• Organic
  seo, ugc, facebook, instagram, tiktok
• Storytelling
  youtube, podcast, social, events, engagement

Pro tip
Think outside the box with your marketing strategies and stand out in a world full of noise

Customer Service

It's important to keep a human element with any online brand. A strong, responsive customer service team is the #1 ingredient for happy customers that keep coming back. CS plays a huge role when the goal is retention.

CS must haves: 

• Team Lead
  someone that can manage a winning team
• Real-time Chat
  online chat always on
• Be Responsive
  reply to inquires in a timely manner

Pro tip
Don't be afraid to invest in this area. Especially as you grow, remember to grow your CS team

Acquisition

Or in other words, traffic to your online store or website. Make sure your strategies include platforms that control your audience's eyeballs. Remember, what works for one niche brand may not necessarily mean it will work for another.

How to drive traffic: 

• SEO/SEM
  google, bing, shopping ads, etc.
• Offline & Other Channels
  events, podcasts
• Referrals
  partner sites, happy customers 

Pro tip
Experiment with every acquisition channel, because you never know what works until you do

Fulfillment & Delivery

You can thank Amazon for setting such a high bar when it comes to fulfillment and delivery. Not to mention fast, free shipping! It will take a team to pull this off.

Fulfillment shortcuts:

• Seamless Automation
  try to automate things like shipping notifications and returns
• Don't Over-promise
  never lie about shipping lead times
• Full Visibility & Order Management
  allow the user manage and view details

Pro tip
Customers are used to fast shipping, you must keep up with the big dogs and deliver

User Engagement

What does it mean? It means a lot of things. How do you engage with your customers and how do you get them to engage back? The name of the game is to stay relevant without annoying them. Keeping your brand top of mind at all times and create meaningful interactions they will remember.

How to engage: 

• Incentives for Feedback
  % off for user generated content like reviews
• Content
  provide meaningful value & provide it often
• Be Personal
  personalize a user's engagement

Pro tip
Engage users everywhere they are

Pricing & Availability

If you don't have competitive prices why would a person buy your brand? If you are OOS on the reg, why would a person continue to shop your brand? Pricing is not about being the cheapest, a user will pay more if they trust your brand over others, but not if you are OOS.

Focus Ares: 

• Inventory
  control it, manage it
• Pricing
  know your brand's worth & price accordingly
• Research
  know your industry and study the pros and cons of your competitors pricing & inventory

Pro tip
Invest in an automated inventory software

Retention

Ahh - the ultimate measuring stick of how well all of these things are helping build your brand. If you have customers coming back, it's because they believe and trust in your brand. Now it's time to up the game and brainstorm ways to keep them buying more and more. 

Retention examples include: 

• Loyalty Program
  a fun way to keep them coming back & buying
• Personalize the Experience
  communicate on a 1 to 1 level, or at least make it look like it's 1 to 1
• Innovate
  every aspect of your brand, product, website

Pro tip
Don't think of "retention" as just a strategy put in place, rather all 8 of these strategies combined