Growing an ecommerce brand can be a tough climb. Whether you’re starting from scratch or taking your off-line business online, the challenges — digital competition, customer acquisition and scaling efficiently — can feel overwhelming.
But with the right strategies, it’s possible to tackle these challenges head-on and drive measurable growth. In this guide, you’ll find actionable steps to expand your ecommerce business, optimise operations and attract the right customers.
In this guide:
- Identify your audience
- Personalise the customer experience
- Provide excellent customer service
- Take advantage of email marketing
- Use content and video marketing
- Optimise your store for organic traffic
- Improve the mobile shopping experience
- Market to all stages of the funnel
- Consider influencer marketing and social commerce
- Implement customer retention strategies
- Sell to international markets
- Measuring, analysing and optimising for growth
- Enhance conversions with CRO tactics
- Apply tools and technologies for growth
Identify your target audience.
Growing your ecommerce business starts with knowing who you’re selling to. While anyone with an Internet connection can stumble across your store, not everyone is your ideal customer. Targeting the right audience ensures your marketing efforts are focused, efficient and effective.
How to identify your audience:
- Analyse your current customers to identify patterns in demographics, interests or behaviours.
- Use keyword research to understand how potential customers search for solutions like yours.
- Review social media insights to uncover audience demographics or engage directly with niche communities.
Ecommerce buyer persona example
The data you gather should form detailed buyer personas—fictional representations of your ideal customers that outline their characteristics, goals and pain points.
Example:
A home fitness equipment brand might create a persona like:
- Pain points: Limited time to visit gyms, lack of space for bulky equipment, difficulty staying motivated.
- Goals: Build an effective home workout routine with compact, easy-to-use equipment.
- Buying triggers: Seeks discounts, detailed product reviews and demonstration videos to ensure value.
- Keywords: “compact home gym equipment,” “at-home resistance bands,” “affordable fitness solutions.”
Personalise the customer experience.
Customers are far more likely to buy — and keep buying — when their experience feels tailored to them. A personalised ecommerce experience builds trust, boosts engagement and drives repeat purchases.
Ways to personalise the ecommerce experience
- Exclusive discounts: Offer incentives for first-time buyers, birthdays or email subscribers.
- AI-powered recommendations: Suggest products based on browsing and purchase history.
- Localised shopping: Adapt language, currency and offers based on a customer’s location.
- Automated follow-ups: Send basket abandonment reminders or personalised product suggestions.
Provide excellent customer service.
Seamless customer service can turn hesitant visitors into loyal buyers.
Key strategies for excellent customer service:
- Implement chatbots for immediate, automated responses.
- Use robust support software to track conversations, purchases and resolutions.
- Offer multichannel support via live chat, email, phone and social media.
- Proactively address needs with FAQs, product guides and chat prompts.
Take advantage of email marketing.
Email marketing remains one of the most cost-effective tools for ecommerce growth.
Effective email strategies:
- Lead generation through discounts or gated resources.
- Recover abandoned baskets with reminders and limited-time offers.
- Upsell and cross-sell relevant products.
- Re-engage inactive customers with personalised offers.
Tips for success:
- Personalise content with names and behaviour-based recommendations.
- Track performance metrics like open rates, click-through rates (CTR) and conversions.
- Automate sequences for basket recovery, post-purchase follow-ups and welcome emails.
Use content and video marketing.
Content marketing strategies:
- Educational content (blogs, guides, eBooks) to answer key customer questions.
- Shoppable content to streamline purchases from blogs or videos.
- Infographics and podcasts to engage diverse audiences.
Video marketing strategies:
- Product demonstrations, tutorials and customer testimonials.
- Livestreams for product launches, Q&As or promotions.
Use engagement insights, like video watch times or content views, to identify what resonates most with your audience.
Optimise your store to attract organic traffic.
Search engine optimisation (SEO) helps your ecommerce site rank higher in search results, driving qualified traffic to your products. By optimising your content, product pages and technical structure, you’ll make it so customers can easily find your store when searching for solutions.
Key areas of focus:
1. Technical SEO
- Address duplicate content caused by faceted navigation and pagination with canonical tags and robots.txt rules.
- Improve JavaScript rendering using server-side rendering (SSR) or dynamic rendering.
- Optimise crawl budgets by prioritising high-value pages and resolving crawl errors.
2. Structured data
Implement schema mark-up (for example, for products, FAQs and breadcrumbs) to enhance search results with rich snippets like star ratings and price details.
3. Site speed and Core Web Vitals
- Compress images (use WebP, avoid PNG unless you need transparent backgrounds).
- Implement lazy loading for below-the-fold content.
- Minimise or defer unnecessary JavaScript and CSS.
4. Mobile optimisation
Design for mobile-first indexing with responsive layouts, clean navigation and fast loading times.
5. Duplicate content management
Use canonical tags, unique product descriptions and 301 redirects for discontinued items to maintain optimal crawling, indexing and ranking of product pages and product category pages.
6. Internal linking
Build a logical linking structure that connects product, category and content pages to distribute link equity and improve navigation.
Improve the mobile shopping experience.
With mobile traffic dominating ecommerce, your store must deliver a seamless mobile experience.
Best practices:
- Use responsive designs for clean layouts on all devices.
- Simplify navigation and reduce checkout friction (for example, offering guest checkout and mobile wallets).
- Optimise loading speeds and form inputs for mobile devices.
Market to all stages of the funnel.
Targeting every funnel stage ensures you nurture prospects effectively:
- Awareness: SEO content, paid ads and social media campaigns.
- Interest: In-depth guides, product comparisons and expert content.
- Desire: Customer reviews, product demos and promotional offers.
- Action: Simplified checkout processes with clear calls-to-action (CTAs).
Consider influencer marketing.
Influencer marketing expands your reach by leveraging trusted voices in your niche.
How to succeed:
- Find relevant influencers whose audiences align with your brand.
- Use micro-influencers for cost-effective, high-engagement campaigns.
Tap into social commerce:
- Use shoppable Instagram posts, TikTok Shop or Facebook Marketplace to sell directly through social platforms.
Implement customer retention strategies.
Acquiring customers is expensive; retaining them is critical for long-term growth.
Retention tactics:
- Loyalty programmes: Offer points, rewards or VIP tiers for repeat customers.
- Post-purchase engagement: Send thank-you emails, surveys or exclusive discounts.
- Subscription models: Provide recurring value to customers while increasing customer lifetime value (CLV).
Sell to international markets.
Expanding into global markets can unlock significant growth for your ecommerce business.
Steps to global expansion:
-
Localise your website:
- Use translation plugins or hire professional translators to adapt product descriptions and ensure cultural relevance.
- Accept local currencies and payment methods to reduce friction.
-
Optimise for international SEO by implement hreflang tags and creating region-specific pages with localised content and pricing.
-
Streamline logistics by offering affordable, reliable delivery options and communicating estimated delivery times clearly.
By tailoring your site for international customers, you can open new revenue streams and increase your brand’s global footprint.
Enhance conversions with CRO tactics.
Conversion rate optimisation (CRO) turns traffic into paying customers.
Key tactics:
- Improve product pages with high-quality visuals, clear CTAs and trust signals.
- Simplify checkout processes with fewer steps and multiple payment options.
- Use A/B testing to refine CTAs, headlines and page layouts.
Measure, analyse and optimise for growth.
Growth depends on consistent tracking, analysis and refinement.
Key metrics to monitor:
- Conversion rates: Lead-to-customer and basket-to-purchase rates.
- Average order value (AOV): The average spend per transaction.
- Customer lifetime value (CLV): The total value a customer brings over time.
- Basket abandonment rates: Track where and why customers drop off.
Apply tools and technologies for growth.
The right tools support your ecommerce strategies:
- Analytics tools: Google Analytics, Adobe Analytics, heatmaps (such as Microsoft Clarity).
- Email marketing automation: Platforms like Klaviyo, Mailchimp or Marketo Engage.
- A/B testing tools: Optimise site elements to improve conversions such as Adobe Target.
How Adobe can help.
Choosing the right ecommerce platform is critical for growth. Adobe Commerce provides everything you need to build, personalise and optimise your ecommerce business at scale.
With Adobe Commerce, you can:
- Automate workflows with built-in business intelligence tools.
- Create personalised shopping experiences with advanced AI-powered features.
- Gain actionable insights to refine your marketing strategies and drive growth.
Learn how Adobe Commerce can help to grow your ecommerce business by requesting a free demo.
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