How To Go About Boosting Your Ecommerce ROI With 18 Strategies

Are you tired of seeing minimal returns on your ecommerce efforts despite putting in countless hours and resources?

If you struggle with low conversions and high cart abandonment rates, you are in the right place. In this article, we’ll tackle these issues head-on and show you how boosting ecommerce ROI is possible with 18 proven strategies.

By the end, you’ll discover how to attract more customers, improve their shopping experience, and increase your sales conversions.

Let’s get into it.

What Is Ecommerce ROI?

Ecommerce ROI (Return on Investment) measures your ecommerce profits by comparing the revenue you generate to the costs you invest. A higher ROI means your ecommerce strategies are effective, while a lower ROI shows a need for improvement.

How Do You Calculate Ecommerce ROI?

To calculate ecommerce ROI, use this formula:

ROI (%) = [(Net Profit – Marketing Expenses)/Marketing Expenses] x 100

For example, if your net profit is $10,000 and your marketing expenses are $2,000, your ROI will be:

ROI(%)=[(10,000 − 2,000)/2,000] × 100= 400%

If you want a more detailed and accurate calculation, use online ecommerce ROI calculators like 121eCommerce, and Virtina. These tools help automate the process and provide a clearer picture of your eCommerce ROI.

What Factors Are Important In Boosting ecommerce ROI?

By grasping these 4 important aspects of ecommerce ROI, you can make informed choices to improve your customer experience and simplify your business processes.

Industry Competition

Analyze your competitors’ pricing, marketing tactics, and product offers to learn about your standing in the market. This will help you identify where you fall short and guide you on how to address them.

Brand Recognition

59% of consumers prefer to buy new products from familiar brands. Keep your messaging consistent, offer high-quality products, and run effective marketing campaigns to build a strong brand presence.

Customer Service & User Experience

93% of customers make repeat purchases with companies that offer excellent customer service. Make sure to give quick, effective help to turn a frustrated shopper into a loyal customer. Make your website easy to navigate, mobile-friendly, and offer responsive support. Check out these 10 best-designed websites to get started.

Shipping & Delivery Logistics

63% of online shoppers abandon their carts because of high shipping costs, while 55% abandon them because of the slow delivery times.

Offer fast, reliable, and affordable shipping options to reduce cart abandonment rates.

8 Important ecommerce KPIs

Understand what each key performance indicator (KPI) does and how to calculate it. Then understand what the results mean to know how well your strategies are working and where to improve. Here are the 8 most important ecommerce KPIs you need to monitor:

Conversion Rate

This measures the percentage of website visitors who complete a purchase. A higher conversion rate shows that your site is turning visitors into customers. To calculate the conversion rate, use the formula:

Conversion Rate = (Number of Conversions / Number of Website Visitors) x 100

Time on Website

This KPI tracks how long visitors stay on your site. Longer visit durations suggest higher customer engagement. Use Google Analytics to track your website traffic.

Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)

CAC calculates the cost of acquiring a new customer through marketing and sales efforts. A lower CAC means you spend less to gain each new customer. This shows that your sales strategies are cost-effective. Calculate your CAC using this formula:

Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) = (Cost of Sales + Cost of Marketing) / Number of New Customers Acquired

Cart Abandonment Rate

This measures the percentage of shoppers who add items to their cart but leave without completing the purchase. If the cart abandonment rate is high, you need to improve your checkout process. Use this formula to measure CAR:

Cart Abandonment Rate = (Number of Completed Purchases / Number of Shopping Carts Created) x 100

Average Order Value (AOV)

This KPI tracks the average amount spent each time a customer places an order. A higher AOV means customers are spending more per purchase, which boosts your revenue. To calculate AOV, use the formula:

Average Order Value = Total Revenue / Number of Orders

Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)

CLV estimates the total revenue a business can expect from a customer over their entire relationship. If you have a low CLV, it means your customers are not contributing much revenue over time because they are not making repeat purchases, not engaging with your brand, or not finding enough value in your products or services to stick around.

To calculate CLV, use the formula:

Customer Lifetime Value = Average Order Value x Number of Repeat Transactions x Average Retention Time

Website Traffic

This stat monitors the number of visitors to your site, so that you can measure your marketing effectiveness. A higher website traffic number shows that you are attracting more online visitors. Use Google Analytics or Ubersuggest to measure website traffic.

Customer Retention Rate

This KPI measures the percentage of customers who come back to make another purchase. High retention rates cut marketing costs because keeping your existing customers is cheaper than attracting new ones.

To calculate CRR, use the formula:

Customer Retention Rate = ((Number of Customers at End of Period - Number of Customers Acquired During Period) / Number of Customers at Start of Period) x 100

How To Boost Your Ecommerce ROI: 18 Solid Strategies

As you explore each strategy, ask yourself: Would it work for my ecommerce business and how will it impact my customers? This will help you tailor the marketing strategies to your specific needs.

1. Know Your Buyer Persona

A buyer persona is a detailed profile of your ideal customer. It’s built from real data and research. Create detailed buyer personas to tailor your ecommerce strategies to your target audience’s needs and preferences.

Your buyer persona details should include:

Demographics: Age, gender, income, education, occupation, and location.
Buying Habits: Understand how often and why your customers make purchases. Find out their preferred shopping times, product types they frequently buy, and their average spending amounts.
Interests & Hobbies: Know what your customers enjoy doing in their free time to create more personalized marketing content.
Challenges & Pain Points: Understand the problems your customers face and how your products can solve them.
Preferred Communication Channels: Know where your customers spend their time online and how they prefer to receive information (e.g., email, social media, search engines). This will help you allocate your marketing resources more effectively.

2. Perform Market Research

Clearly define what you want to learn from your market research. This includes collecting information on:

Market trends
Competitor strategies
Customer preferences

Study your competitors to understand their strengths and weaknesses. Look at their product offers, pricing strategies, marketing tactics, and customer reviews. Use the following resources to do your research:

Surveys
Interviews
Focus groups
Social media insights
Customer feedback to gather data
Online analytics tools like Google Analytics

Analyze the collected data to identify patterns and trends. Use what you learn to adjust your business strategies, from product development and pricing to marketing and customer service. For example, if your market research shows your target audience has a taste for the finer things in life, develop a line of luxury products to meet this need.

Similarly, if the research indicates that your audience uses social media, then, allocate more budget to social media advertising.

At this stage, you can hire a marketing intern to help with data collection, survey distribution, data analysis, and reporting. This will save you time and effort, so you can focus on the decision-making aspects of your business.

3. Choose The Right Products

Identify products with higher selling potential. An easy way is to look for items with positive customer reviews, strong demand, and high profit margins. Once you identify, promote these products in your website, social media, email marketing, and online marketplaces. Make sure you highlight their unique features/benefits to attract attention.

4. Use Discounts When Appropriate

Offer discounts during seasonal events or for bulk purchases to attract more customers. For example, offer a 20% discount during Black Friday or give a "buy 3, get 1 free" deal for bulk purchases.

Implement dynamic pricing strategies—adjusting prices based on market demand, competitor pricing, and other factors in real-time. This approach offers competitive prices when demand is low and higher prices when demand is high.

5. Use SEO To Drive Organic Traffic

Optimize your website’s content, structure, and keywords to rank higher on Google. Start by researching relevant keywords that your target audience is likely to use. Use Google Keyword Planner or Ahrefs to find high-traffic, low-competition keywords (10k-30k search volume; 20-30 keyword difficulty). Then incorporate these keywords naturally in your product descriptions, blog posts, and meta tags.

Follow the steps to improve your site’s SEO:

Use Mobile-Friendly Design

Use a responsive website design that adapts to different screen sizes including mobile phones, tablets, and laptops. Test your site on various devices to ensure it provides a good user experience on mobile.

Build Quality Backlinks

Reach out to reputable websites in your industry and request backlinks. Write guest posts, collaborate on content, or list your business in relevant directories to earn these links.

Improve Loading Speed

Optimize your images, use a content delivery network (CDN), and enable browser caching. Use Google PageSpeed Insights to identify pages with low speed.

Produce Engaging Content

Regularly publish blog posts, articles, and guides that answer your customers' questions and provide valuable information.

Optimize Images

Use descriptive image file names and add alt text that includes relevant keywords. This helps search engines understand the content and context of your images and improves your site’s accessibility.

Set Up Google Search Console

Create an account and submit your sitemap to Google Search Console. Use it to monitor your site’s performance, track search queries, and identify and fix any site issues.

6. Invest In Quality Content Marketing

Create valuable content to educate your audience and solve their pain points. This approach establishes your brand as a trusted resource. Use blog posts, pillar pages, guides, ebooks, and white papers to cover topics in-depth and provide actionable insights.

You can also get help from content marketing agencies to create and publish content on your site to keep your content consistent and high-quality. The Glorious Company is one of the best marketing agencies, crafting high-quality content tailored to your brand’s unique needs, all while working within your budget.

You can also leverage email and social media content to engage with your audience and nurture leads. For example, send a monthly newsletter with highlights of your latest blog posts and exclusive discounts.

7. Optimize Your Online Store's Conversion Rate (CRO)

Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) increases the percentage of visitors who complete a desired action on your website. For example, they make a purchase or sign up for your newsletter.

To optimize your CRO, track bounce rates, session durations, and conversion paths. Use tools like Google Analytics 4, Google Search Console, and your CMS to understand what’s working and what isn’t.

Conduct A/B testing by creating variations of key elements like headlines, call-to-action buttons, and product pages to determine which versions perform better. Test one element at a time. Then, make changes based on the test results to improve customer experience.

8. Use Social Media For Promotion

Leverage X (formerly Twitter), Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok to promote your online store.

Curate content tailored to each platform to engage with different audiences effectively:

Use X to share timely updates, promotions, and customer service interactions.
Use LinkedIn for professional and industry-specific content like case studies, white papers, and business insights.
Use Facebook for promotional posts, customer testimonials, and engaging multimedia content.
Use Instagram to create visually appealing content like product photos, behind-the-scenes looks, and influencer collaborations.
Use TikTok to create short, engaging videos that showcase your products in entertaining ways.

9. Choose The Right Paid Advertising Channels

Paid advertising channels drive immediate traffic and sales, complementing your organic SEO efforts. Use paid channels like PPC campaigns to reach a wider audience, drive more traffic, and boost your ecommerce sales. Pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns target specific keywords to reach potential customers who are actively searching for your products.

You can also run other ad formats like:

Search Ads: Run search ads on platforms like Google Ads to appear at the top of search results for relevant queries.
Display Ads: Use display ads to reach a broader audience with visually appealing banners on various websites.
Native Ads: Integrate native ads seamlessly into the content of websites or apps, providing a non-intrusive advertising experience.
Social Media Ads: Promote your products on social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and TikTok to reach targeted demographics.

10. Upsell & Cross-Sell Smartly

Place upsell and cross-sell suggestions on product pages and during checkout to increase the average order value.

Upselling

Encourage customers to purchase a higher-end product than the one they’re considering. For example, if a customer is looking at a basic laptop, suggest a more advanced model with better specifications.

Cross-Selling

Recommend complementary products that enhance the main purchase. For instance, suggest a phone case and screen protector when a customer buys a new smartphone.

Personalized Recommendations

Use data-driven insights to offer personalized product suggestions based on the customer’s browsing and purchase history.

Bundling

Create product bundles that offer a discount when multiple items are purchased together, making it an attractive deal for customers.

11. Offer The Best Customer Service

Make sure your customer support is accessible across various platforms. This way, customers can reach you wherever they are, whether it’s on your website, social media, or mobile app. Offer live chat, phone, email, self-help documentation, and FAQs to cater to different customer preferences.

You can also personalize your customer service to create a more engaging and satisfying experience. Use customer data to address them by name, recall their previous interactions, and tailor your responses to their specific needs. Use Zendesk, LiveChat, or Intercom to provide customer service across multiple channels.

12. Track & Analyze Customer Behavior

Use Google Analytics, Hotjar, or Crazy Egg to track and analyze how customers interact with your website. Monitor page views, time on site, bounce rates, and conversion paths to know their browsing habits.

Use heatmaps and session recordings to know where visitors click, and how they scroll. Then, analyze this data to understand:

How they navigate your site
Where they encounter obstacles
What drives their buying decisions

For instance, if you notice a high drop-off rate during the checkout process, it indicates issues with your forms or payment options. Simplify the forms, have clear buttons, and offer multiple payment methods to reduce cart abandonment.

13. Analyze Your Competitors

Analyze your competitors to identify their strengths and weaknesses, so you can refine your strategies to get a competitive edge.

List your main competitors in the market.
Look at their website design: Creative logo, navigation, and product pages. Note what works well and what doesn’t.
Compare their product range, quality, and pricing with yours. Identify any gaps or opportunities.
Look at their SEO efforts, content marketing, social media presence, and advertising campaigns. See which keywords they rank for and what kind of content they produce.
Observe how they interact with customers on social media and through customer service channels. Note their response times and engagement quality.

14. Hone Your Tech & Marketing Stacks

While deciding on your eCommerce shop, consider Shopify, BigCommerce, or Wix. Look for features that align with your business goals. For example, use Shopify if you're just starting and want an easy-to-use setup. Use BigCommerce if you need advanced SEO features and scalability for a growing business.

Use Plugins & Add-Ons

Enhance your store's functionality with the right plugins. Use SEO plugins, payment gateway integrations, inventory management tools, and customer review systems to optimize your operations. For example, use the Yoast SEO plugin to improve your search engine rankings

Select Email Marketing Tools

Choose email marketing tools that suit your needs like MailChimp, AWeber, or Campaign Monitor. Look for features like automation, segmentation, and analytics, so that you can automate your campaigns and track your performance effectively.

For example, if you're a small business, use MailChimp for its user-friendly interface and automation features. If you're a growing business, use Campaign Monitor for its advanced segmentation and customization options.

15. Use Email Marketing

Email marketing is one of the most effective ways to boost your ecommerce ROI. For every dollar you spend on email marketing, you get an average return of $36. Follow these 4 key steps to create effective email marketing campaigns.

Collect Email Addresses

Start by collecting email addresses through popups, lead magnets, or sign-up forms on your website. Offer incentives like discounts, free shipping, or exclusive content to encourage sign-ups.

For example, use a full-screen discount popup like Spocket to grow your email list. It incentivizes visitors to "Start a 14-day FREE trial” in exchange for signing up. It communicates the value of the offer and creates a sense of urgency with its free trial period.

Build Your Email List

As you collect email addresses, focus on building a quality email list of engaged subscribers by offering incentives that interest them. For example, if you're in the fitness niche, offer access to a monthly webinar with workout routines. Make sure your sign-up process is easy and communicates the benefits of subscribing.

Segment Your Subscribers

Divide your email list into segments based on customer behavior, preferences, and demographics. This helps you to send targeted messages that are more relevant and engaging for each group.

Automate Your Sequences

Use email marketing tools to set up welcome emails, abandoned cart reminders, and personalized product recommendations.

If you're short on time, consider partnering with an email marketing agency like The Glorious Company. The Glorious Company helps businesses develop and execute email strategies that meet the specific customer’s needs. From strategy and design to deliverability and analytics, everything’s handled for your campaigns.

16. Use AI Properly

54% of online consumers choose to shop from an AI-powered ecommerce store over a human-run one. It’s high time you leverage Artificial Intelligence tools to personalize customer experiences and automate routine tasks.

Personalization

91% of consumers are more likely to shop with brands that give relevant offers. AI can analyze customer behavior and preferences to offer personalized product recommendations.

Customer Service

Implement AI-powered chatbots to provide instant customer support. AI chatbots can answer queries, and guide users through their shopping journey.

Inventory Management

An AI-driven inventory management can cut forecasting errors by up to 50%. Use AI to predict demand and manage inventory levels to minimize overstock and stockouts.

Dynamic Pricing

AI can adjust prices in real-time based on demand, competition, and other factors.

Dynamic pricing can boost your ROI by up to 10%.

17. Minimize How Much You Spend to Acquire New Customers

Monitor your ad spending and measure the ROI of each marketing campaign. Use Google Analytics and ad platform insights to understand which campaigns are delivering the best returns.

If your ROI is low, revise your ad campaigns. Analyze which elements are not performing well, like ad copy, targeting, or visuals, and make necessary adjustments to improve.

Use organic social media marketing to engage with potential customers. Or implement referral programs to encourage existing customers to refer new ones.

18. Set Goals For Scaling Your eCommerce Store

Track important metrics like organic traffic, annual revenue, and conversion rates on a quarterly basis. These metrics provide valuable insights into your store's performance.

Next, brainstorm ways to increase these key metrics to grow your customer base. Consider strategies like virtual product demos, user-generated content, and promotional webinars.

Explore opportunities to expand your product line or enter new markets to boost ROI. Use a mix of marketing channels, including social media, email marketing, and paid advertising. Create partnerships with influencers or affiliates to extend your reach.

Ecommerce ROI: Know What You’re Doing

As you implement these strategies, ask yourself: Which strategies can I implement first to drive more value for my customers and increase my returns? This will help you focus on what brings the most results for your business.

If you’re looking for personalized assistance, visit The Glorious Company. As a content marketing agency, they specialize in SEO, content strategy, and digital marketing campaigns tailored to your brand's unique needs. Contact them now, and they’ll help you drive more organic traffic and boost eCommerce ROI.

This is a guest post by Burkhard Berger, the founder of Novum™. He helps innovative B2B companies implement modern SEO strategies to scale their organic traffic to 1,000,000+ visitors per month. Curious about what your true traffic potential is?

Have any questions? Keep the conversation going by leaving a comment below.

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