ACQUISITION | 1

22 Ecommerce Growth Hacks

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Supercharge Your Audience Targeting Result: Get more from your Facebook advertising

SEO Hack Result: Improve your search ranking

Mass Follow with a Touch of Customization Result: Find potential customers on Twitter

The Offline Niche Result: Find the ideal spot for a pop-up shop

Create Content That Gets Shared Result: Improve your content virality

Tap Peak Customer Satisfaction Moments for Referrals Result: Get more social referrals

Data Journalism Result: Create highly shareable content

Super-Simple Personalization Result: Improve the customer experience

The Point of Maximum Profitability Result: Improve profit margins

The Exit Survey Result: Reduce shopping cart abandonment

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ACQUISITION

CONVERSION

Get an Extra Conversion, Free Result: Boost engagement at the very first conversion

The Foot-in-the-Door Technique Result: Increase conversion rate

Give Reviews the Mobile Makeover Result: Get more reviews

Ask Purchasers What’s Stopping Non-Purchasers Result: Reduce shopping cart abandonment

Badging Result: Improve product page conversions

Calculate the Square Inch Value of Your Popular Pages Result: Improve the conversion rate of your pages

Make Your Customer the Star Result: Increase long-term customer loyalty

Take it Offline Result: Increase average order value

Don’t Leave Retargeting Just to Your Website Result: Improve revenue from email marketing

Reverse Engineering Your Best Customers Result: Get more high value customers

Turn Receipts into Growth Opportunities Result: Increase customer retention

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RETENTION

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This is a question I get a lot these days as people try to figure out what it means, what it is, and how to do ‘it’. I coined the term in 2010 along with Hiten Shah and Patrick Vlaskovitz as a way to identify a new type of marketing role—one that focused solely on the growth of the company over everything else.

At Dropbox, where we built and optimized their now-famous referral program, it became clear that the most promising growth opportunities for new companies existed outside of traditional marketing channels. These new opportunities required new skill sets that lay outside of classic marketing, such as analytics, engineering, user experience and product management.

Growth hacking, therefore, was the attempt to identify the mindset and approach to growth that put growth as “the thing” above all other marketing activity, and used the opportunity inherent within the product as the growth lever—instead of traditional marketing campaigns.

Fast forward to today and there is a lot of conversation about growth hacking, what it is and isn’t, and whether it’s really different than marketing. What really matters in all of it is that growth hackers approach growth differently than classically-trained marketers. When you think like a growth hacker, you take a more analytical and creative approach to your growth efforts.

By being creative and rigorous, working with engineering, product and the user experience team, you can create big opportunities for growth that have yet to be capitalized on by your competition.

In this whitepaper we’ve identified some of the newer and more promising growth opportunities for ecommerce companies. We’ve written up each one in a way that allows you to take and test them your own. While these ideas are good on their own, ultimately we hope that they inspire you to identify new ways to improve and grow your business.

The key to growth hacking lies in your ability to glean unique insights about your customers that your competition doesn’t have. This requires a deep understanding of your customers which comes from your data and experiments that you run. Growth hackers don’t guess, they make hypotheses based on data and then experiment to prove those hypotheses right or wrong. It’s up to you to think like a growth hacker and gain the edge against your competition, improving your business and the experience for your customers at the same time.

What’s Growth Hacking?

Sean Ellis

CEO, Qualaroo

Founder, GrowthHackers.com

ACQUISITION | 2

Acquisition

At the very top of the funnel are your new user acquisition efforts. Customer acquisition can be expensive, especially when you’re battling it out with other advertisers across traditional online marketing channels. If your customer acquisition costs are headed in the wrong direction, dive into these data-driven user acquisition hacks to find an edge.

From paid optimizations, to search and social traffic building tactics, we’ve put together six hacks that you can use to take your acquisition efforts to the next level—all driven by insights from your customers, just waiting to be unlocked.

• Supercharge your audience targeting

• SEO hack

• Mass follow with a touch of customization

• The offline niche

• Create content that gets shared

• Tap peak customer satisfaction moments for referral

• Data journalism

ACQUISITION | 3

Supercharge Your Audience Targeting

#1RESULT:

Get more from your Facebook advertising

WHY TRY IT This hack takes audience targeting to the next level to find ultra targeted and highly profitable audiences on Facebook.

Everyone knows that Facebook has incredible audience targeting capabilities, and that’s the problem. Using Facebook’s default filters and targeting options leaves you competing with too many people, and overpaying for new customers. Instead, go deep to uncover uncommon opportunities that cost less and convert more to reinvigorate your Facebook acquisition efforts.

• List of customers that have purchased from you in the last 90 days• Facebook fan page• Custom landing pages

1. Create a Custom Audience in Facebook. For example, say you want to target people who are similar to customers who’ve purchased shoes from you in the past 90 days.

2. Upload those email addresses to Facebook. Facebook will then let you target people who have similar likes and interests via the Lookalike Audience feature available from the Facebook Power Editor.

3. Target those purchasers further by interest targeting. Continuing the example, you can build a specific campaign for people who visited the crossfit or Reebok sections of your site.

4. Create a landing page designed just for those audiences. On that landing page you’ll want to include Reebok and Crossfit products.

5. Create ads that showcase your Crossfit and Reebok products to those users across the sites they’re visiting.

6. Retarget those specific visitors. Here’s the really powerful stuff. By using unique retargeting code on that landing page, you can now retarget crossfit and Reebok ads back to those visitors (whether they convert or not) across Facebook, Twitter, Google Display Network, and more.

By using a specific customer profile, combined with Facebook interest data, unique retargeting codes and custom landing pages and ad units, you’ve built a highly targeted and highly profitable ad campaign across a wide range of sites.

WHAT YOU NEED

HOW TO DO IT

ACQUISITION | 4

#2RESULT:

Improve your search ranking

WHY TRY IT Content marketing is hard. Let’s face it, writing blog post after blog post feels futile when you’re trying to gain traction with competitive search terms. Creating your own content is a long play. And there are no shortcuts in the world of SEO, or aren’t there?

Plenty of ecommerce marketers use coupons and incentives to drive conversations and conversions via social media, but these referral programs have an often overlooked benefit. When people are talking about and sharing your brand online, Google notices.

• An incentive program for current shoppers that gets them sharing• Tools that can help you: Curebit, SocialRebates, Social Annex• A keyword that you’re trying to optimize for

Coupons are effective at driving conversions, they’re also effective at eating at away at profit margins. Companies like Curebit and SocialRebates offer another way. Instead of coupons, they offer customers incentives for talking about the brand online—get five of your friends to shop and get $x back.

“On average our customers are seeing 300% ROI,” says Ben Stewart, CTO at SocialRebates. But there’s an unintended consequence that comes from all this social chatter—search rank. “We’re seeing that customers who design rebate campaigns around a keyword consistently end up on the first page for that keyword.”

Whether Google indexes a Tweet, a status gets shared on Google+, or a blog post gets written with the referral code baked in, the opportunities for more search visibility are an added bonus to the social mentions. Incentivize people to talk on social, and watch your search rankings soar.

WHAT YOU NEED

HOW TO DO IT

SEO Hack

ACQUISITION | 5

#3RESULT:

Find potential customers on Twitter

WHY TRY IT Sure, more Twitter followers would be great. Even better? Twitter followers that will turn into customers. By being savvy about who you choose to follow, you can connect with more people who are looking for what you sell, right this very second.

If you’re not sure how to make social media work for you, or if your efforts to date have resulted in nothing more than ho-hum, try this hack. Instead of just using Twitter to promote your brand, start looking for people who are ready to buy and engage with them today. Just like Google search, you can find people actively seeking out solutions just like yours.

Try some keyword searches today and see just how many people are out there looking for what you offer.

• Tweepi• Twitter search• Zapier or IFTTT• FunnelFeed.io

WHAT YOU NEED

Mass Follow with a Touch of Customization

ACQUISITION | 6

Tweepi makes it incredibly easy to find potential customers based on who they’re following or what they’re tweeting about. Let’s say you have a coffee subscription service, your first step is to find people who would be interested in this product. How about a search for #overcaffeinated?

There it is! A list of avid coffee drinkers. But wait, hold up one second! Before you start following make sure that you’re speaking their language. Send a tweet from your account using the same hashtag or keyword that you’re searching on. When they see they’ve got a new follower, they’ll click through to your profile and the first tweet they see from you will be hyper relevant.

Alternatively, favorite their tweets. You can use tools like FunnelFeed.io to easily find search terms that matter to you and follow, retweet, and favorite those Tweets quickly and easily, driving more awareness, engagement, and traffic (through the link in your profile) to your site.

Want to go even further? Setup an automated recipe on Zapier or IFTTT to get notified whenever there’s a new mention of the keywords that are important to you. You can get an email or have them added to a spreadsheet automatically. That way you don’t have to constantly be searching, you’ll get notified whenever someone is looking.

One thing to keep in mind, Twitter has rules around how fast you follow people.

HOW TO DO IT

ACQUISITION | 7

#4RESULT:

Find the ideal spot for a pop-up shop

WHY TRY IT Ecommerce retailers tend to deal in the fringe, the niche, the hard-to-come-by, so to make the transition to offline retail takes more ingenuity than just going straight to the hottest retail centers. Pop-up shops are a fantastic way for online retailers to start testing offline locations and strategies, but even then, where to get started? Customer order data holds a clue about where to focus your efforts.

• Customer order data• A spreadsheet

Pull order data and tally up revenue by state. Once you know your most popular states, then tally up revenue by city. Finally, zoom in one level deeper and tally up revenue by zipcode, and there you have it. Your most popular locations by neighborhood. If you’re going to open a retail location or a pop-up shop, now you know the best possible place to do it.

Look beyond total revenue numbers for an even better look. Are there particular categories or brands that sell more in the city you’re considering? Is your revenue driven by loyal fans of your brand or something else? What time of the year do you sell the most in the city? Use these data points to plan your strategy and launch a successful pop-up store to capitalize even further.

If you’re looking for new opportunities cross-reference your purchase data with user interests and time your pop-up shop with large events that drive more visitors to the city. Sell a lot of sneakers to music fans? A pop-up shop in Austin around Austin City Limits might be a perfect fit for your business.

WHAT YOU NEED

HOW TO DO IT

The Offline Niche

ACQUISITION | 8

#5RESULT:

Improve your content virality

WHY TRY IT Coming up with killer content ideas is hard. Good thing is, you don’t always have to. Sometimes all it takes is finding content that’s already performing well and then doing it different, better, or smarter.

This concept, sometimes called the “skyscraper method”, leverages the popularity of a particular type of content, and then one-ups what’s out on the web today to drive the traffic to your front door.

• A list of keywords or topic ideas• BuzzSumo• BuzzStream

Let’s say you’re writing about coffee, do a quick search on BuzzSumo and you get this:

If you sell coffee by the bag then you better be writing something about the terrors of coffee pods. The top articles on this list both cover this topic and have over 60,000 thousand shares each! If people are fascinated by coffee pods, find a way to create content that goes above and beyond the initial shared item. Can you create an infographic, a video, or a more robust piece of content that gives people a richer experience around a topic they care about?

WHAT YOU NEED

HOW TO DO IT

Create Content That Gets Shared

ACQUISITION | 9

• That’s the key to the “skyscraper method”. Once you’ve created the new content, reach out to those sites that already shared similar content and alert them to the new and im-proved information. They’re likely to share it again, and may even update their old links to point to your new content.

Buying guides are another thing that plenty of ecommerce retailers do, and can be powerful ways to harness specific searches around niche products and topics. Instead of starting from scratch, start by seeing what some of the most frequently shared buying guides include.If you’re selling espresso machines, a quick BuzzSumo search will help you find the best espresso machine buying guide out there.

ACQUISITION | 10

#6RESULT:

Get more social referrals

WHY TRY IT The friend referral is hardly news. It seems most sites have a “give a friend $10 and get $10 for yourself” program in place. The key to making these programs stand out is rethinking where they fit into the customer lifecycle.

• Friendbuy• Curebit• Anafero• Referral link tracking

Let’s use Warby Parker as an example. Warby Parker asks for referrals at just the right moments on their site. First, they ask you to share photos of yourself in the new frames when you use their ‘Try 5 before you Buy’ program. It’s a smart way to create conversation and awareness around the purchase process, and fits perfectly with the potential customer’s intention. Trying on new glasses? Of course I should see what my friends think.

Second, they ask you to invite friends right after you purchase a new pair of glasses. Which, again, is the perfect opportunity to boast about your new, sweet frames. By tapping visitors at the peak of their excitement and satisfaction with the brand, Warby Parker ensures maximum participation and referral engagement.

In addition to getting the timing right, Warby Parker offers several network options, and more importantly, several messages and ways to share. You can brag about your new purchase, or just encourage friends to check them out. The choices make it easy and personal, the right mix for getting maximum return from customer referrals.

WHAT YOU NEED

HOW TO DO IT

Tap Peak Customer Satisfaction Moments for Referrals

ACQUISITION | 11

#7RESULT:

Create highly shareable content

WHY TRY IT If you conduct your business online, you’ve got data—lot’s of it. Sure, using this data to create a great experience for customers is awesome, but how about using it to extend the impact of your brand?

With journalists and bloggers tired of pitches without any substance, and content marketing being done by everyone in your niche, data has real power to create big opportunities for new traffic and awareness.

If you have data that you can use to tell a story, a data visualization and insights can go a long way to driving awareness for your business.

• A data set• Spreadsheets• Data visualization tools. Get started by checking out a few of these.

Here’s an awesome example of how DeliveryChef executed this hack. DeliveryChef delivers foods from thousands of Indian restaurants, giving them a unique data set on the food preferences of the Indian consumer. One of their very first pieces of content marketing was an infographic on the pizza preferences of Mumbai.

“Putting out this piece of content brought tremendous recognition to DeliveryChef as an authority on the food industry in India,” says founder Aditi Kapur. “It built our credibility as a data source among food bloggers, writers, and restaurants who began asking us for hyper-local analysis of consumer tastes in their neighborhoods. The Food & Grocery Forum of India 2014 even invited me as a panelist to share the content with the industry.”

Look for ways to turn your data and insights into new opportunities to promote your business.

WHAT YOU NEED

HOW TO DO IT

Data Journalism

CONVERSION | 12

Conversion

The next stage in the marketing funnel is to turn website visitors into paying customers. Sophistication in this area has grown substantially over the past several years. Experts like Tim Ash and Bryan Eisenberg have religiously championed the value of the A/B test. And tools like Unbounce, Optimizely, Qualaroo, and CrazyEgg make it easier than ever for companies with small budgets to test like the big guys.

In this section we’re going to explore methods ecommerce marketers are using to uncover ideas for their next test:

• Super-simple personalization

• The point of maximum profitability

• The exit survey

• Get an extra conversion, free

• The foot-in-the-door technique

• Give reviews the mobile makeover

• Ask purchasers what’s stopping non-purchasers

• Finding the golden motion

• Badging

• Calculate the square inch of your popular pages

CONVERSION | 13

#8RESULT:

Improve the customer experience

WHY TRY IT Personalization is the ultimate goal of data-driven conversion optimization. When you can identify an individual user and tailor their shopping experience to their needs and interests you can drive incredible results.

You can personalize on a number of features such as buying behavior, inbound link via an ad unit, or even on-site activity. One super-simple way to get started is personalizing based on a single interaction on your site or via email. By using the interaction to inform how the rest of the experience is delivered, you can customize the user experience, taking the first step on the road to personalization.

Personalization leads to greater relevance for the visitor and a higher likelihood of conversion and repeat visits and purchases. While building out or integrating full personalization can be intimidating, starting small can lead to big wins and drive further personalization projects.

• A question with mutually exclusive answers• A delivery system (i.e., email, modal, on-site survey)• Tools: Monetate, Qualaroo, iPerceptions, Bounce Exchange

One example would be to ask visitors to your site if they’re shopping for themselves or for someone else. You would then take this response and use it as a personalization parameter to dynamically display different product options on subsequent pages. Visitors who chose “shopping for someone else” get “Great Gift Ideas” on top of category pages, or a free gift wrap offer on orders over $50.

The options are endless and you can unlock powerful results just with simple personalization efforts like the example above.

WHAT YOU NEED

HOW TO DO IT

Super-Simple Personalization

CONVERSION | 14

#9RESULT:

Improve profit margins

WHY TRY IT Any economics student knows that there is an inherent trade-off between price and demand. Charge too much and you’ll lose customers, but charge too little and you’re missing out on pure profit. Striking just the right balance can ensure you’ve optimized your site to find that balance.

When you’ve found the optimum price point you maintain your competitiveness and sales velocity while generating more cash on a per order basis. This extra cash can be fed into new marketing and customer acquisition programs, or new developments to improve the user experience.

• The ability to make pricing changes• A spreadsheet

Here’s how to hack your pricing and find the point of maximum profitability: • Choose the product you want to test (it’s best to pick a high velocity item) • Select your price range. 10% higher and 10% lower than your current price point is

a good place to start. Avoid going too extreme or you might wind up annoying your customers.

• Run the experiment. Give each price point several days and try to control for external factors (i.e., weekends, holidays)

• Find your point of maximum profitability. Dump all your data into a spreadsheet and find the price point bringing in the most revenue at the best profit margins.

Learn how Betty Bills did this.

A note of caution here—testing pricing on a per session basis or between different user attributes can get you in trouble. Orbitz was caught showing higher prices to visitors who used Mac computers to access their site, setting off a public relations nightmare.

Remember, the goal is to optimize your pricing to improve the ability of the business to grow, not to gouge a certain segment of your customers.

WHAT YOU NEED

HOW TO DO IT

The Point of Maximum Profitability

CONVERSION | 15

RESULT:

Reduce shopping cart abandonment

WHY TRY IT Cart abandonment is the bane of any ecommerce site. While you can (and certainly should) use abandonment emails to re-engage someone who leaves your site before checking out, why not try to save the purchase while they are still on the site? That’s the idea behind this exit survey hack.

Using an exit survey that’s triggered when someone starts to leave the website during the checkout process, you can ask the visitor what stopped them from completing their purchase. This gives you direct insight into future changes you should make to optimize the checkout process, while helping you in the moment to prevent lost sales.

• Qualaroo• Monetate• Bounce Exchange

When a visitor starts to abandon their shopping cart they’re shown a short exit survey. This is done through exit detection and the position of the user’s mouse on the screen.

As they go to leave, ask them what’s getting in their way of completing their purchase. Make the question multiple choice to increase the response rate. A customer may respond that they’re leaving because shipping costs are too high. That’s great feedback but also an opportunity to save the transaction right then and there.

Respond to their answer with a free shipping code to address the objection in real time. Objection overcome, visitor recaptured. Set business rules around who gets the offer and you can selectively save purchases for the right potential customers.

“There’s no reason you shouldn’t be trying to recover cart abandonment on your site.” says Kurt Elster, Creative Director at Ethercycle. “You’re establishing communication with the customer and asking them ‘Hey, why didn’t you buy this?’ You’ll quickly find that many customers reply and tell you what the barrier to their purchase is.”

WHAT YOU NEED

HOW TO DO IT

#10 The Exit Survey

CONVERSION | 16

Get an Extra Conversion, Free#11RESULT:

Boost engagement at the very first conversion

WHY TRY IT Optimizing for conversion is one thing, but did you know you can leverage the momentum from one conversion to drive another during the same visit? That’s the concept behind the post-conversion, conversion hack.

Oli Gardner of Unbounce champions the method of asking for a secondary conversion right after the first conversion takes place in order to maximize the current goodwill of your cus-tomer. Gardner says that this technique has driven huge gains in their email list size, and you can use it to get a two-for-one on your list building efforts as well.

“Please sir. I want some more.” Oliver Twist was ahead of his time with that request. And it’s a strategy that every marketer should learn from. When you’re doing lead gen, you have a precious opportunity to gain a second conversion on the form’s confirmation page. This is called a post-conversion conversion. To put it into context, on the confirmation page for Unbounce webinar registrations we ask people to subscribe to our blog newsletter. In one instance we had 2,500 webinar registrants, and 40% of them (1,100) subscribed to the blog. Simply because we asked for some more.”

— Oli Gardner, Co-founder of Unbounce

CONVERSION | 17

• Pop-up modal• Compelling offer

Consider asking website visitors to Like or Follow you on your social media channels such as Facebook or Twitter. You can do this via a site overlay or similar pop up. This is an easy, light touch conversion that gives you a chance to regularly engage site visitors and keep your brand top-of-mind.

To increase conversions of this action, try offering a coupon for free shipping or a similar perk. Once the visitor has clicked the ‘Like’ or ‘Follow’ button, display a thank you dialog that simply asks “Where should we send the coupon to?” You’ll find that you instantly build your social and email lists with the two-for-one post-conversion, conversion hack.

HOW TO DO IT

WHAT YOU NEED

CONVERSION | 18

RESULT:

Increase conversion rate

WHY TRY IT The foot-in-the-door-technique is a classic sales trick where you land a bigger commitment by first gaining buy-in for a much smaller commitment. The psychology behind this is that when a person makes a small commitment they align themselves with the cause or brand.

By getting your site visitors to provide their email address ahead of time, you use their motivation to shop as a powerful driver to build your email list. Once they’ve committed to getting emails, they’ve taken the first steps in establishing a relationship with you, making them more likely to buy now or in the future.

Plus, by capturing their email, you have the ability to bring them back to the site if they choose not to buy on their first visit.

• Pop-up modal

It’s simple. Instead of pushing first-time visitors to buy, shift your focus to getting the email address. This strategy has been adopted by many ecommerce companies including Zady and Frank & Oak.

Once you have this, you can use their inbox to move them toward purchase. You can combine this technique with an incentive and the post-conversion, conversion hack to make this effort really soar.

WHAT YOU NEED

HOW TO DO IT

#12 The Foot-in-the-Door Technique

CONVERSION | 19

RESULT:

Get more reviews

WHY TRY IT User reviews are critical to ecommerce success. This isn’t new information, but with more users viewing email on smartphones, are you losing out on getting those reviews for your products?

If you’re suffering from a lack of reviews, this could do the trick for your site. Even if your mobile traffic isn’t an overwhelming percentage, the truth is almost half of all email is opened on the go. If you’re soliciting reviews from customers via email, make it easy for them to provide a review from their phones.

• Review options other than straight text (i.e., stars, recommends, scale)• BazaarVoice• Mobile optimized email template

Based on their learning, BazaarVoice recommends the following to get more user generated review content on your site: keep review request emails relevant and brief, optimize feedback forms for mobile UX, and make giving feedback easy through one-click responses such as star ratings or simple thumbs up/thumbs down options.

BazaarVoice found that by optimizing their mobile product review experience for retailing client Buckle, they were able to increase review activity 146%.

WHAT YOU NEED

HOW TO DO IT

#13 Give Reviews the Mobile Makeover

CONVERSION | 20

RESULT:

Reduce shopping cart abandonment

WHY TRY IT Trying to guess at what’s causing cart abandonment can be an expensive and time consuming wild goose chase. There are two ways to figure out why people are leaving your site:

• Interpreting the data• Asking visitors directly

The former requires you and your team to pour over data for days, create hypotheses, debate what should be done, and take your best guess at running the next optimization test or improvement. The latter gets insights right from the people that are leaving, making it clear what the root issues are.

Hopefully its obvious that using the voice of the customer to determine what to test next and improve is the way to go. Rather than guess at what to test next you can find out what’s really getting in the way of people converting on your site.

• On-site survey or post-conversion email survey• Tools you can use: Qualaroo, SurveyMonkey

Instead of leaning on best practices or guessing at what the data is saying, identify issues by asking purchasers what almost caused them to abandon as well. Chances are the hurdle they were able to overcome is a sticking point for dozens of people who weren’t as motivated to get past it.

Simply ask purchasers “What almost stopped you from completing your purchase?” You can ask it on the order confirmation page via an on-site survey such as Qualaroo, or via a post-purchase email survey. Use an open response field so you don’t shoehorn people into confirming known issues. You want to hear about things that might not be on your radar.

For example, if you get a lot of people who say they almost gave up because they weren’t sure about your return policy, you can do a better job of making your return policy clearer during the checkout process to eliminate that hurdle and improve conversions.

WHAT YOU NEED

HOW TO DO IT

#14 Ask Purchasers What’s Stopping Non-Purchasers

CONVERSION | 21

RESULT:

Improve product page conversions

WHY TRY IT Landing on a page with rows and rows of delightful products can be a bit overwhelming. In fact, too many choices can lead to analysis paralysis, with the visitor leaving without buying anything. That’s where the power of social proof can be used to your advantage.

The theory of social proof says that in moments of uncertainty we’ll look to the behaviors of others to identify what the proper action is. That behavior pattern can be used to help visitors make decisions by highlighting standout choices through badging.

Badges that proclaim the top seller, highest rated, or latest arrival can increase purchases of that item significantly. Modcloth uses social proof with its “Be the Buyer” badges, which can increase sales of a particular item 2x those of non-badged items.

• Photoshop• Monetate• Badgeville

Brooks Brothers used small badges on product detail pages to increase conversions by 26% and revenue per visit by 34%. The badges indicated product attributes such as “Made in America” and “New Arrival.”

Peter Borden, Growth Hacker at Monetate, recommends using this tactic only when you have solid search functionality and strong recommendations, “People can’t purchase what they can’t find, so you need to get internal site search right first.” Learn how Brooks Brothers did this.

You’ll want to use badging sparingly and back up the reasons behind using the badge. Start small with things like best seller and highest rated and then branch out into other badge types to measure their impact on conversion.

WHAT YOU NEED

HOW TO DO IT

#15 Badging

CONVERSION | 22

RESULT:

Improve the conversion rate of your pages

WHY TRY IT You might know the most valuable pages on your site when it comes to driving conversions, but do you know the value of every square inch on those pages? Every ecommerce page has a relative value per square inch that’s based on where visitors look during their natural gaze patterns.

Using the “Battleship Grid” approach developed by Bryan Eisenberg, you can assess how your product pages’ designs map to these gaze patterns, and create value in the active window of the page. The active window is where users focus, ignoring navigation until they need it. The value of each section of your page is relative, not absolute, and you can use it to identify gaps in your design that could be hurting conversions.

• Photoshop• Your design team• Testing tools like Optimizely or Visual Website Optimizer

WHAT YOU NEED

#16 Calculate the Square Inch Value of Your Popular Pages

CONVERSION | 23

• Create a grid in a Photoshop file like the one pictured below. Review the grid with your team and put a dollar value on each square. This can be based off the average order value of one of your products or similar metric.

• Adjust the transparency of the grid and overlay it on your website’s most important pages.

• Review the page design in context of the value of each section of the page.• Determine if your most valuable page sections have your most valuable content and

offers. • If not, iterate on your page design to get more of what matters into the high value,

highly-visible areas of your website.• Test the new design against the old to see if you see improved results.

HOW TO DO IT

RETENTION | 24

Retention

The marketing adage “it’s cheaper to keep a customer than it is to acquire a new one” is what retention is all about. While important in all businesses, retention plays a special role in ecommerce because the longer you retain customers, the greater their lifetime value. With higher lifetime values you can invest more upfront in acquiring your customers, knowing that the expense will pay off in long-term profitability.

This increasing lifetime value kicks off a powerful engine of growth for your business. You are able to spend more than your competition in channels like search and affiliate marketing, as well as offer special buyer incentives that make it more likely that new people will shop with you over their other choices. This flywheel drives more new customers to your business, helping you grow.

But retention isn’t just about sending more emails. In the following hacks we’ll give you some new, fresh ways to stay in front of your customers and keep them coming back for more, including:

• Building loyalty through user generated content

• Using offline tactics to drive repeat visits

• Retargeting readers of your email, not just website visitors

• Reverse engineering your best customers

• Making the most out of your receipts

• Leveraging ‘golden moments’ to drive referrals

RETENTION | 25

RESULT:

Incrase long-term customer loyalty

WHY TRY IT Many ecommerce stores lose money or just barely break even on the costs of acquiring a new customer. They rely on repeat purchases to drive up customer lifetime value and deliver ROI in the longer term. Your competitors know this too, which is why everyone uses the same playbook of email marketing and re-engagement offers.

Take your retention efforts to the next level by making your customers the star of your site. User generated content is a great way to build long-term loyalty, fuel word of mouth, and add a dash of social proof and personal touch all at the same time.

Here’s how to instantly put user generated content to work for your retention program in a big way.

• Curalate• Filemobile• Offerpop

User generated contests are a great way to make your customer the star of the show. You can use something as simple as an Instagram hashtag or a tool mentioned above to help you manage a more robust program. This works best if you have products that people love to show off.

The execution of it is going to vary widely based on your business model and customer base, but anyone can take a page from the Modcloth playbook. Modcloth is well-known for the smashing success of its Be the Buyer program, and the Modcloth team is doing even more to make their customer the star of the show. Their latest program, Make the Cut, invites customers to submit their own design ideas. The winning design from the “Prints Charming” edition has already garnered close to 2,000 likes.

• Encourage your current customers to show off their new purchases with photos shared to Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.

• Give them a special hashtag to use with each photo so you can easily identify them through Twitter search or by monitoring social media for mentions of the hashtag.

WHAT YOU NEED

HOW TO DO IT

#17 Make Your Customer the Star

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• You can either use a tool like those listed to add these images to your site on the homepage, product pages, or other areas of your site, or you can handpick the ones to use and add them yourself.

• Promote new additions and encourage engagement by highlighting them in your emails to your customer base.

• Add a fun promotion such as a gift card giveaway for the most creative photos or make your favorite shot the “fan of the month”.

• Whatever you do—make your customer the star.

A few notes to consider before implementing a program like this:

• Don’t automatically post all mentions of a particular hashtag to your site. You may inadvertently post something that you wouldn’t want associated with your brand.

• Get creative and encourage people to show off their purchases.• Look for inspiration from leaders like Rent the Runway for more ways to incorporate user

generated content into your customer retention efforts.

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RESULT:

Increase average order value

WHY TRY IT Your customers are bombarded with ads and offers, both online and offline. If you want them to remember you, you have to actually be memorable. Don’t be afraid to be a little cheeky and show some attitude. Just be sure to keep it on brand.

This tactic is especially valuable if you get a large percentage of your revenue from first time purchasers arriving at your site through organic search. Ranking well in search is a big business benefit, but if you’re not memorable you can lose repeat purchases to the competitors lurking around you in the search results.

Use this hack to ensure that the next time your new customer needs to buy from you they’ll type your URL into the address bar and skip search altogether.

• A promotional item that supports your core brand message

Blue Soda Promo sells an array of the branded promotional items one typically picks up at conferences and tradeshows. The way they use it for their own brand, however, is a bit unusual. The marketing team uses branded merchandise to integrate online marketing efforts with direct mail.

One example was the “awesome” campaign. When a customer filled out an online inquiry form they received the “awesome” mug within a few days of requesting the quote. This relatively low-cost gesture boosted inquiry to customer conversion rates by 30%. But that’s not even the success they’re most excited about. “We sent out a ‘high five’ mug 90 days after a customer purchases,” says Matt Powers, marketer at Blue Soda Promo. “This campaign has improved Average Order Value for repeat customers by over 40%!”

You can be sure that the next time these coffee-drinking customers need promotional items they’re not turning to Google search for answers—they’re turning to Blue Soda Promo, which is exactly the idea.

WHAT YOU NEED

HOW TO DO IT

#18 Take it Offline

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RESULT:

Improve revenue from email marketing

WHY TRY IT Retargeting isn’t just for your website. You can retarget people who read your email but don’t come to your site very often. It’s a great strategy to stay in front of potential customers when they’re not regularly visiting your site.

This hack is particularly powerful if you have a long lag between repeat purchases or a large portion of your email list has gone dormant. By placing a retargeting pixel in your HTML email you are able to target your site and promotional offers to readers of the email around the web.

• Retargeting provider like Perfect Audience or AdRoll• A retargeting pixel for your HTML email• Established HTML email list and campaign

Simply place the retargeting pixel in your HTML email. If the user opens the email, the retargeting pixel will be triggered, allowing you to serve ads around the web that are targeted specifically to the readers of your various email streams.

Try it as a way to re-engage dormant customers and subscribers. Create a special offer for inactive shoppers that you deliver via email with a unique retargeting pixel included. Then create a matching retargeting campaign with ads that reinforce the offer and a call-to-action to come back and shop again.

Online retailer BustedTees used this technique and drove a 390% ROI by re-engaging dormant customers with a new offer through email and retargeting.

WHAT YOU NEED

HOW TO DO IT

#19 Don’t Leave Retargeting Just to Your Website

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RESULT:

Get more high value customers

WHY TRY IT In a typical ecommerce store, the top 1% of customers spends 30x more than the average customer. That’s a massive difference and represents an enormous amount of value that can be captured by migrating a good customer to a great customer. By understanding what makes your best customers different from other customers, you can design programs, promotions and communication plans to turn more everyday customers into the top 1%.

• Customer order data

First, calculate the total revenue that a given customer has spent to identify the top 1% of your customers. Second, do some analysis to find out what makes the difference between a great customer and a good customer. Look at things like:• What products do your best customers purchase?• Where do your best customers live?• How frequently do your best customers purchase from you?

If you can’t find the answer through quantitative data, pick up the phone. Offer a free gift card in exchange for their time and find out why your top customers love you.

Once you have identified the difference between a great customer and a good customer, it’s time to work backwards. Use what you have learned to create an experience for the good customers that more closely mirrors the experience of the great customers—whether it’s encouraging them to buy a product that engenders loyalty, or adjusting the frequency of your email outreach

WHAT YOU NEED

HOW TO DO IT

#20 Reverse Engineering Your Best Customers

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RESULT:

Increase customer retention

WHY TRY IT One of the biggest missed opportunities for online retailers is the receipt. You send thousands each year, but have you ever considered it a new opportunity for connecting with your customers and driving follow up action? Square co-founder, Jack Dorsey, certainly thinks so. Speaking at the National Retail Federation Expo, Dorsey said:

“What if we see the receipt more as a publishing medium—a product unto itself that people actually want to take home, that they want to engage with, be fully interactive with? What can we do with this everyday tool? What can we build into this canvas that’s actually valuable, that’s independent of the product you just sold? What can you give in this communication channel, this publishing medium, that people want to engage with?”

It may seem like a little thing, but optimizing your receipts can drive repeat purchases, customer referrals, brand loyalty, and overall satisfaction.

• A clean email template• A bit of imagination

Take a tip from Uber, and make the most out of this pedestrian, yet essential customer touch point. Include items such as a call-to-action to refer their friends, provide a follow up coupon code, or use it to show off a bit of your personality and build brand loyalty. Whatever you choose to do, remember that your receipts are a powerful touchpoint with your customers. Make the most of them.

WHAT YOU NEED

HOW TO DO IT

#21 Turn Receipts into Growth Opportunities

Finding new ways to grow an ecommerce company isn’t easy. Your potential customers have more options than ever, making it absolutely critical that you differentiate yourself in the competitive landscape. Today, a new generation of companies are finding ways to stand out by taking a hard look at their data and using it to drive decisions and tactics. Your data is the key to understanding the best ways to connect, engage and find the right customers for your business.

Our goal is to help you know your customers well and empower you to develop unique strategies to turn that knowledge into growth. These are the keys to creating a stand-out brand and lasting business value. We hope these growth hacks give you the inspiration to take your current marketing efforts to ‘11’ and grow your business faster than ever.

The Takeaways

Qualaroo is an on-site survey tool that uncovers insights that lead to smarter tests and faster improvements in your website’s ability to deliver on key business objectives.

RJMetrics helps online companies make smarter decisions with their data. With RJMetrics business intelligence software, any company can become data-driven.

qualaroo.com/ecommerce

@Qualaroo

rjmetrics.com

@RJMetrics

Robert J. Moore

CEO, RJMetrics