Short- and Long-Term Strategies for Boosting E-commerce Revenue

A lot of effort goes into running an e-commerce store, with the overarching goal of creating revenue. After all, the amount of income your online store generates has arguably the largest impact on its bottom line.

Employing a healthy mix of short- and long-term strategies for boosting ecommerce revenue will help you improve profit margins in a sustainable manner. That is, you'll be doing what you can now to make more money while also playing the long game to increase the chance of continued success in the future. Here are a few strategies to consider.

Improve Customer Targeting

Trying to sell your products to the wrong group of people is "barking up the wrong tree." This is especially true when you're evaluating the performance of paid ad campaigns. Spending money to show ads to people who have little interest in your products will decimate your marketing budget for no gain.

Better targeting means an increased chance of earning sales, end of story. To take advantage of all the advanced targeting options available in ecommerce marketing today, you must understand your ideal customers inside and out. Who are they? What do they want? What problems can your products solve for them?

Honing your target audience now pays off when your marketing efforts attract people most likely to make purchases.

Increase Average Order Value (AOV)

Now let's say you've increased the percentage of people on your website who convert. Another way to boost revenue is to increase your website's average order value (AOV). This means persuading people already buying something to buy more-adding more to their shopping carts before checking out.

Upselling and cross-selling are two popular methods for ramping up AOV. Upselling entails trying to get customers to purchase either a more expensive model within the same family or to add additional features for a price. Cross-selling, on the other hand, encourages people to add complementary products to their original purchase.

Let's look at the difference between upselling and cross-selling in action. You sell cosmetics from home through Shopify. You want to increase your makeup store's AOV so each purchase generates more revenue.

If a customer adds a certain eyeshadow palette with eight colors to their cart, you could suggest they upgrade to a palette in the same family with 12 or 16 colors.

Another customer adds mascara to their cart. Your site could automatically suggest they bundle this product with an eyebrow tint-a complementary product from a different family.

The former is upselling; the latter cross-selling. When used in moderation, both have proven effective to get people to spend more per purchase, thus boosting your AOV.

Create Valuable, Varied Content

Content marketing is effective in driving short-term sales and fostering long-term relationships with consumers, making it an effective tool for uplifting revenue.

Going back to our cosmetics store example, a blog post about what kind of deals people can score during your limited-time makeup sale can drive traffic to your website now. A long-form how-to guide to applying different kinds of skin makeup-primer, foundation, concealer, BB cream-will provide more lasting value. Plus, curious online users will find it while searching for answers.

Aim some of your content at generating sales and the rest at providing your target audience genuine value.

Build Lasting Brand Loyalty

Working on your overall brand is a strategy for the long term. This is where you look at customer relationships as more than sales. An example in this arena is optimizing your unboxing experience, making it utterly memorable and unique for buyers.

The right combination of short- and long-term strategies will help your store boost its e-commerce revenue sustainably over time.