22 Ecommerce

Growth Hacks

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ACQUISITION | 1

TABLE OF CONTENTS
ACQUISITION

1.

Supercharge Your Audience Targeting

Result: Get more from your Facebook advertising

2. SEO Hack
Result: Improve your search ranking

3. Mass Follow with a Touch of Customization

Result: Find potential customers on Twitter

4. The Offline Niche

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

5. Create Content That Gets Shared

Result: Improve your content virality

6. Tap Peak Customer Satisfaction Moments for Referrals

Result: Get more social referrals

7.

Data Journalism
Result: Create highly shareable content

CONVERSION

8. Super-Simple Personalization
Result: Improve the customer experience

9. The Point of Maximum Profitability

Result: Improve profit margins

10. The Exit Survey

Result: Reduce shopping cart abandonment

11.

Get an Extra Conversion, Free

Result: Boost engagement at the very first conversion

12. The Foot-in-the-Door Technique

Result: Increase conversion rate

13. Give Reviews the Mobile Makeover

Result: Get more reviews

14. Ask Purchasers Whats Stopping Non-Purchasers

Result: Reduce shopping cart abandonment

15. Badging
Result: Improve product page conversions

16. Calculate the Square Inch Value of Your Popular Pages

Result: Improve the conversion rate of your pages

RETENTION

17. Make Your Customer the Star

Result: Increase long-term customer loyalty

18. Take it Offline

Result: Increase average order value

19. Dont Leave Retargeting Just to Your Website

Result: Improve revenue from email marketing

20. Reverse Engineering Your Best Customers

Result: Get more high value customers

21.

Turn Receipts into Growth Opportunities

Result: Increase customer retention

Whats Growth Hacking?

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 roleone that focused solely on
the growth of the company over everything else.
Sean Ellis
CEO, Qualaroo
Founder, GrowthHackers.com

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 leverinstead of traditional
marketing campaigns.
Fast forward to today and there is a lot of conversation about growth hacking, what it is
and isnt, and whether its 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 weve identified some of the newer and more promising growth
opportunities for ecommerce companies. Weve 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 doesnt have. This requires a deep understanding of
your customers which comes from your data and experiments that you run. Growth
hackers dont guess, they make hypotheses based on data and then experiment to prove
those hypotheses right or wrong. Its 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.

Acquisition
At the very top of the funnel are your new user acquisition efforts.
Customer acquisition can be expensive, especially when youre 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,
weve put together six hacks that you can use to take your acquisition
efforts to the next levelall 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

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Supercharge Your Audience

Targeting
RESULT:

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 thats the
problem. Using Facebooks 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.

WHAT YOU NEED

HOW TO DO IT

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 whove 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 youll
want to include Reebok and Crossfit products.
5. Create ads that showcase your Crossfit and Reebok products to those users across
the sites theyre visiting.
6. Retarget those specific visitors. Heres 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, youve built a highly targeted and
highly profitable ad campaign across a wide range of sites.
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SEO Hack
RESULT:

Improve your search ranking

WHY TRY IT

Content marketing is hard. Lets face it, writing blog post after blog post feels futile when
youre 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 arent 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.

WHAT YOU NEED

HOW TO DO IT

An incentive program for current shoppers that gets them sharing

Tools that can help you: Curebit, SocialRebates, Social Annex
A keyword that youre trying to optimize for

Coupons are effective at driving conversions, theyre 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 onlineget 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 theres an unintended consequence that comes from all this social chattersearch rank.
Were 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.

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Mass Follow with a Touch of

Customization
RESULT:

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 youre 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.

WHAT YOU NEED

Tweepi
Twitter search
Zapier or IFTTT
FunnelFeed.io

ACQUISITION | 5

HOW TO DO IT

Tweepi makes it incredibly easy to find potential customers based on who theyre following
or what theyre tweeting about. Lets 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 youre speaking their language. Send a tweet from your account
using the same hashtag or keyword that youre searching on. When they see theyve got a
new follower, theyll 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 theres 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 dont have to
constantly be searching, youll get notified whenever someone is looking.
One thing to keep in mind, Twitter has rules around how fast you follow people.

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The Offline Niche

RESULT:

Find the ideal spot for a pop-up shop

WHY TRY IT

WHAT YOU NEED

HOW TO DO 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 youre 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 youre 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 youre 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.

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Create Content That Gets Shared

RESULT:

Improve your content virality

WHY TRY IT

Coming up with killer content ideas is hard. Good thing is, you dont always have to.
Sometimes all it takes is finding content thats 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 whats out on the web today to drive the traffic
to your front door.

WHAT YOU NEED

HOW TO DO IT

A list of keywords or topic ideas

BuzzSumo
BuzzStream

Lets say youre 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?
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Thats the key to the skyscraper method. Once youve created the new content, reach
out to those sites that already shared similar content and alert them to the new and improved information. Theyre 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 youre selling espresso machines, a quick BuzzSumo search will help you find the best
espresso machine buying guide out there.

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Tap Peak Customer Satisfaction

Moments for Referrals
RESULT:

Get more social referrals

WHY TRY IT

WHAT YOU NEED

HOW TO DO 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

Lets 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. Its a smart way to create conversation
and awareness around the purchase process, and fits perfectly with the potential customers
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.

ACQUISITION | 10

Data Journalism
RESULT:

Create highly shareable content

WHY TRY IT

If you conduct your business online, youve got datalots 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.

WHAT YOU NEED

HOW TO DO IT

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

Heres 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.

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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 were 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 whats stopping non-purchasers
Finding the golden motion
Badging
Calculate the square inch of your popular pages

CONVERSION | 12

Super-Simple Personalization
RESULT:

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.

WHAT YOU NEED

HOW TO DO IT

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 theyre 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.

CONVERSION | 13

The Point of Maximum Profitability

RESULT:

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 youll lose customers, but charge too little and youre missing out on
pure profit. Striking just the right balance can ensure youve optimized your site to find that
balance.
When youve 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.

WHAT YOU NEED

HOW TO DO IT

The ability to make pricing changes

A spreadsheet

Heres how to hack your pricing and find the point of maximum profitability:
Choose the product you want to test (its 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 heretesting 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.

CONVERSION | 14

10

The Exit Survey

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? Thats the idea behind this exit
survey hack.
Using an exit survey thats 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.

WHAT YOU NEED

HOW TO DO IT

Qualaroo
Monetate
Bounce Exchange

When a visitor starts to abandon their shopping cart theyre shown a short exit survey. This is
done through exit detection and the position of the users mouse on the screen.
As they go to leave, ask them whats getting in their way of completing their purchase.
Make the question multiple choice to increase the response rate. A customer may respond
that theyre leaving because shipping costs are too high. Thats 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.
Theres no reason you shouldnt be trying to recover cart abandonment on your site. says
Kurt Elster, Creative Director at Ethercycle. Youre establishing communication with the
customer and asking them Hey, why didnt you buy this? Youll quickly find that many
customers reply and tell you what the barrier to their purchase is.

CONVERSION | 15

11

Get an Extra Conversion, Free

RESULT:

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? Thats 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 customer. 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
its a strategy that every marketer should learn from. When youre doing lead gen, you have
a precious opportunity to gain a second conversion on the forms 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 | 16

WHAT YOU NEED

HOW TO DO IT

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? Youll find that you instantly build your
social and email lists with the two-for-one post-conversion, conversion hack.

CONVERSION | 17

12

The Foot-in-the-Door Technique

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 theyve committed to
getting emails, theyve 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.

WHAT YOU NEED

HOW TO DO IT

Pop-up modal

Its simple. Instead of pushing firsttime 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.

CONVERSION | 18

13

Give Reviews the Mobile Makeover

RESULT:

Get more reviews

WHY TRY IT

User reviews are critical to ecommerce success. This isnt new information, but with more
users viewing email on smartphones, are you losing out on getting those reviews for your
products?
If youre suffering from a lack of reviews, this could do the trick for your site. Even if your
mobile traffic isnt an overwhelming percentage, the truth is almost half of all email is opened
on the go. If youre soliciting reviews from customers via email, make it easy for them to
provide a review from their phones.

WHAT YOU NEED

HOW TO DO IT

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%.

CONVERSION | 19

14

Ask Purchasers Whats Stopping

Non-Purchasers
RESULT:

Reduce shopping cart abandonment

WHY TRY IT

Trying to guess at whats 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 whats really
getting in the way of people converting on your site.

WHAT YOU NEED

HOW TO DO IT

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 werent 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 dont 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 werent 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.

CONVERSION | 20

15

Badging
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. Thats where the power of social proof can be used to your advantage.
The theory of social proof says that in moments of uncertainty well 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.

WHAT YOU NEED

HOW TO DO IT

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 cant purchase
what they cant find, so you need to get
internal site search right first. Learn how
Brooks Brothers did this.
Youll 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.
CONVERSION | 21

16

Calculate the Square Inch Value

of Your Popular Pages
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 thats 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.

WHAT YOU NEED

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

CONVERSION | 22

HOW TO DO IT

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 websites 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.

CONVERSION | 23

Retention
The marketing adage its 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 isnt just about sending more emails. In the following
hacks well 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 | 24

17

Make Your Customer the Star

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

WHAT YOU NEED

HOW TO DO IT

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.

RETENTION | 25

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 domake your customer the star.

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

Dont automatically post all mentions of a particular hashtag to your site. You may
inadvertently post something that you wouldnt 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.

RETENTION | 26

18

Take it Offline
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. Dont 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 youre 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 theyll
type your URL into the address bar and skip search altogether.

WHAT YOU NEED

HOW TO DO IT

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 thats not even the
success theyre 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 theyre not turning to
Google search for answerstheyre turning to Blue Soda
Promo, which is exactly the idea.

RETENTION | 27

19

Dont Leave Retargeting Just to

Your Website
RESULT:

Improve revenue from email marketing

WHY TRY IT

Retargeting isnt just for your website. You can retarget people who read your email but dont
come to your site very often. Its a great strategy to stay in front of potential customers when
theyre 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.

WHAT YOU NEED

HOW TO DO IT

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.

RETENTION | 28

20

Reverse Engineering Your Best

Customers
RESULT:

Get more high value customers

WHY TRY IT

WHAT YOU NEED

HOW TO DO IT

In a typical ecommerce store, the top 1% of customers spends 30x more than the average
customer. Thats 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 cant 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, its
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 customerswhether its
encouraging them to buy a product that engenders loyalty, or adjusting the frequency of your
email outreach

RETENTION | 29

21

Turn Receipts into Growth

Opportunities
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 mediuma 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
thats actually valuable, thats 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.

WHAT YOU NEED

HOW TO DO IT

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.

RETENTION | 30

The Takeaways

Robert J. Moore

Finding new ways to grow an ecommerce company isnt 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.

CEO, RJMetrics

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.

Qualaroo is an on-site survey tool that

uncovers insights that lead to smarter tests
and faster improvements in your websites
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

rjmetrics.com

@Qualaroo

@RJMetrics