One of the questions most people ask us is “How to increase revenue in eCommerce fast?” Of course, we always tell people that the easiest way is to hire our professional services. After all, we have a business to run and we don’t need our customers to go do things themselves. However, we felt this time we wanted to reveal some of our secrets for those who feel they can’t afford hiring a top eCommerce SEO agency.

Believe us, you can’t afford NOT having eCommerce experts by your side, but that does not mean there aren´t actions you can take to get you on the right track.

The point of this piece is to give you some ideas on where to look if you feel your website is lagging behind.

And more importantly:

To let you know how we managed to make one of our most recent clients grow their business by a whooping 60% in only 2 months.

But first, a few details on their background. This particular client is a B2C apparel store that sells customizable clothing pieces for young-adult audiences located in the U.S. They were having problems with click-through rates and retargeting, and showed a very low 0.45% conversion rate when we audited them last March.

Right off the bat, we detected a few factors their developers overlooked. These seemingly small factors were causing huge bounce rates and massive shopping cart drops. To be fair, most people who start in the eCommerce world tend to overlook these details as they just want to start selling their products right away. So they are extremely common problems and we see a lot of merchants make them inadvertently. However, they can drive a business into a ditch if they´re not taken care of quickly.

We also found that their website had conflicting functionalities. For example, they used the Facebook Ads retargeting app Pixels. However, there were two instances of Pixels running in the background: one for prospecting ads, and the other was solely set for retargeting. As you can imagine, the retargeting campaign was going nowhere. It is always important to check that your plugins are installed correctly and pointing to the right places.

Fortunately, our eCommerce wizards took care of all the technical SEO aspects of the website in no time, all while improving loading times and mobile responsiveness for good measure. Google likes speed and that websites feel great on mobile devices, so this step is important for rankings.

Next, we saw that very few people spent more than 10 seconds browsing their website. While there was nothing wrong with the overall design, it just didn’t stand out from the other hundred million competing websites. They had a cookie cutter product catalog that wasn´t intuitive enough for people who are used to how social media works today.

To solve this, our creatives designed a small yet clever strategy. They helped our client create a few 10-15 seconds videos showcasing their best selling products, but only giving the audience one option for conversion, making sure they didn’t stray on their way to the checkout. These videos were to be used on every social media channel for a uniform multi-channel campaign.

Then, the writing team crafted several alternatives for ad and social media copy, and we A/B tested a wide combination of calls to action and short videos until we got decent CTRs. Then pumped up the budget focusing on the strongest ads.

Additionally, we widened the scope of what was considered conversions, by offering free samples if they joined our mailing list. Of course, this increased conversion rates without necessarily increasing revenue, but here´s the kick: this made their email marketing campaign open and click-through rates explode.

Last, but not least, we took care of general UX. The website had abysmal cart abandonment rates. From “Add to Cart” to “Checkout”, they experienced an average of 76% drop. Our eCommerce UX pros found out that there were many things that were bloat on the purchase journey. So, we cut the whole journey by 50%, by merging some steps and completely eliminating redundant clicks. As expected, conversion rates went from 0.45% to almost 2% in less than 2 months, and we got to see our clients openly smile for the first time in our last meeting.

Our current goal is to take that to a solid 4%, so there is still a lot to do for us. But we wanted to share their story with the world and give you all some hints on how to increase revenue in eCommerce, even if you´re not expert devs or designers.

How about you? Tell us about your own experience as an SEO or eCommerce owner, leaving a comment below. We´re sure you all have crazy stories to share.