Build a successful plan for online growth

Having a plan to grow your eCommerce business is crucial. Without a plan for customer acquisition, conversion, engagement, and retention, it’s unlikely that your business will succeed.

On this course, you’ll look at how to put together an effective plan that addresses all of these areas. You’ll set your desired business outcomes and answer the fundamental question of how to make money with your eCommerce store.

Optimise your product pages for SEO

Part of the customer journey is finding the products the customer wants to buy. This course will help you make this whole experience as easy and seamless as possible so that you can design an experience that always leads customers to your desired business outcome.

You’ll assess the customer journey and the sequence of interactions they go through when visiting a site. Then, to improve the discovery of your products, you’ll learn how to create a product page that supports successful searches, both on your site and search engines.

Learn how to effectively boost customer acquisition

Effective customer acquisition is about understanding paid, earned, and owned media and channels.

The course will show you how to drive traffic to your site using these channels and where you should spend your time and money. You’ll evaluate the suitability of different media and look at how you can utilise social channels for eCommerce.

Increase your conversion rates and customer lifetime value

Conversion rate optimisation (CRO) is the process of increasing the number of website visitors you convert into customers. By exploring how best to increase the CRO percentage, you’ll better understand conversion rates in eCommerce and increase your chance of success.

Syllabus

Week 1
Growing your eCommerce store
- Welcome to the course
  Creating great, engaging marketing programmes are the key to increasing traffic to your eCommerce site, turning visitors into customers and growing your revenue and profits.
- Introducing the 4Cs
  The 4Cs of eCommerce capture everything we need to do to drive traffic to our eCommerce store and convert site visitors into paying customers. This week we are going to learn all the tools and techniques to acquire customers.
- Choosing customer acquisition tactics
  How do we actually get paying customers visiting our eCommerce store? In this section we talk about the tactics you can use to drive the right shoppers to your eCommerce store.
- What are the best customer acquisition tactics?
  Customer acquisition is about driving traffic and getting new customers. But which is the best approach for your eCommerce store? This is the definitive guide.
- Weekly wrap up
  'Build it and they will come' are not words that any eCommerce business owner should ever believe. We have to put systems and strategies in place to acquire, convert, engage and retain customers.
Week 2
Channels: driving growth by adding new sales channels
- Welcome to Week 2
  This week is about adding new sales channels. We are going to be talking about Google Shopping, social media platforms, and even messaging apps. Channels not only drive potential shoppers to your site, but also create sales.
- Grow your eCommerce store using multiple channels
  Many eCommerce stores sell on multiple channels to reach more customers. It is a recommended strategy. But how do you choose and work with these channels to grow your store?
- Social media as a sales channel
  Social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, Snapchat and Pinterest can be sales channels for eCommerce brands - in fact, they are among the most powerful customer acquisition channel of all.
- Google Shopping as a sales channel
  Google Shopping ads are the picture-driven product ads that appear in Google search results. Shopping ads are also visible on the Google Shopping tab, on search partner websites, in the price comparison shopping service and apps.
- Messaging apps as a sales and customer service channel
  Messaging apps like WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger are in the palm of our hands on our smartphones. This makes messaging highly promising channels for our eCommerce store to use for sales and customer support.
- Weekly wrap up
  Different sales channels such as marketplaces, social media, Google Shopping and messaging apps can allow us to reach many more customers than we could imagine. They are also always changing - which gives us even more opportunity.
Week 3
Turn visitors into paying customers
- Welcome to Week 3
  Just because we get shoppers to your eCommerce store does not automatically mean that they will buy from your store. We need to work hard to 'convert' this traffic into paying customers - and that's what this week is all about.
- The importance of a great customer journey
  Every eCommerce store must think through the path and sequence of interactions customers go through when visiting their store. Creating a consistent customer experience right through the journey is a challenge.
- Conversion rate optimisation: turning visitors into customers
  A beautifully designed eCommerce store that does not sell is no use. We must always be focused on converting our website traffic into customers - and cold hard cash.
- Improving conversion rates
  CRO is about incremental gains. Small tweaks can make a big difference - but there is no silver bullet. Taking a methodical step-by-step approach is required.
- Addressing shopping cart abandonment
  Consider why shoppers abandon their purchase at the last minute on the shopping cart page. The fastest way to grow your revenue is to address cart abandonment and improve the checkout experience.
- Course wrap up
  Course 3 has been about customers: how to acquire them, what channels to use and the customer journey they take when they arrive on our website. We also looked at conversion - what we can do to convert those visitors into cash.

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Learning on this course

On every step of the course you can meet other learners, share your ideas and join in with active discussions in the comments.

What will you achieve?

By the end of the course, you‘ll be able to...

Apply the 4Cs of eCommerce: the discrete processes that underpin every aspect of an eCommerce business
Compare customer acquisition tactics
Produce a customer email database
Experiment to grow your eCommerce store using multiple channels
Explore what is a great customer journey
Explain how to turn visitors into customers
Improve shopping cart abandonment

Who is the course for?

This course has been designed for anyone responsible for eCommerce in their organisation. If you’re new to the role, this is a great course to develop your expertise.

It’s also a good opportunity to upgrade your skills if you’re a small business owner looking to develop the eCommerce channel in your business.

Who developed the course?

Colin Lewis

Multi-award-winning author, speaker, investor and eCommerce expert, Colin has over 25 years of hands-on international marketing experience. An adviser and active investor in eCommerce, Colin ran his first eCommerce site in 2006 and been teaching eCommerce since 2011.

About this ExpertTrack

Whether you’re starting up or scaling up, discover the strategies, tactics, tools, and platforms to grow your eCommerce business.

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