The 4 Levers of Ecommerce growth

When online sales aren't where they should be, the first instinct is often to spend more on ads to drive more people to the site. Sometimes that's the right call, but it's only one of four places the growth can come from, & it's usually the most expensive one.

Every ecommerce business runs on the same 4 values: how many people visit, how many of them buy, how much they spend when they do & how often they come back. Over the past 20+ years, I’ve used these 4 levers to help grow multiple online brands, most recently DTC, B2B & B2B2C craft, garden & homeware businesses. No matter what the industry, these 4 levers are a great basis to identify where to focus your precious time.

‘More Buyers’ is the obvious one - bring more of the right people to the site, through SEO, paid ads, social & anything else that brings in traffic.

‘Buy Now’ focusses on converting more of the visitors you already have. At a very basic level this is about improving product pages, having clear delivery information, offers & a checkout that doesn't get in the way.

‘Buy More"‘ considers the size of the basket & improving average order values, through bundling, upsells & merchandising that makes ‘spending more’ easy.

‘Buy Again’ is about bringing hard-earned customers back, with email, loyalty & value-added content.

The benefit of splitting growth this way is that the levers compound, so 10% on each lever is worth more than 40% in total (closer to 46%). Small, steady improvements across all four will often do more than one big push on traffic.

They also cost very different amounts to pull, a 10% conversion lift & a 10% traffic lift are worth the same but rarely cost the same to achieve. One place to start is to pull those four numbers (sessions, conversion rate, average order value & repeat purchase rate) for the last couple of years & see which one has moved least, that's usually the lever with the most opportunity.

Clients of mine have access to a Sales Lift Calculator that gives you an idea of how much more revenue you could be generating by adding different incremental uplifts to each lever. Its part of a suite of tools I’ve built to help founders better understand their online channel and the steps to take to grow.

If you'd like a hand working out which levers to pull & what's realistic for your business, or you’d like to get your hands on that nifty Sales Calculator, get in touch.