Shopify offers a dynamic and continually evolving e-commerce platform that is excellently suited for businesses seeking growth and those already experiencing rapid expansion. Shopify advances quickly, consistently offering new opportunities for developing e-commerce sales. However, competition is fierce, so increasing sales requires dedicated effort. A carefully planned data-driven growth strategy is immensely helpful in enabling ongoing business expansion. 

Growth in a Shopify store can be achieved in three ways: acquiring new customers, increasing the average order value, or generating more revenue per customer.
Sounds simple? To truly achieve growth, you need to delve deeper and clearly identify what you wish to sell and to whom.

Patterns of purchasing behaviour reveal motivations for buying

Planning the growth marketing for your e-commerce begins by understanding how your products or services and the online store itself align with various models of buying behaviour.

There are numerous models, but I'll use Shopify’s own model of six buyer types as an example:

1. The Innovator (Innovaattori): This buyer type is driven by the need to adopt the latest products or technologies first.

2. The Perfectionist (Perfektionisti): This buyer type is motivated by high quality, and they are also willing to pay to get the best product or service.

3. The Value Shopper (Arvon ostaja): This shopper always seeks the best deal and value for money, willing to spend time comparing prices, products, and services to find the most advantageous price. 

4. The Impulsive Buyer (Impulsiivinen ostaja): This buyer type tends to make spontaneous decisions, often guided by emotions, and rarely spends time comparing products or prices.

5. The Bargain Hunter (Tarjoushaukka): Motivated by discounts and promotions, these deal hunters do whatever it takes to find the best offer.

6. The Loyalist (Merkkiuskollinen): These customers are deeply committed to a particular brand, remaining loyal even if a competitor offers a lower price or better deal.
   
   
   

If this specific model does not suit your e-commerce site, you can utilise another buying behaviour model that better fits your product or service. The purpose of modelling buying behaviour is to gain an understanding of how customers approach purchasing decisions and how they behave during the buying process.

Once you understand your own buyer types, you can monitor and measure their behaviour and conduct essential A/B testing for growth marketing. Shopify provides a comprehensive guide to A/B testing.

Buyer types are intriguing, and you might immediately recognise which category you belong to. However, based solely on these categories, it is still very difficult, if not impossible, to conduct more precise segmentation of different e-commerce visitors. Therefore, you need to dive deeper. 

Buyer personas represent the target audience of the online store

A more sophisticated approach to e-commerce growth than buying behaviour models is defining its buyer personas. There are various models for this work as well, and Shopify offers its own.

The core idea is that a buyer persona is a detailed description of a person who represents the target audience of an online store. This persona is fictional but based on in-depth research of the existing or desired audience. The better you know who you are selling to in your online store, the more impactful and effective growth marketing can be.

The internet is already quite a “noisy” place, and marketing there is no longer about who makes the loudest noise – although sometimes that can be beneficial. Nowadays, it's more about who reaches the right people, at the right time, in the right place, with the right message. That is, the focus is on a very classic marketing principle. Howard Luck Gossage succinctly expressed this back in the 1960s.

"Nobody reads advertising. People read what interests them; and sometimes it's an ad."

 

This classic quote from the Mad Men era still holds true, even after decades and changes in the media landscape. A common trap in e-commerce marketing is trying to be everywhere and spreading resources across all channels. 

When your knowledge of buyer personas includes where they spend their time, it's easier to determine which channels to focus on – and, importantly, which channels to avoid. 

Once it’s clear who and where you are communicating to, creativity in marketing and communication is the next requirement. Luckily, defining buyer personas also provides a wealth of invaluable information for developing creative solutions that can influence the desired target group.  

But what is the best way to find the right marketing and communication angle? One that can best influence different buyer personas or one that integrates the brand, products, services, and e-commerce into their consumption habits.

Analytics helps in understanding customer behaviour

E-commerce analytics is the process of collecting data from as many aspects affecting the e-commerce platform as possible. This information is then used to understand trends and consumer behaviour. By utilising and understanding data, you can make informed decisions in e-commerce that increase sales.

E-commerce analytics should be viewed holistically and include metrics from all different stages of the customer journey: awareness, consideration, activation, customer retention, buying event, and post-purchase (advocacy).

There are three basic components in the development of e-commerce analytics: channels, customer experience, and products. Collecting and analysing data from these three components and from the customer journey is the primary core skill needed to develop a successful e-commerce platform.

• Channels are external sources that drive traffic to the site. These channels can include social media, search engines, or emails. Each channel has its own complexities and metrics.

• Customer experience is the user's entire experience on the e-commerce site. The aim of monitoring the customer experience is to continuously improve website performance and usability.

• Product can be a service, subscription, reservation, or a tangible item that a user can purchase from the site. By monitoring products, you enhance e-commerce operations. Practically, this could mean optimising product pages or making buying easier, for example, by improving product descriptions.

• Customer journey includes the following stages: awareness, consideration, activation, customer retention, buying event, and post-purchase (advocacy).
  
  
  

Shopify provides a very comprehensive set of analytics and reporting capabilities for free. Therefore, the challenge is not what can be done with Shopify's analytics, whether the data can be enriched with any add-ons, or how to combine data from different channels. Instead, the breadth of Shopify’s offering and the resulting abundance often pose a headache for e-commerce professionals.

The selection of suitable add-ons and exploring all the possibilities Shopify offers takes time away from actual e-commerce development. On the other hand, nearly everything is possible, and the necessary analytics components are already in place, making the challenge lie in constructing the analytics and planning truly useful reporting. Here, data analysts from Crasman can be of significant assistance. 

Insight is a means to observe the effectiveness of marketing

Achieving insight (Insight) involves a process of collecting data, evidence, and observations from various sources, considering contexts, and examining contradictions. Insight research allows an e-commerce professional to form evidence-based views on the effectiveness of digital marketing. 

Insight should always be based on researched information and data rather than mere intuition or the so-called merchant’s “gut feeling” (not to undermine them in the least).

Sources of insight include, among others:

• Customer databases. These can provide information such as purchase history and the value of those transactions, as well as insights into customer service and the most common challenges customers face related to the e-commerce platform.

• Internal data. Departments or functions within the e-commerce setup can supply important puzzle pieces regarding, for instance, employee experiences, operational constraints, financial impacts, or even made complaints.

• Market information. All e-commerce platforms benefit from an external perspective on issues such as the volume and value of markets, the company's share in those markets, as well as broader future trends (such as consumer, economic, societal, or technological trends).

• Consumer research. This forms the backbone of Insight work for many online stores. Research can be conducted in quantitative, qualitative, ethnographic, or semiotic forms. Regardless, every e-commerce store must engage with its customers to understand why they do what they do and under what circumstances they might behave differently.

• Foresight (also known as Strategic Foresight). This refers to developing new and deep future insights based on global trends and events. This work also considers the different underlying forces that drive these trends and events. Utilizing such future studies allows e-commerce stores to create a credible picture and scenarios about how different future perspectives might impact their business.
  
  
  

Once buyer personas have been created, their purchasing behaviour has been clarified, and a clear insight into how to communicate with different buyer personas has been constructed, marketing can be set as the engine for e-commerce growth.

Growth marketing accelerates the growth of your online business

Growth marketing is a collaborative model, the basic function of which is to identify the problems and barriers to sales and marketing of the e-commerce that hinder business growth. Following this, growth marketing analyses the causes of these problems, upon which measures are planned and executed to solve them. 

At Crasman, the growth marketing team for e-commerce is a data-driven multidisciplinary team committed to advancing the growth of your online business. We consider marketing holistically throughout the customer journey. It's this holistic approach to marketing that sets growth marketing apart from what is known as traditional marketing.

Effective, planned, and impactful growth marketing requires a growth strategy based on the objectives of the e-commerce platform. Strategic growth planning is conducted based on business goals, insights, customer journeys, and buyer personas.

A growth strategy consolidates information on how to acquire and retain customers. It binds together the e-commerce product or service offering and competitive advantages. 
In addition, the growth strategy defines, among other things, the target groups of the e-commerce platform, customer experience, and the digital channels through which customers are reached. Growth strategy planning considers not only insight but also the necessary resources and digital touchpoints as well as their developmental needs.

Shopify offers numerous applications for growth marketing, both within the store and across various external channels. With the assistance of Crasman's growth marketing specialists, you’ll quickly find the Shopify add-ons that best suit your e-commerce needs.

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Does your Shopify online store need a boost in sales? 

Contact us, and we'll help you accelerate the growth and development of your online business!  

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