The Hidden Growth Behind Today’s Fastest Scaling Ecommerce Brands
When it comes to e-commerce, the market is forever growing, making it a more attractive prospect for anyone looking to dip their toes in the e-commerce waters.
However, while many e-commerce brands achieve success, not everyone gains the same success, if any.
The fastest-scaling e-commerce brands are the ones that are separating themselves from the competition by optimizing everything behind-the-scenes and not just providing better products for customers. It’s often what goes on in the backend infrastructure that benefits the front-end.
In this guide, you’ll get an insight into the hidden growth behind today’s fastest scaling ecommerce brands and how to maximize your efforts for your own e-commerce this year.
The hidden growth behind today’s fastest scaling e-commerce brands
So what are some of the secrets behind today’s fastest scaling e-commerce brands? Here are a few methods that modern e-commerce brands are currently utilizing and optimizing.
- The invisible operational foundations
Operationally, there are a number of foundational aspects that are necessary for scaling up your e-commerce.
Some of the fastest-growing brands will often pause to ensure that the business will remain profitable at scale, which allows companies to outspend competitors on ads. It’s all about focusing on margin improvement, too.
A lot of the top e-commerce brands will align their creative, paid media, and retention teams in order to ensure all creative decisions are being informed by conversion data. Nowadays, it’s all about customer experience and operating on contribution margins rather than the vanity metrics that many brands have relied upon.
The use of real-time data activation through customer data platforms is a great source of truth for all marketers and marketing teams, who therefore don’t need to rely on guesswork to make decisions for future campaigns and efforts.
- Strategic hidden marketing
The importance of strategy within marketing is essential too, and there are certainly several ways in which successful e-commerce brands are using certain methods to improve sales.
Instead of solely focusing on buying new customers, e-commerce brands are now investing in lifetime value and building loyalty in customers.
Many successful brands find unconventional and unique angles to acquire customers outside of the traditional marketing methods, like Facebook ads, for example. Instead, they may focus on community-led content and specialized partnerships.
Within social and live commerce, there’s a growing popularity in live and interactive shopping experiences. This form of marketing drives higher Average Order Value as well as lower return rates.
- Technological and structural advantages
There are several technological and structural advantages that a lot of successful e-commerce brands are using to help scale their business.
Some are moving to headless, API-first, and cloud-native systems that help achieve faster time-to-market. It provides an agility for the business to easily change components on the site without needing to rebuild the entire store.
The growth of AI is certainly dominating many aspects of business, including the world of e-commerce. Implementing AI tools is helpful for smarter search, and when paired with AI-driven pricing, it helps to generate margin improvements.
Many companies are now switching to more autonomous supply chains and logistics, which helps to reduce fulfillment costs. The use of a 3PL company helps to manage the scale and growth of an e-commerce business, especially when it comes to order fulfillment. Along with the use of AI for demand forecasting and inventory placement, it all contributes to improvement.
- The ‘hidden’ growth model
Understanding the ‘hidden’ growth model helps your e-commerce brand to follow in the footsteps of those already-successful e-commerce brands.
Rather than relying on just paid ads nowadays, those who have managed to scale their business quickly have done so by building a brand personality. By utilizing user-generated content and cultivating a community to build and foster trust, further success is achieved.
It’s good to have a niche focus when it comes to scaling growth. Many brands achieve that huge scale upwards by dominating in a specific niche and expanding globally, rather than just regionally.
Ultimately, many brands should focus less on just the front-end of their business and instead, look at what they’re doing with the backend infrastructure too. While more ads and a better web design are important, you should also look to invest in the hidden aspects.
From AI-optimized logistics to data-driven personalization, this helps optimize the brand for scale.
Top tips for scaling your e-commerce business successfully
To help scale your own e-commerce business successfully, these top tips should give you the best chance possible.
Optimize user experience and mobile
It’s important to ensure your site is operating seamlessly. Your site should optimize user experience, especially when it comes to mobile-use. Having a mobile-friendly site is essential as a significant portion of traffic comes from mobile devices.
Leverage data for decisions
It’s worth considering how data can be helpful for scaling up your e-commerce business. Using analytics is helpful for identifying some of the top-performing products and understanding customer behavior.
Automate your operations
Automating your operations is a good way of helping improve workflow. That’s why it’s a good idea to implement automation for inventory management, customer service, and order processing. This can be great for handling increased volume without having to add any extra staff.
Diversify sales channels
Expanding beyond your website to marketplaces like eBay or Amazon is useful. Nowadays, you’ve also got newer platforms like TikTok Shop and Whatnot to explore, too.
Improve customer retention
Customer retention is important to improve where possible, whether that’s implementing loyalty programs or personalizing email marketing. There’s also the important contribution of top-tier customer service in order to keep your customers engaged.
Streamline fulfillment
Be aware of what order fulfillment services are available and how they can benefit in managing inventory, speeding up your shipping times, and reducing errors.
Localize and personalize experiences
Customizing experiences for different user locations and for individual users specifically helps to improve conversion rates.
Invest in marketing
Finally, be sure to continue your investment in marketing from targeted Instagram and Facebook ads to help retarget visitors and hopefully reach new audiences too.
When it comes to improving your abilities to scale an e-commerce business, make use of these tips, whether that’s embracing outsourced platforms for fulfillment, creating personalized experiences, or investing in meaningful marketing.
