For many people, New Year’s resolutions just don’t work. In fact, more than 80 percent of people fail at their New Year’s resolutions by mid-February.
While failure happens for various reasons, there is one huge reason at the root of it all: Most people simply set terrible resolutions.
Yet, it is possible to set good New Year’s resolutions. And when you do, they can be your compass towards the light during tough times.
New Year’s resolutions are almost like goals but more. A resolution has more to do with your actions, methods, and habits. Yet, they should be set like goals, not vague wishes and hopes. The key to developing good resolutions is to keep them SMART: specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and time-constrained.
In other words, your resolutions should be clearly defined, within your reach, possible to achieve right now, and with a firm time frame attached to them.
If you want to start running, it is wise to begin easy: run 1 mile for a minimum of 20-30 days to create a habit and build a more positive approach. Then you can comfortably start increasing the distance. As you feel and see your results, you will be more likely to continue past mid-February.
Your ecommerce business also deserves its resolutions. The resolutions will keep you motivated and willing to work throughout 2022.
We have compiled a list of the essential ecommerce resolutions to boost your business this year!
1. Get Serious about Content Marketing
Every ecommerce owner wants to increase the amount of traffic their website gets because increased traffic usually leads to increased sales.
Content marketing will remain a potent method for driving organic traffic and building relationships with customers and visitors.
Therefore, in 2022, ecommerce companies should get serious about content. Choose a medium—blogs, podcasts, videos—and commit to publishing throughout the year. Think of it as a habit goal and publish at least once a week.
You should know that video content has been the king for the past years, and it is not going away. Those companies that produce content in video win customers’ attention, especially with the younger generations. The most popular is the short-form video.
Another huge trend is non-music audio, specifically podcasts. Between 2017 and 2021, the percentage of monthly podcast listeners among 12-to-34-year-olds grew from 27 percent to 49 percent. There are now more weekly podcast listeners than Netflix account holders.
Partnering with influencers remains the key to growing your direct selling business. In fact, influencer marketing is an integral part of content marketing.
No matter which form of content you decide to use in your business, content marketing should be an integral part of your ecommerce strategy for 2022.
2. Collect More Email Addresses
Along with content marketing, your focus for 2022 should be email marketing and collecting more email addresses for your efforts.
Email marketing is crucial for making your content work. As Content Marketing Institute founder Joe Pulizzi says, “An email list is critical because you can’t build your content on rented land.”
You want to own your marketing channel, and email allows that. For example, you can’t have your content buried by a surprise algorithm change of social media. It’s also good to know that email is still the most used online communication platform.
And it works, too. Email is 40 times more effective for acquiring new customers than Facebook or Twitter, and email has an ROI of 38:1.
Ninety-one percent of US adults actually want to receive promotional emails from companies they like. In addition, email is the preferred method of staying up-to-date about business promotions for 60 percent of people.
That’s why growing (or starting to build) your email list is perhaps the most important thing you can do for your online business in 2022.
3. Get the Most Out of Your Tools
If you haven’t chosen your strategic technology partner yet, 2022 is the year to start your research. Ecommerce has been booming for years now, and the COVID-19 crisis only escalated the change.
In 2020, retail ecommerce sales worldwide amounted to $4.28 trillion, and e-retail revenues are projected to grow to $5.4 trillion in 2022. With these massive shifts to online shopping, it’s more vital than ever to have the most effective digital infrastructure for your business.
Learn more about how to choose the best ecommerce platform for your business in our comprehensive blog posts:
- Choose The Best Ecommerce Platform for Your Business in 2021
- How to Choose the Right Technology for Your Ecommerce Site to Handle Your Holiday Sales
If you already have the primary technology partner, it is time to take advantage of all its most valuable features. Contact the support team of your software provider and talk about all the options they offer.
The best companies offer 24-7 customer service free of charge. Take advantage of this great feature. Try to learn more about your software to make sure you get the most out of it. Maybe you will find out some great functionalities you are not using yet.
In case you use more than one technology provider, 2022 is the year you should look into all of them. Revise your monthly fees and check your subscriptions. Does your company need all of them? Do they provide value for your money? Do they improve your business?
Managing multiple tools can be equally challenging and necessary for successful ecommerce sales. However, business owners should stay alert and ensure all the tools still provide value to your company.
So in 2022, get rid of software clutter—audit all of the company’s licensed and SaaS programs. Learn who is using them and why. Then consolidate or eliminate.
Last but not least, don’t forget to increase your website’s speed.
4. Simplify Your Checkout Process and Drop Your Shopping Cart Abandonment Rate
Online shoppers look forward to an easy and convenient shopping experience when browsing your website. But if this is the case, why do so many shoppers end up abandoning their carts before checkout? Simply put, shoppers are looking for simplicity and ease of use.
According to the Baymard Institute, around $4.5 billion worth of online products is abandoned every year. On average, a customer who abandons their shopping cart will leave for good after 22 minutes.
Take a second and think about your checkout process. How many pages is it? What steps do you require customers to take? The average checkout flow has 5.08 steps, and 50 percent of sites ask for the same information more than once during checkout.
Long, repetitive checkouts are one of the leading causes of cart abandonment. However, there are more reasons:
- 50 percent said they leave their carts due to additional fees and shipping costs.
- 28 percent left because they had to set up an account.
- 20 percent said that websites had errors or crashed while shopping.
In 2022, your business should focus on reducing the cart abandonment rate. Here are some tips on how:
- Allow guest checkout.
- Reduce the number of pages.
- Audit the information you require.
- Remove anything that’s not necessary (do you really need work and personal phone numbers?).
- Don’t ask for the same info twice.
- Use clear CTAs.
- Consider adding faster payment options like PayPal or Amazon Pay.
If you have enough traffic and enough potential shoppers, dropping your cart abandonment rate from 80 percent to—let’s say—75 percent can lead to a significant increase in sales.
5. Nurture Repeat Buyers
Do you know that most online stores typically get most of their revenue from their existing customer base? Repeat customers are one of the most critical assets for an ecommerce business.
Here is some data to back it up: It costs approximately five times more to get a new customer than to sell to an existing one. Furthermore, returning customers spend an average of 67 percent more than new ones.
And above all, loyal customers can become your best brand advocates and even nano- and micro-influencers. By the time a customer makes ten purchases, they’ve referred an average of seven people to a site—and those people spent around 75 percent of what the initial customer spent.
The best ecommerce businesses know how crucial it is to focus on turning one-time customers into repeat customers and turning repeat customers into loyal brand advocates.
Here are some of the strategies for nurturing your repeat customers:
- Develop loyalty or VIP programs.
- Offer exclusive and early access to products.
- Leverage all platforms to build a stronger bond.
- Personalize communication.
- Turn the shopping process into a game for better engagement.
Ecommerce Resolutions Summary
The ecommerce industry has been booming for years now. Therefore, in 2022, it is necessary to allocate budget and time towards improving and growing your ecommerce business to drive extra sales.
We suggest keeping these ecommerce resolutions throughout 2022:
- Get serious about content marketing.
- Collect more email addresses and improve your email marketing.
- Get the most out of your tools.
- Simplify your checkout process and improve your cart abandonment rate.
- Nurture repeat customers.
If you genuinely want to reach your full potential in 2022, we recommend trying our platform DirectScale Ecommerce powered by Rave Retailer.
Using their decades of MLM industry experience, DirectScale offers more than just an ecommerce management platform.
DirectScale took the best of Shopify and built upon it to strengthen and improve the customer experience and the Admin controls specific to our industry needs.
It has designed unique revenue optimization tools on top of its commissions’ engine. By aggregating all of your sales data alongside our compensation profiler and editor, DirectScale gives you not only the insight but the ability to drive the growth of your business.
Take your business to another level with DirectScale!