6 Ways to Strategically Position Your Scaling Store for Growth in 2023

Everyone has resolutions for the new year—from walking 10,000 steps per day to saving more money. By the same token, your ecommerce brand very likely has resolutions too—like growing revenue.

And much like people, your brand needs strategies to reach your goals.

To know what your plans might need to look like in 2023, we’ve rounded up some predictions from our experts and what this foresight means for your strategy.

First up on the list of things you’ll want to do…

1) Own a direct-to-consumer channel for better brand control

For the past two years, we’ve seen an explosion of social media thanks to COVID lockdown measures. In 2023, Nick Raushenbush, Shogun co-founder, predicts that social growth isn’t over:

“I predict platforms like Facebook or Meta (including Instagram, Messenger, and WhatsApp)—and content platforms like YouTube and TikTok are going to become commerce players alongside Amazon and other online marketplaces.”

These channels are already helpful as people can shop on them without even leaving their app. But Nick advises you think of all these platforms “rented spaces” because you can’t fully control them.

Which is why Raushenbush also predicts: “We’re going to see even more retail brands investing in DTC channels like ecommerce websites, as well as web and mobile applications.”

To brands looking to stay ahead in 2023, he says, “Have your own direct-to-consumer channel, be it your website or even a progressive web app. This helps you control your acquisition and distribution, own the relationship with your customer (and their data, with their permission, of course).”

Though, it’s not enough to own your own Shopify or BigCommerce site; you also need to make sure it’s exceptional.

• Publish content that attract shoppers and get them back on your site regularly
• Showcase real-time personalization so customers can see the changes they’re making to customize their products
• Create an exceptional and smooth-flowing checkout experience

Take steps to build an active following with your site content in addition to your social media audience, so you can control more aspects of the customer journey, regardless of what other channels change about their platform.

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2) Improve your data analysis skills to keep up with privacy changes

While Google’s removal of third-party cookies is good for your customers, it’s going to make all advertisers jobs more challenging. Simon Robillard, Partner & VP at O2 Web, predicts:

“The shift in how data is collected (cookies apocalypse, iOS changes, etc.) will change the way companies gather and analyze their data. 2022 will be a year of adjustment, and marketers will need to find new reflexes to make the right long-term decisions.”

This shift can be done by taking new online courses, attending seminars, or networking to stay updated on the latest trends.

To help, here are a few updated courses and articles that should refresh and improve your marketing reporting knowledge:

1. Google Analytics Academy
2. Semrush Academy
3. HubSpot’s Digital Marketing Certification
4. Explainer: What do Apple’s new iPhone privacy changes mean for consumers and businesses?
5. The Privacy Sandbox

Each of these certifications keeps you up to date on the latest changes in analytics, SEO, and digital marketing.

Choose certifications that use examples from all industries so your brand can take successful marketing tactics from all over and use them to stay ahead and find new ways to talk to your consumers.

3) Improve website performance to decrease your bounce rate (and increase conversions)

Position yourself for success in the new year by focusing on lowering page load times and boosting your store conversion rates.

Research shows that visitors and search engines prefer websites with faster load times, so you should expect your conversion rate to grow as your performance increases.

In addition, Adán Archila, the Founder of Studio 31, predicts that all the major players in ecommerce will be focusing on website speed and performance in 2023. According to Archila:

“Shopify [will be looking to improve speed] with the launch of Online Store 2.0 and also requesting author developers to improve the speed of their apps or they will get penalized.”

In the short term, compressing images can increase website performance, especially if you haven’t done so in the past.

Early in the year, you can also look to improve your Shopify’s Google Lighthouse score, generally. For a more dramatic upgrade in performance, going headless with a progressive web app could be a better route.

Robillard predicts that we will see an increase “in the conversion potential of high-speed ecommerce sites” because of headless architecture.

He says, “this technology delivers an ‘app-like’ shopping experience to customers. Whether it’s on mobile or on desktop, headless technologies put the load time speed at another level.’“

With headless, customers have a flawless and seamless experience—more like an app on their phone or a game—rather than a disjointed series of clicks and pages.

4) Invest in your brand and focus on differentiation

It’s safe to say ecommerce isn’t a trend—it’s a defining pillar of the internet. There are many opportunities here for new entrants and for established players to expand rapidly.

According to Nick Raushenbush, “Ecommerce is still in its infancy with penetration in North America still at only about 20%. And this space is going to explode over the next few years, and for decades to come.”

But as we’ve shared before, there are already millions of ecommerce businesses you must compete against. Brand differentiation is vital in this expanding market. Raushenbush says:

“I’ve seen a lot of retail companies with great products fail because they couldn’t convey the difference between themselves and competitors.”

In 2023, more brands than ever will invest in not just brand building but becoming experiential. They’ll continue to focus on telling their story more effectively by adding high-quality visuals, dynamic site content, and rich merchandising to sites that really match their brand vision.

The key in the coming year will be to watch that you can build the experience you envision (and fast) and that you don’t sacrifice performance.

You’ll want to watch that your web presence nets you more revenue-per-user and repeat purchases. These metrics help indicate what customers think about you and if you are telling your story all that well for your investment in the bells and whistles.

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5) Offer premium customer service to retain loyal customers

Today’s shoppers take brand experiences seriously. In 2020, 40% of customers in the US said they stopped doing business with a company due to poor customer service.

Robillard says, “Whether to solve customer complaints or to increase customer satisfaction, ecommerce directors need to focus on delivering a high-end customer experience.”

According to a survey by Statista, good customer service does the following:

• Solves the customer’s issue in one session
• Places knowledgeable, experienced reps with customers
• Allows customers to try to solve their issue on their own first
• Takes notes internally to prevent the customer from having to repeat themselves

With these factors in mind, choose a customer service software that gives you the ability to offer omnichannel support and 24/7 availability. Look for a solution that also lets the customer search a knowledge base before contacting support. Finally, Robillard says:

“Eliminating UX frictions, investing in automation, and addressing customer pain points such as fit finder, for instance, with tools like Gorgias, will become crucial for conversion.”

In short, help the customer accomplish what they want faster.

6) Focus on long-term success by diversifying your sales strategy

In 2022, Robillard thinks marketers and brand owners will focus on long-term improvement over short-term wins. He says:

“Marketers should stop considering techniques and strategies to quickly solve short-term problems. In 2022, the focus shouldn’t be to sell more but to develop performance in the long run.”

When speaking about how to look at performance development, he says, “Keep using all the platforms that you have at your disposal but don’t rely on them! Simply consider them as frenemies!”

In other words, similar to Nick’s point—don’t leave Facebook, but make sure you have a long-term plan that goes beyond Facebook. So, always look for new ways to sell, even if they seem far-fetched initially.

Keep an eye out for emerging ways to diversify your sales strategy. For example, at first, selling through Facebook seemed like it could never work. Now, years later, Facebook has an independent shop that allows customers to shop and check out—all without leaving Facebook.

Consider: What channels are emerging now that seem like they could be adding shoppable functionality to their UX? How could you get ahead of this?

Another possibility is to leave a market or sales platform that isn’t performing to invest more time in something that is working.

Though your sales could see a small decline, better allocating your time will see a higher rise in sales over the long run.

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