Increase ROAS Of E-Commerce Store [Cheatsheet]

We have gathered all these eyeballs here to read about how to increase ROAS for your E-commerce business.

But before that, let’s run a little E-commerce background check.

Back in the days when Pizza hut started selling pizzas online, little did they know what an industrial revolution they were shaping. Nobody would have thought back in 1994 how the new ordering method would somewhat sweep the conventional go-to-get or call-to-order method.

However, that is not the real begging of E-commerce.

The Humble Beginning of E-commerce

The first known online transaction was nothing that could do us proud. 

Really? How’s that so?

The Standford students made the first-ever online sale using Arpanet to the students of the Massachusetts Institute of technology in the early 1970s. 

Now that’s really cool, won’t you say?

True, that. 

But, what isn’t so cool about this transaction is the product they decided to sale/purchase.

You wouldn’t believe what they sold.

Marijuana!

Seriously? Out of hundreds of thousands of other stuff, that’s what they chose to deal in while shaping history?

Truly, unfortunately, YES!

Here’s what John Markoff said in his book “What the Dormouse Said: How the Sixties Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer Industry.”

“In 1971 or 1972, Stanford students using Arpanet accounts at Stanford University’s Artificial Intelligence Laboratory engaged in a commercial transaction with their counterparts at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Before Amazon, before eBay, the seminal act of e-commerce was a drug deal. The students used the network to quietly arrange the sale of an undetermined amount of marijuana.”

Fast forward to 2019; global E-commerce is expected to stand at $25.038 trillion – says an online report – Global Ecommerce 2019.

If you haven’t jumped on the bandwagon already, do not delay opting for this growth avenue. If you have taken the lead, we have drafted this report for you.

Keep reading to find out how to increase the ROAS for an e-commerce business.

So, How to Increase the ROAS for your e-commerce store?

In case you are new to marketing, you might need a little background knowledge first.

What is ROI & ROAS? 

ROI (Return on investment) and ROAS (Return on Ad Spend) are two closely related terms, meant to measure the financial effectiveness of your paid marketing. 

The profit you earn out of investing a unit currency in smaller elements, i.e., keyword or the bigger ones i.e., campaigns is called ROAS. LYFE Marketing explains the difference between the terms, stating that ROI applies to overall marketing, unlike ROAS.

But as a marketer, you are not only interested in ROAS for E-commerce store. Other factors keep you awake through nights too.

Conversion rate, cost per acquisition, relevance score, clicks, etc. are a few, somewhat inter-dependent terms in a way or other. 

Let’s drive back to the original question now. Shall we?

Are there any proven, actionable ways to increase ROAS for your e-commerce site?

Of course, there are loads of them. For convenience’s sake, let us stick to the most practically actionable, tried, tested, and trusted ones.

15 Actionable tips to Increase ROAS Of Your E-Commerce Store [Cheat-Sheet].

ROAS is directly related to your paid advertisement. 

Ideally, your ad drives traffic to your website. It is the impression the user builds on this website that helps him decide to purchase or not. 

Therefore, ROAS has an indirect relation to your website, as well.

So, here’s a cheat sheet covering website and ads related factors to help you improve the ROAS for your E-commerce store.

Load speed

Increased load speed is often your ROAS’s first enemy. 

Put it another way:

When your site loads with a 100 milliseconds delay, your conversion rate drops by 7%.

Now, imagine the result of a few seconds delay on the conversion rate and the ROAS?

Source: Think with Google

For much the same reason, even Google factors in your site’s load speed while ranking.

The point here, how do you plan to earn through your E-commerce site when the load speed is only increasing your bounce rate?

Mobile optimized site

In 2018, the E-commerce retail sales in the U.S alone were said to be 148 billion U.S. dollars. 

The figure is expected to rise to 345 billion U.S. dollars in 2021.

Now, imagine losing all those potential dollars, all because you haven’t optimized your site for mobile devices.

Ouch! That hurts.

One good reason to optimize your site for mobile devices is that the mobile conversion rate is roughly 3X higher. 

Source: Greg Sterling at Marketing Land.

 Keyword optimized content

Searcher’s intent with most short-tail keywords might not be as clear as it would be with long-tail keywords.

So, invest in keywords, specially the long tail ones. That’s a great source to capture the attention of people who are looking for what your E-commerce store has in stock. 

The best part; Keywords save you bucks.

And how’s that?

• Find the keywords with high purchase intent. For instance, give the keywords with the prefixes or suffixes cheap, buy, price, discount, order, shop, etc. a try.
• Pro-tip: Use negative keywords to ward off irrelevant, useless visits.

Negative Keywords are the terms and phrases that filter the stats for you by preventing your ads from being shown to people who don’t need them (or who you don’t need). 

See an example of how negative keywords work.

 Use high-quality images

The best favor you could do to your prospects is to show high quality, clear images of the products. That greatly enhances their experience. Additionally, that gives you a satisfied client when the product turns out exactly as shown on the website.

However, a high-quality image alone might not be enough to grab the viewer’s attention. You’d have to play with the images to make them attractive without compromising the quality. 

Ideally, the work done on the image should enhance the features of the product more. This is particularly important because you can’t expect them to buy the product until it creates a pleasant image behind their eyeballs and on their minds.

You’d find these posts helpful along the process:

The Ultimate List of Content Marketing Tools and Resources-III

The Ultimate List of Content Marketing Tools and Resources-IV

Switch to videos

The success rate associated with high-quality images is fantastic. It sure is, and that’s the purpose of visual aid. 

However, the conversion rate of a video is exceptionally high.

Margot Whitney states on wordstream that the conversion rate of your landing page may climb to 80% with a video.

Because videos do a better job grabbing the viewer’s attention for long. They inform, entertain, and provide value – better.

However, not every video can earn that crown. Your video has to depict the best practices to be able to increase the conversion rate and ROAS.

User-friendly navigation

Your website needs to have a great structure. If a user faces difficulty in finding the relevant products or sections of the website, be sure to expect small to no conversion. 

Here’s how it happens?

When they can’t find what they are looking for, the only stats they are expected to increase are bounce rate and exit rate.

Besides a user-friendly structure permitting easy navigation, your website needs to boost the search function.

If your website is not user-friendly, your users won’t be your friends for long. So, make it friendly and easier to navigate through to see your ROAS climbing.

COPY

The copy is a significant factor to attract your prospect’s attention. Whether you talk about the copy of your E-commerce landing page or that of the ad, your conversion rate, and ROAS depends a good deal on it.

So that your conversion and ROAS rises high, make your ad copy stand out and perform with the following features:

• Make it simple, clear and concise.
• Use terms, phrases, emojis, and offers to catch attention.
• Make the copy educational, inspiring, or entertaining, so it sticks to the reader’s mind.
• Your copy should be convincing, or it is useless.
• Follow the theme, consistently through the end.
• While your copy entices the readers to take a specific action, the use of an effective call to action psychologically binds them to take the desired action.

Similarly, your web copy could depict highly desirable results if it depicts the following features:

• The whole copy should be error-free. Because you won’t like to lose sales of your highest-quality products just because the errors in the copy indicated otherwise.
• Optimize your copy for relevant keywords. However, do not go anywhere near keywords stuffing, and under-usage.
• An active call to action appropriately placed in the content pays off big time.
• Your E-commerce landing page could make claims, backed by stats and proves. That’s when they are the most effective.
• Make sure to keep your content relevant and exciting.
• A product description page should contain all the essential features of the product that the user is looking for.
• Keep your content up to date and fresh.
  

Promotional Offers

Offers are the life of your marketing. They convert a prospect to your client, even when the prospect is not intending to buy. 

So, make your ad and web copy further attractive with attractive offers and packages. 

Your offers could be season-specific or general. The more attractive your E-commerce offer is, the higher are the chances of conversion and increased ROAS.

Whatever be the type, your offers should promote sales, not demote them.

Useful paid media

The paid media you chose to display your E-commerce products depends on several factors. However, the most important selection factor is the presence of your audience on a platform.

Use all the media where your audience is present. And do not choose any media where your audience is not present, no matter how perfect it appears for you otherwise.

Competitive pricing

An essential aspect of your success is how well you watch your competitors. Understanding the product’s features and pricing of your competitors is a critical aim of studying them.

And you do that so you can make your pricing competitive.

Else, your prospects are more likely to purchase from your competitors. That in itself is a ROAS-buster for you when you are investing in marketing but not generating revenue.

Approachable add to cart button

Your Ad to wish list and Add to cart buttons should hold a prominent position on the landing page. 

If a user has to search for the button, he might just as well exit without taking this action.

However, some E-commerce sites make these buttons quite imposing. They move with you as you scroll across the page and often make the visitor’s desirable action difficult. 

In case you didn’t learn from experience, this does more harm than good.

Share real stories/live stats

Some websites, especially the E-commerce ones, display live stats. These stats range from the number of current dwellers on the website or the regions people are currently visiting a product page from etc.

You could go a step ahead by adding true stories of the customers in your ads, their written or video reviews, and endorsements.

Interestingly, such stats and endorsements play a supportive role in making up your mind to purchase a particular product.

Source: Neil Patel

Enable reviews

Soon after a customer has received the product, ideally, he might want to review it on your site. If he does, you should have the website enabled to encourage reviews.

A good number of today’s paid marketing campaigns consist of attempts to get reviews. If your customers are willing to do that on their own, that’s a lot of saving on your part. As long as you are quality conscious, needing feedback calls for enabling that function.

Easy checkout

With an easier checkout process, the chances for an individual to actually complete the checkout process grow higher. 

In an exciting infographic about customer psychology and E-commerce Checkout stats, Cox Blue states that 10% of users abandon the cart if they find the checkout process laborious. 

Now, abandoned carts inevitably hit you hard if you are the business, owning those carts.

But you know what hurts harder?

The abandoned carts just one click away from the purchase.

So, optimize your check out process and form. Make it short and easy to understand. That way, you are bound to see an increase in sales and get high value on your ad spent.

Retarget

Re-targeting is practically the most useful feature to improve the ROAS of E-commerce businesses. 

When a user leaves the product un-purchased during an advanced stage in the buying process, it is best to approach them again with the product. The most useful practice is to retarget them with a discount or promotional offer. 

But how would that help? If he was that interested, he would have placed the order the first time. Research proves that you shape the audience’s interest with your offers. The reasons behind an abandoned cart are numerous. However, price forms a good part of those reasons. So if you hit the prospect back with a discount offer, he’s very likely to complete the purchase.

Here’s what Neil Patel has to say about promotions and re-targeting:

Source: Neil Patel

Source: Neil Patel

And Now What?

Some of the measures we have asked you to take are directly related to the ad and ROAS of your E-commerce store. Others, mainly related to your website, do not have a direct relation with ROAS. However, optimizing the website for these factors is crucial as you build ROAS after your visitors land on a website, and it compels them to purchase.

Just to revisit the whole lesson, here’s are the few practical steps you have to take:

1. Optimize your site’s load speed. 
2. Make your website mobile-friendly.
3. Optimize your content for keywords. A perfect blend includes some relevant short tail and high-intent long tail ones.
4. Use high-quality images. 
5. Switch to quality videos.
6. Make your website user-friendly with easy navigation.
7. Make your copy (ad and web both) extremely attractive – inspire, entertain or educate persuasively.
8. Promote visits, interest, and conversions with fantastic offers.
9. Use all the useful paid media.
10. Make your price competitive.
11. Make your add to cart button easily approachable.
12. Share real stories, live stats and endorsements.
13. Enable reviews.
14. Make your checkout process converting i.e., easier.
15. Retarget with personalized offers.
    

What Next? Your Turn!

You have done a great job. Now calculate your ROAS. Optimize the results if needed, or enjoy the results if they are satisfactory.

However, do not forget to share your progress along the way with us. 

If you are beginning now, feel free to share how you plan to start.

Or feel free to hit us up if you need help. You won’t be the first one to have asked us for help 🙂

Also, read:
Content Marketing for E-Commerce – 3 strategies to get started

12 Shopify Help Tips from the Professionals [FREE GUIDE]