Starting an ecommerce store is not an easy task. Choosing a platform, designing your store & selecting products are all steps in the process that take considerable time, not to mention trial & error

And even when the store is officially launched, it takes testing, numerous changes & additional development to achieve the results you’re looking for.

Building your store is just the beginning. The bulk of your business’s development will be spent in ecommerce optimization—determining what works & what doesn’t so your business can ultimately win.

The Customer Value Journey & Ecommerce Optimization

Your store likely involves a lot of moving parts that work together to create your marketing strategy…so how do you define ecommerce optimization in terms of what your business really needs?

The Customer Value Journey, the patented formula we used to construct clients’ campaigns, gives a roadmap for creating a great customer experience that not only compels people to buy, but brings them back to buy more & then tell people about your business.

The 8 stage-journey takes customers from strangers to your brand who are just becoming aware of who you are to total evangelists for it who promote your business by telling their friends.

By putting this model into place, you can map out what your customer experiences at your store stage by stage, determining specifically where you need to optimize your ecommerce store.

Using the data you gather from your site’s pixel, as well as your store visits & sales, you can assess how well customers are moving through their journey with your store—& where they might be falling off the map.

There are tools in each stage that are essential for ecommerce optimization. If you aren’t creating awareness of your store, for example, you might need to drill down into your approach to Facebook ad campaigns.

If you are getting customers to download a lead magnet & subscribe, but they aren’t making a purchase, you may have to examine what’s keeping them from converting.

To really achieve your goals as a business, all stages need to be present, & examining each of them individually can provide a great framework for ecommerce optimization.

But how exactly does that work? Let’s look at a successful ecommerce store & how each element of the business works to create a profitable Customer Journey that meets buyers’ needs.

By looking at their story, you’ll discover a variety of ecommerce optimization tips to advance your store’s own success.

Color My Slime & Ecommerce Optimization

Color My Slime enables kids to create endless varieties of slime. But we aren’t talking about disgusting pond scum or snail trails. Slime is a substance made of glue, water & an activator like saline solution molded together until it forms a squishy semi-solid.

While slime was first mass produced in the 1970s & resurfaced in the 1990s, it has experienced an explosion of popularity within the last few years as an arts & craft toy that can be easily made at home. In fact, in 2017, the slime phenomenon led to a shortage of school glue.

That was when Hideko Tachibana, owner of Color My Slime, purchased a previously established slime ecommerce store from the original owner.

Having just left a successful full-time job in finance to pursue her dream job as an entrepreneur, it was the perfect way to get her feet wet (or perhaps get her feet sticky).

Color My Slime sells a variety of pigments that can be added to homemade slime to add colorful or glittery flair. Tachibana knew almost nothing about slime, but the store fit her criteria for an ecommerce business she could take over.

She wanted something with an established revenue of at least 6 months that did not dropship & that provided a niche market with very little competition.

Color My Slime fit the bill, & so began her process of ecommerce optimization. As she creates her customers’ Value Journey, she’s achieved success in a few crucial areas for any business owner who wants to form a meaningful connection with customers.

Instagram

What sets Color My Slime apart is the wide variety of pigments that can be purchased to make unique slime experiences. With its emphasis on short videos & images, Instagram is the perfect social network for spreading the word about these colorful & often sparkly creations.

Color My Slime currently has more than 20K followers on Instagram & invites customers to share photos & videos of their slime. The brand then chooses their favorite submissions to share on their official page.

The original store had very little social media presence, so determining your strategy for Facebook or Instagram is an important ecommerce optimization tip. Not only does Color My Slime use Instagram to create awareness, but to also build excitement among consumers as they show off their experiences with the product.

Blog posts

Having a blog is important for driving traffic to ecommerce stores. Using search engine optimization, you can research the most popular search terms for your business type, then incorporate them into your posts to achieve higher rankings in search engines, giving your brand more visibility.

For Color My Slime, the blog was an important part of ecommerce optimization simply because there weren’t many blogs about slime. As a result, the company’s posts garnered more than 10K organic views per month, bringing more people to engage with the store & make purchases.

Blogs also create authority for your store, demonstrating knowledge of the topic & providing useful information that can eventually lead visitors to buy.

Optimize Your Checkout Process

As a Shopify store, Color My Slime has access to apps that simplify & optimize the checkout experience for customers. One app, Fomo, creates the environment of a busy store during peak hours. It adds a feed to the store that shows new Instagram posts, the latest purchases & items currently in customers’ carts.

Not only does it add a sense of urgency for site visitors, but it also inadvertently creates social proof for items customers are browsing or buying.

The store also uses the Cross Sell app to recommend additional items to customers at checkout, giving them the chance to buy products that are comparable to the ones they’ve selected.

Since the slime subculture is particularly interested in mixing different colors, this app plays off this trend by recommending pigments that would mix well with what they’ve purchased.

Once customers decide to actually make a purchase, the ecommerce store can be optimized through a checkout experience that immediately leads them to become repeat buyers.

Contests & Excitement

Creating excitement after customers make an initial purchase is critical to bringing them back to buy more, & launching a fun contest is an ecommerce optimization tip that can bring results.

Color My Slime did this not only by selecting posts of customers’ slime creations to share on their Instagram, but also by giving customers the chance to help create new products.

Periodically, they would post the color of a brand new pigment & ask customers to submit names for it. The winner would not only have their suggested name chosen for the product, but receive a free package of it.

Contests both build better relationships with customers & create more buzz around your products & services, building excitement that advances customers through their journey.

Color My Slime’s success offers numerous ecommerce optimization tips to bring greater profits & renown to your business…but how do you get started?

How do you determine what your customer’s Value Journey looks like so you can make it work for your brand?

Take our Customer Adventure Score assessment now. You’ll discover what the patented formula looks like, how well you’re incorporating it into your current strategy & even more tools & resources to help you improve your score.

Check it out here!