14 Sure-Shot Ways to Boost Your eCommerce ROI

eCommerce founders are always looking for ways to grow ROI. With many strategies out there, deciding which strategy works best is difficult.
Cutting the noise, here are time-tested strategies to help you grow your eCommerce ROI on a limited budget.
If you want an honest answer, there’s no such thing as a good eCommerce ROI. Sure, Google might say it's either 10-20%, but with an economic slowdown looming large, you can never be so sure.
Your industry could be more prone to slowdowns while others may not feel the heat as much. When you look past this, other factors come into play.
Your customers can no longer afford to buy or have found better alternatives that match their idea of ‘value’.
If your business is using standard shipping instead of flat rate shipping, your ROI will be different. If you compare yourself to competitors who have a steady retention rate, it's only fair to say you have the wrong expectation.
Finally, if your marketing channels have an ROI of 2:1 ratio instead of the standard 5:1, don’t beat yourself up. It could be the start of your journey to getting to your good eCommerce ROI.
Remember, it's always the smaller wins that always lead to big victories.
To calculate eCommerce ROI, you’ll need to calculate your Net Profit.
Net Profit = Total Revenue — Total Costs
Once, you have your Net Profit, use the formula, Net Profit / Total Costs*100
Let’s say you are selling a jumpsuit worth $200 via Google Shopping Ads and Emails. You spend $50 on ads and $75 on emails getting 7 conversions and 18 conversions respectively.
Since the ROI for ads stands at 2800% and email scores 4700%, without a doubt, email has a higher ROI.
While a useful metric, eCommerce ROI analysis doesn’t factor in LTV—a crucial factor for recurring sales.
Jump to:
4 Immediate Marketing Strategies to Boost eCommerce ROI
1. Improve average time spent via CRO
2. Analyze your conversion funnel to improve ROI
3. Get your buyer personas right
4. Personalize your marketing efforts
6. Drive product discovery through website usability
7. Streamline your SEO process
8. Create paid ads that deliver
9. Create landing pages to nurture high intent
10. Hustle & get emails to drive actual sales
12. Stick to multichannel selling
13. Get started with affiliate marketing
14. Revisit your pricing strategies
You’re losing out on improving your eCommerce ROI, if your customers are not spending as much time as they should on your site pages.
Your low-performing pages may need the CRO treatment. Here are ways you can fix them:
Warby Parker makes finding products easier with visual results.
Everlast uses it to re-engage customers back into the funnel.
When you're strategizing to improve ROI, a critical factor to consider is how “expensive” certain drop-off points are.
For example, if 70% of your drop-offs happen at checkout, and your optimization efforts are currently taking care of something else, reorient and reorganize.
At Convertcart, we start by splitting any funnel in the following format:
Identify which of these paths have a less than 50% conversion rate.
But if you have to dig deeper, ask some really critical questions.
Let’s say only 20% of your users are going from the product page to the cart page. Try decoding:
Further Reading: 5 Stages of an eCommerce Conversion Funnel (+Examples)
No matter what kind of budget you have marketing ROI, it’ll never yield what you need if you don’t get the right buyer to engage.
So, getting your buyer personas right is a non-negotiable—here’s a checklist that can help:
👉 Delve deeper into real-time behavior: no matter how many segments you have to study, the following questions can help.
👉 Get a firm understanding of their buying motivation: if you can figure out what they’re consistently engaging with and which behaviors they’re adopting, it’ll help in the big picture.
👉 Evaluate on the basis of channel & platform: this will let you see what’s working and which behaviors lead to maximum conversions across each platform or channel.
Further Reading: eCommerce Behavioral Segmentation Examples For 2025
77% of marketing ROI is due to segmented, targeted, and triggered campaigns.
Yet, only a sizable number of eCommerce brands grow their ROI via personalization.
Check out these tips to personalize your campaigns better:
Here’s a brilliant example of a 1:1 consultation by Bloomingdale’s. Notice how the microcopy explains the benefit in one-liners.
The ROI for content marketing across all industries is 748% when done consistently.
The best way to do this is a Content Hub.
A content hub is a one-stop guide for all your branded content. It contains a main page linking to blogs on different topics containing subtopics. And this isn’t limited to blogs but applies to ebooks, infographics, and videos as well.
To get one right with the goal of boosting eCommerce return on investment:
👉 Link content clusters to the most popular customer objections: for example, if “how to fix sensitive skin” is a leading customer concern, you can identify 3 to 4 of your bestsellers and lead your primary content with arguments supporting their regular use
👉 Make it easy to directly convert from featured content: yes, feature those “quick add” CTAs within your blog content, show links to product review pages and offer social proof nudges like “12, 000 have used this product since 2010”
👉 Retarget based on content they show interest in: pixel all content pages and create retargeting audiences based on topic interest, making sure the rules are super clear - for example, if they viewed 2+ posts on “dry skin”, show bestselling moisturizers in carousel ads
Beardbrand has a one-stop shop guide—that features different topics ranging from beard, mustache, and lifestyle, to product guides. This is a brilliant content library example, which focuses on engaging shoppers at various stages of their journey with the brand:
The subcategories are well segmented making information easy to find on all things beard.
Further Reading: Gated content: 10 Dos & Don'ts that eCommerce Founders Must Know
The hallmark of excellent eCommerce ROI is product discovery.
The more ease, satisfaction and choice shoppers experience around this, the longer they’re likely to engage with the brand to buy.
At Convertcart, we’ve noticed this takes the shape of seamless product comparisons and relevant product recommendations.
To get comparisons above par:
👉 Feature a “compare” CTA on category pages: upon clicking, let shoppers see an overlay where they can add 3 to 4 similar products of their choice, which also throws up a quick differentiated description for each product (take AI’s help!)
👉 Show editable comparison charts on product pages: this one’s similar to the previous tool, but can be more elaborate, featuring more fields of info plus a quick add CTA for each
👉 “Compare” products at the end of quiz results: this can be a real CRO gamechanger especially if you’re able to cite the UVP of each product (instead of featuring only “the best product”)
To show relevant recommendations at the right junctures, consider:
👉 Mid-scroll recommendations on product pages: especially when they come with “complete the experience / set with…” recommendations alongside a discount, rewarding the shopper in research mode while promising “value”
👉 Discounted order confirmation page recommendations: pick up to 3 only and show an “email me the discount code” CTA to deepen engagement
👉 “Take X% off” quiz recommendations: appeal to the ToFu buyers who might be checking out aimlessly but the promise of a focused, discounted experience wheels them back in towards higher buying intent
Further Reading: 33 Scientific Ways To Improve eCommerce Product Discovery
While SEO might be mainstream, 57% of North American brands don’t have an SEO strategy.
It’s scary considering so much of ROI in eCommerce actually depends on the right people finding your brand and choosing to buy.
However, it’s never too late to start and here are a few tactics to get to speed quickly:
Further Reading: 3 eCommerce SEO mistakes to avoid and get more conversions
Paid ads have a significant impact on growing your eCommerce ROI despite rising costs.
So much so, that 43% of high-traffic sites spend more than $5000 on social ads.
Equally important, Facebook is a high ROI channel with 78% of American customers using it to discover products.
Here are some relevant tips that help you create high-performing ads:
Further Reading: Convert More Paid Traffic—9 Strategies That Always Work (eCommerce)
While it’s easy for landing pages to stand out for shoppers who want to buy, the idea here is to make them appealing to the entire customer journey.
If you’re confused about this, let’s break it down to see what shoppers really do on a landing page when they’re in:
The ToFu stage: they would have landed on the page because your ad showed up for a generic keyword like “best shoes for flat feet”
The Mofu stage: since this stage is about being more problem-aware (and possibly product-aware), they may be looking for answers to more specific keywords like "leather shoes for flat foot high arch”
The BoFu stage: at this stage, shoppers know the brands and also what each are doing differently, and have a need to find balance between quality, pricing and guarantees
So, this is what you need to ensure your landing pages do for high ROI in eCommerce:
👉 Show social proof: this is a big one and appeals to the entire conversion funnel for obvious reasons (the more love a product receives, the more trustworthy it is, isn’t it?)
👉 Feature multiple recommendations: we recommend up to 5, focusing on the levels of maturity of the audience, amongst which 1 to 2 recommendations can even be bundles
👉 Offer differentiated gated content: you don’t wanna show the same sign-up hooks here that you show on your homepage or product page—instead feature something different with benefits that speak to all kinds of audiences.
That’s what Popsicle Beauty Club does:
Triggered email marketing can bump your eCommerce ROI—generate 4x revenue with 18x profits.
And more importantly—they aren’t as complex as people make them out to be.
Here are some of the best pieces of advice for boosting eCommerce ROI from founders:
Repeat purchases can be the ultimate ROI booster—except that they can be not that common.
But not if you get a few things on your eComm store right, primarily the way you honor loyalty (related programs see ROI of 200% to 300% across industries) AND the way shoppers experience giving feedback.
To take care of both, you need to introduce:
👉 One question post-purchase micro-surveys: if Tom bought a beach holiday skincare bundle, it may be worthwhile to ask him, “What almost stopped you from buying?” or “Was anything confusing at checkout?” (and add multi-choice answers, along with an empty field)
👉 Behavior-based exit intent feedback pop-up: identify 4-5 behaviors that routinely occur like bounce-offs after shoppers have hovered over size info, triggering questions like “Going already? What info is missing?” with multi-choice answers
👉 Reward behavior-based incentives—share on social media, refer a friend, create UGC, etc.
👉 Offer incentives beyond points and cash—like first dibs to brand collaborations when shoppers cross a certain AOV threshold
Further Reading: 26 Brilliant Ways To Boost eCommerce Repeat Sales
Multichannel selling accounted for 576 billion US dollars in 2023 alone.
But, eCommerce brands struggle to find the right channels. Here are relevant tips to help you:
At the end of the 30-day, look at your channel sales growth. Even a small growth should let you know that you are on the right path.
Further Reading: How To Increase eCommerce Sales: 23 Immediately Actionable Ideas
Even though 16% of eCommerce sales in the US and Canada come from affiliate marketing, SMBs aren’t great fans.
That’s because of spammy traffic that dilute eCommerce store ROI.
Check out these tips to start fresh:
Further Reading: The Do's And Don'ts Of Affiliate Marketing For eCommerce Brands
When it comes to pricing, eCommerce brands choose to go extreme—sell themselves low or too high.
And this is done without monitoring ever changing customer preferences.
Here are some smart pricing tips to boost your eCommerce ROI:
Further Reading: eCommerce Pricing Strategy: 13 Standout Brand Examples
The process of uplifting your eCommerce store ROI is a long-term one.
However, there are some marketing strategies that are better suited to deliver results within a few weeks.
Since this is solely based on real-time behavior, shoppers expressing interest and intent becomes higher with such ads. Target those who’ve:
Pro Tip: Add personalized urgency like “Size M selling the fastest”
When it comes to social proof triggering higher ROI in eCommerce, context is king.
Put simply, not all kinds of social proof AND not all the time.
On product page: short review snippet right above / below primary CTA (ensure it focuses on clearly explaining the key benefit)
On mini cart / cart page: highlight the star ratings and feature a post-purchase review snippet to subtly suggest people are happy having purchased the product - “Item arrived in 2 days, beautifully packed.”
On checkout page: mention the number of total positive reviews your brand has garnered plus how many people are happy with their purchases
Pro Tip: Avoid showing reviews / snippets without the timeframe mentioned
Product finder quizzes are all the rage, but can all of them be great as an eComm ROI strategy?
We think not—whicb is why you’ll have to ensure the quiz:
This can impact your online store ROI rather positively because we all know retention is easier than acquiring.
To get to a positive eCommerce ROI, what you need is stellar UX.
Something that shoppers will look back on, and say, “Woah! That was easy, I wanna go back and shop again!”
Because, after all, 98% of visitors who visit an eCommerce site—drop off without buying anything.
Why: user experience issues that cause friction for visitors.
And this is the problem Convertcart solves.
We've helped 500+ eCommerce stores (in the US) improve user experience—and 2X their conversions.
How we can help you:
Our conversion experts can audit your site—identify UX issues, and suggest changes to improve conversions.