How to Build an Effective eCommerce Growth Strategy

Building an eCommerce growth strategy isn’t just about eye-catching social media ads or striking websites — it’s about creating a brand that people remember and a system that converts. At Big Human, our approach blends brand building with data-driven optimization, all working toward the North Star of sustained business growth.

“If you focus too much on performance, you risk a generic brand with no long-term loyalty,” Kelley Louise, Director of Marketing at Big Human, said. “But if you only focus on your brand, you end up with something beautiful that nobody knows about. The real magic happens when you approach it from both sides.” 

There’s no universal playbook for eCommerce growth, but these 10 steps will help you find what works for your brand. Start here, test fast, and keep evolving. When you’re ready to go further, Big Human can help you turn that strategy into measurable results.

1. Define Your Brand and Business Goals

Start with a picture of what success looks like — think revenue targets and pricing, defined plans for audience growth, and high customer retention. The clearer your objectives, the easier it is to prioritize worthwhile tactics.

“Set goals that are both achievable and aspirational: one that keeps your team focused, and one that pushes you to think bigger,” Kelley said. “Growth happens in the space between the two.”

Equally important is sharpening your digital branding. This isn’t just your logo, fonts, and color palette; it’s the mission and vision your eCommerce business brings to every interaction. Aligning your growth goals with a well-defined brand ensures that every feature rollout, marketing campaign, and new product description feels deliberate and consistent.

At Big Human, we put equal effort into developing your eCommerce brand and performance from day one — building a foundation that fuels customer loyalty and strong conversion rates.

2. Know Your Audience Inside Out

The best way to get to know your audience? Use quantitative data and qualitative insights. Analytics, purchase history, conversion rates, and other patterns highlight what’s working and where users drop off. But customer data without context is useless, and that's where the insights come in — customer reviews, surveys, interviews, and even social media comments help to give you the full story and uncover the “why” behind the metrics.

From here, you can tailor everything — product pages, content marketing, loyalty programs, even user assistance — to meet user needs and create personalized experiences. When people feel understood, loyalty and growth follow naturally.

“Our approach is all about empathetic marketing,” Kelley said. “It’s about reaching the right person at the right time and understanding how a product or service can meet them where they’re at.”

At Big Human, we build detailed customer profiles that connect the dots between desires and behavior. 

3. Audit Your Digital Presence

Before diving deeper into tactics, pause and zoom out. Too often, brands get caught in constant execution mode and lose sight of the bigger picture. Take a step back to evaluate your online presence.

 Review your user experience, mobile performance, and existing marketing strategy across channels (don’t forget SEO health). Your UX should be fast, functional, intuitive, and aligned with your customer base’s expectations across web and mobile devices. Product pages should be optimized with the right keywords, and meta descriptions should invite clicks from potential customers. Your social media presence should match your messaging on other channels, expressing your brand’s POV while providing a benchmark for your eCommerce growth strategy.

(By the way, this is often where the power of working with an outside partner comes in. An agency can bring a fresh set of eyes to your product and growth strategy). 

4. Map the Customer Journey

Get clear on how new customers find your business, what persuades them to buy, and what keeps them coming back. The best eCommerce brands treat the journey as a cycle, not a single transaction. For example, post-purchase follow-ups that feel personal, and encourage repeat purchases and referrals.

When you understand how users move through awareness, consideration, purchase, and retention, it becomes clear what’s working and what could use some help. Smooth out friction points (like a lack of accepted payment methods), which ideally, leads to less cart abandonment, stronger loyalty, and sustainable growth.

We tailor this process to your business, whether you’re a startup or an established brand looking to refine your retention rate.

5. Build (or Refine) a Conversion-Ready Website

Make sure your website is offering the highest-quality customer experience possible by prioritizing speed, mobile optimization, and a friction-less checkout process.

But great performance alone isn’t enough: Product and marketing have to work hand in hand. You can run the smartest campaign in the world, but if your site isn’t optimized for conversions, you’re just paying to lose potential customers. Growth starts with experience.

Menus and buttons should feel intuitive, and pages should load immediately, even during heavy traffic. From shopping carts to product recommendations, your online store needs to work perfectly.

And functionality is only half the equation. Branding matters just as much. As a full-service creative agency, we bring developers, designers, and marketers together from day one — so your UX and conversion strategy are aligned from the start. 

When you partner with Big Human, we become an extension of your team and help fill in the gaps. If you have a great dev team, we’ll focus on marketing. If you have a great writer but lack a focused SEO (or GEO) strategist, we can help out. Our projects are unique and tailored to your goals.

6. Create a Data-Driven Marketing Plan

A strong eCommerce growth strategy isn’t about doing everything; it’s about doing the right things, in the right order. Think of your eCommerce marketing channels like tools in a toolkit: You don’t need them all at once, just the ones that fit the job.

Your mix should be based on where your most loyal customers already spend time. SEO and SEM reach people searching with intent; social ads meet them where they scroll. The key is focus: spreading your budget across every platform doesn’t necessarily drive growth, it dilutes it.

Think about fit: A fashion or cosmetics brand will probably see more traction on TikTok than long-form blogs, while a B2B eCommerce store might lean harder on organic search and email marketing campaigns. The right mix depends on audience and customer engagement.

“We’re not here to sell you on every channel under the sun; just the ones that make sense for your goals,” Kelley said.

7. Integrate Brand Storytelling through Creative Testing

Bringing your marketing strategy to life starts with experimentation. Growth marketing is part art, part science — and the best campaigns test both.

At Big Human, we build creative campaigns that stay true to a brand’s mission and voice while exploring different ways to connect. We develop multiple ad concepts mapped across a spectrum: Logical to emotional on one axis, and product-focused to aspirational on the other. Testing these variations helps identify which messages resonate most deeply at different stages of the funnel.

The goal isn’t to find one winning creative element, but to learn what your audience responds to and why. From there, you can lean into what works, refine what doesn’t, and keep evolving your storytelling in ways that drive measurable growth.

8. Test, Measure, and Optimize Key Metrics

Testing is key to help understand customer relationships and behavior to drive measurable eCommerce sales growth. Launch with A/B testing, tracking KPIs like customer acquisition cost, return on advertisement spent, average order value, and customer lifetime value.

Because we work as your integrated partner, we adjust campaigns in real time rather than waiting for “the next big launch.” This is an ongoing partnership: Expect regular updates and behind-the-scenes insights so that we can make informed, strategic decisions together. 

9 & 10. Plan for Scalability, then Keep Evolving

Build systems that can handle growth without breaking, from inventory management to tech stack upgrades. Scalable systems don’t just prevent meltdowns, they unlock opportunities, letting you launch new products, expand channels, and enter untapped markets with confidence. 

Why? Digital landscapes never stand still: Markets shift, algorithms change, customer expectations rise. Your eCommerce growth strategy needs to keep pace. This means constantly monitoring performance metrics, analyzing customer behavior, and testing new approaches. It also means embracing emerging technologies to stay ahead of the curve.

We always future-proof, so your eCommerce site, app, and brand are ready for the needs of tomorrow. When you choose Big Human as your partner, we help you adapt your strategy, refine your messaging, and launch new tech without losing sight of your brand.

Make Big Human Your eCommerce Growth Partner

An effective eCommerce growth strategy is never “set it and forget it.” It’s a living process that blends creative storytelling with technical precision, adapting to both your customers’ needs and your business goals. 

At Big Human, we work alongside you to make sure every step you take is a step toward sustainable growth. Ready to partner? Connect with us.