If you are reading this article, you probably own an online store or work for somebody who owns one. Your goal is to increase sales and revenue. You’ve already achieved good results but you need more.

That’s ok as this is how new heights are reached. However, no matter how many things you’ve done and how hard you’ve tried, there always comes the moment when you don’t know what to do next. But don’t get lost, this is usually happens before the major breakthroughs. Here are some ideas that will help you to go further.

See also: The essential guide to starting and growing an online business

Ask your customers

You know that there is always room for improvement, right? And you’ve done many improvements to your products and services already, so what else? Ask your customers for any ideas. They can share unbiased opinions and spot things you would never think about. For example, the other day I received an email from a success manager of one service I use.

She asked me for any feedback I can give. I use this service every day, so I could list some points that may not be so obvious for the service developers. And a few days later I saw the improvements I wrote about. Superb!

Listening to your clients is important. On the one hand, you improve relationships with them and increase their loyalty. On the other hand, this gives you plenty of ideas for improvement.

Learn from your competitors

You may not like your competitors but you can learn from them. They may be doing some things better than you (just like you may be more successful than them in other spheres). Do your competitors have a better site, better support or return terms, more flexible shipping options? Research different aspects and highlight those in which you are less successful. What’s next? Improve it!

Analyze your performance

It’s important to track your performance each particular period of time. For example, each week, month, 3 months, etc. The period depends on the KPIs you are tracking.

KPI stands for a key performance indicator. It shows how successful you are in a particular sphere. The examples of KPIs are a number of purchases per a particular period; site visits per day, bounce rate, etc.

By analyzing the history of your KPIs changes you can see which aspects need improvements.

Set new KPIs

You already track some performance indicators, so it’s time to think about new ones. For example, your blog visits or percent of customers who come to you from your blog monthly.

The best way to come up with new KPIs is to ask questions. You can also find different Google Analytics dashboards and see which metrics other sites track.

But don’t get too obsessed with tracking all the possible key performance indicators; choose those that really matter for your business.

Try something completely new

If you’ve never had a blog, create one and regularly write articles for it; if you’ve never changed your site since creating it many years ago, re-design it. I hope you’ve got the idea of trying something new.

Since the resources are limited, you can’t afford trying many things. Moreover, such changes should be carefully thought over before implementation. Concentrate on those spheres that are more likely to bear fruits.

Run split tests

This idea is related to the previous one: it’s also about trying something new. But the good thing is that split tests don’t require much effort and still can give you visible results.

You can test minor or major changes on your site and see how these changes affect your conversion rate and sales.

Summing up

I’ve recently been asked one interesting question: “What can we do to improve everything?” I’m sure this question comes to your mind from time to time. But businesses don’t grow overnight despite our wish, that’s why you’ll need a plan to make improvements and time to achieve them. I hope the ideas in this post will help you.

About the author

Kristina pays careful attention to the latest digital marketing trends while developing detailed strategies for site performance improvement and conversion optimization. She is a marketing manager and SEO specialist at Amasty, a company that develops high-quality Magento extensions which make the lives of Magento store owners easier.