![[headshot] image of customer](https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/68be8fb9ed366e671bd0fff9/6946bb725d271db77776ce88_vladislav_kostov_ecommerce_strategy.jpg)
A few years ago I came across the term “Random Acts of Marketing”, coined by Karen Hayward. It stuck with me because I had seen too many companies run their marketing exactly like that. No clear strategy, no planning and no shared purpose. The outcome was predictable. Wasted budget, exhausted teams and poor returns.
In ecommerce, the same thing happens all the time.
Teams try to grow by doing more. More channels, more campaigns, more tools. Budgets increase, activity ramps up but growth slows down. Eventually leadership asks the uncomfortable question: why isn’t our online business growing more?
The issue is rarely effort. It’s focus.
Most ecommerce businesses don’t lack tactics. They lack clarity on what actually drives revenue at their current stage. Instead of identifying the few levers that matter, they optimize everything at once and end up spreading impact too thin.
A more effective way to think about growth starts with the ecommerce formula itself:
Traffic × Conversion Rate × Average Order Value = Revenue
Each part of this equation is a growth pillar. And within each pillar, there is usually one lever that moves the needle far more than the rest. The goal is not to optimize everything. The goal is to identify those three levers and focus relentlessly on them.
Let’s start with the first pillar:
When growth slows, the instinctive reaction is almost always the same: get more visitors. Increase spend. Add new channels. But more traffic only helps if it’s the right traffic and that’s where most ecommerce businesses go wrong. In reality, traffic is the most misunderstood growth pillar.
The problem is not volume. The problem is traffic quality.
Most ecommerce businesses already generate enough traffic to grow. What they lack is clarity on which traffic actually converts, produces profitable orders and returns to buy again. Without that clarity, scaling traffic often makes performance worse, not better.
Before identifying the right growth lever, it’s worth addressing a few traps that repeatedly show up in ecommerce teams.
Trap 1: Optimizing for low CPC instead of revenue
Low CPC looks good in dashboards. It creates a sense of efficiency. But cheap traffic that doesn’t convert or that converts into low-value customers is rarely a growth lever. Moving more budget into a low-CPC channel without analyzing source-level conversion and downstream value is one of the fastest ways to waste spend.
Trap 2: Judging channels in isolation
Channels are often evaluated independently. Paid search is judged on ROAS. Social on engagement. Affiliates on volume. What’s missing is the customer journey across channels. Many high-intent customers don’t convert on first touch. Without looking at assisted conversions and paths to purchase, teams undervalue the traffic that actually drives revenue.
Trap 3: Adding new channels before fixing existing ones
When growth slows, new channels feel like progress. In practice, they often add complexity before the core traffic sources are fully understood or optimized. Scaling something new rarely works if the existing foundation is leaky.
For most ecommerce businesses, the real growth lever is doubling down on the traffic source that delivers high-intent customers, not increasing overall volume.
High-intent traffic has three characteristics:
When you identify the source that consistently delivers customers like this, growth becomes a matter of focus rather than experimentation.
This requires stepping beyond surface-level metrics.
Instead of asking:
Ask:
In many cases, ecommerce teams discover that 80+% of meaningful growth comes from two or three traffic sources. Everything else generates noise, not scale.
A focused traffic strategy is not about doing less. It’s about doing the right things with intent.
It means:
When traffic is treated as part of a system rather than a standalone lever, it becomes a predictable driver of growth instead of a constant source of frustration.
When traffic is not converting, the instinctive response is to look at the website. Change layouts. Run A/B tests. Tweak copy. Conversion rate optimization often turns into a long list of small experiments that create activity but little impact. The issue is that conversion rate is often treated as a design or testing problem.
In reality, it’s a decision-confidence problem.
Customers don’t fail to convert because the button color is wrong. They fail to convert because something important is unclear or unresolved in their mind.
Trap 1: Testing without understanding friction
Running experiments without first identifying the main source of friction leads to incremental gains at best. If the primary reason users drop for is trust, product understanding or price justification, no amount of layout testing will fix it.
Trap 2: Treating all users the same
Not all visitors need the same information to convert. New visitors need reassurance and clarity. Returning visitors need confirmation and momentum. When conversion efforts ignore user intent and context, improvements remain limited.
Trap 3: Optimizing micro-elements instead of the decision
Teams often focus on micro-optimizations because they are easy to test and measure. But the biggest conversion lifts usually come from addressing one major uncertainty, not from polishing small interface elements.
For most ecommerce businesses, the conversion lever that moves the needle is reducing uncertainty at the key decision point.
Uncertainty typically falls into a few categories:
Until the dominant source of uncertainty is removed, conversion improvements remain capped.
Hint: pay attention to a potential cognitive load - bombarding the customer with too many needless features, use cases or technical details competing for attention instead of a clearly stated proposition that explains what problem the product solves and for whom
The fastest way to improve conversion is not testing more. It’s diagnosing better.
This means:
In CPG or consumer electronics, conversion issues often stem from insufficient product clarity and poor comparison logic. Customers want to understand use cases, compatibility and real-world benefits before committing. When that information is missing or fragmented, they delay or abandon the purchase.
A focused conversion strategy aims to solve one problem at a time.
It means:
When conversion work is approached this way, improvements are not marginal. They are structural and they compound as traffic scales.
When teams think about increasing average order value, the usual tactics come to mind. Bundles, cross-sells, discounts and upsells at checkout. While these can help, they rarely change growth trajectories on their own. That’s because AOV is often approached as a sales tactic.
In reality, it’s a buying logic problem.
Customers don’t increase their order value because they are pushed harder. They do so because the way products are presented makes higher-value purchases feel logical and complete.
Trap 1: Forcing bundles without context
Bundles that exist only to raise AOV often confuse customers or feel artificial. When the value of the bundle is not obvious, customers either ignore it or default to the lowest-priced option.
Trap 2: Relying only on discounts to lift basket size
Discounts may temporarily increase order value but often at the cost of margin and brand perception. Over time, they train customers to wait rather than buy.
Trap 3: Treating accessories as afterthoughts
Accessories are frequently positioned as optional add-ons instead of integral parts of the solution. This misses a major opportunity to increase both AOV and customer satisfaction.
For most ecommerce businesses, the AOV lever that moves the needle is anchoring the purchase around value rather than price.
This starts with identifying the anchor product. The anchor product sets expectations for what the customer is buying and why it matters. Once that anchor is clear, higher order values emerge naturally when complementary products are positioned as part of a complete solution.
Customers are far more willing to spend more when they feel they are solving their problem fully rather than being upsold additional items.
A value-led AOV strategy focuses on clarity and relevance.
It means:
Customers want confidence that everything works together and that nothing important is missing. When the buying experience reflects that logic, higher order values become a natural outcome.
A focused AOV strategy doesn’t aim to maximize every order. It aims to improve the quality of the average purchase.
It means:
When AOV is treated as part of the overall growth system rather than a standalone tactic, it compounds the impact of traffic and conversion improvements.
Traffic, conversion rate and average order value do not work in isolation. In high-performing ecommerce businesses, growth happens when all three are aligned and optimized around the same strategy.
More traffic will not fix a weak value proposition. Higher conversion rates will stall if the wrong audience is being acquired. Bigger baskets will not matter if demand quality is poor. Sustainable growth comes from identifying the one lever in each pillar that truly moves the business forward and focusing resources there.
The role of strategy is to replace random acts of digital marketing with deliberate decisions. To understand which traffic sources deserve more investment. To remove friction that blocks conversion. And to increase order value in ways that strengthen the customer relationship rather than inflate discounts.
When teams stop chasing every metric and start pulling the right three levers, growth becomes predictable, scalable and profitable.
That is the difference between simply doing more and building a system that actually scales.