What are the essential elements of an E-commerce business? After years of doing marketing at SHOPLINE and helping thousands of merchants grow their businesses, we've come up with the following growth stack to help E-commerce merchants build and growth their businesses from 0 to 100. (It's currently V2 and the overall framework is still work-in-progress!)

Elements of a Successful E-commerce Business:

Product

value proposition
page design / user experience
product presentation (images, videos, description, copywriting, packaging)
promotional campaigns
customer service

People

acquisition channels
buyer personas
user accounts / membership programs
buyer intent
customer lifecycle

Trust

branding
reviews
online presence / media exposure
partners
after-sales support
service consistency
platform (payment and logistics)

Cross-Elements:

International
A/B Testing & Growth Framework
Customer Loyalty

Acquisition Channels:

search engine marketing (CPC)
- AdWords
- Bing,
- Yahoo
display ads
- Facebook
- Instagram
- Snapchat
- GDN
search engine optimisation (SEO)
content marketing
social media marketing
- Facebook
- Instagram
remarketing
- regular remarketing
- dynamic product remarketing
email marketing
influencer marketing (targeting bloggers)
affiliate marketing
offline marketing
partnerships & business development
PR
viral marketing
community building
trade shows
unconventional public relations
engineering as marketing
existing platforms
offline events

Analytics & Insights:

conversion funnel analytics
product analytics
inventory analytics
keyword analytics
content analytics
customer analytics
competitor analytics
industry analytics
site usage (heatmaps)
user sentiments (NPS)
brand / social mentions

Archives:

E-commerce Growth Stack V1