This is the most comprehensive guide to learn how eCommerce case studies can help you start your own eCommerce business.
The best part?
I’m going to show you eight case studies that can inspire you to skyrocket your e-commerce business.
In short: if you want build a successful eCommerce business, you’ll love this guide.
Ready?
Let’s get started.
1. [eCommerce Case Study #1] Raw Generation increased sales from $8000 to $96000 per month by exploring a new sales channel
Raw Generation is a company that aims to make the consumption of raw and unprocessed food easier. This includes food made from fresh and natural fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, spices and herbs. They provide juices and smoothies made from real plant based ingredients. The goal is to make the supply of food – with no artificial additives or preservatives – more convenient.
Initially the founder of the startup, Jessica used social media to market her products. After having mediocre success with social media, she realized that she needed something different. After about 6 months of trying, she was introduced to a Deal Site, Lifebooker.
Almost instantly after shifting to Lifebooker, her sales saw a substantial rise. A majority of her sales used to come from deal sites anyway. However, she quit using other deal sites after Lifebooker came into play.
Take Home Message
Figure out your options then critically assess which one works the best for you. Direct your focus towards the option that generates more sales. If one option is not working out, it is wiser to quit and try another.
2. [eCommerce Case Study #2] Neon Poodle Grew Revenue By 232% By Expanding Across 3 Continents
Neon Poodle was formed when its founder, Sammy Gibson was looking for a customized sign for her daughter’s room. When she failed to find it, she took it as an opportunity to fill this gap by bringing her own neon signs to the market that were easily customizable and safe for children’s rooms. Neon poodle soon became the number one e commerce store in Australia selling neon signs.
After a while, the company noticed the Australian market was reaching a saturation point. Therefore, they planned to expand their business internationally. In an attempt to expand to Europe and Australia, their business saw many difficulties related to payments, logistics and monitoring area wise sales.
They explored their options and targeted the couriers that other companies worked with. They used stripe to handle international payments without additional fees. Doing all this, their business became smoother in the international market and saw a 232% growth in sales.
Take Home Message
When starting out an ecommerce store, it is better to target a niche of customers. After reaching a saturation point, start growing your business by expanding your target market. If you are targeting one area or a state right now, why not try and test out some marketing campaigns for other states? If you think your business has grown well in your country, you can start expanding the business into other countries.
3. [eCommerce Case Study #3] Ministry of Supply raised over $420,000 on Kickstarter through word of mouth
Ministry of Supply is an apparel brand that has revolutionized the fashion industry by integrating space tech with clothing and apparel. Their products use technology of Phase-Changing materials from NASA spacesuits. This technology helps regulate the temperature of the human body. They used this in their flagship product, called the Apollo.
They ran two kickstarter campaigns that proved heavily successful. Their funds target exceeded their wildest expectations. How they managed to hit those numbers? Let’s see. They started approaching tech blogs relevant to their products using customized emails. This helped them raise $30,000 within five days of their campaign.
The key here is, they started with small blogs instead of directly targeting big blogs like TechCrunch.
After featuring on small blogs, TechCrunch and Forbes featured them too which skyrocketed their funding to $400,000
Take Home Message
Start small. Everyone wants attention from big bloggers, but you need to have achieved something meaningful for them to feature you. This is the case, even if it is a publication with many small blogs. If Ministry of Supply pitched directly to the bigger blog sites, they might not have featured MoS.
4. [eCommerce Case Study #4] Diamond Candles Gained 293,000 Followers
Diamond Candles is an e-commerce company that sells scented candles. Their unique selling point of their company is that their candles have a ring at the bottom. The excitement or redeeming the prize in the end attracted more and more people to buy.
They used social media and referrals to market their business rather than paying and buying ads online. Their strategy included using real photos contributed by their customers, which had a large part to play in their success. This way they did not have to spend money on ads, while the pictures did their marketing for them.
They created an environment that encouraged their customers to share more and more photos. They did so by adding a call to action on the candle to encourage customers to post photos of the ring on social media. Announcing giveaways for those who shared the pictures encouraged more customers to share. Finally, they shared all of their customers’ pictures, which spread the impression that it was a normal practice to share a picture of your Diamond Candle or the ring that came with it.
Take Home Message
Your customers are an asset. They can contribute a lot in terms of increased sales by word of mouth marketing. You just need to find a unique method to incentivize them to share your message across.
However, the first strategy for you should be to sell a product that is a conversation starter. If you were able to do so, you would not have to spend on marketing. The second lesson from the case is to utilize the power of visuals to share your product around. When you find a way to do this, your marketing takes care of itself, while you handle the rest of the matters of your business.
5. [eCommerce Case Study #5] MixedMade, A Startup Consisting Of Two Friends, Sold 170k Worth Of Products In 10 Months
MixedMade was a startup company co-founded by two friends. They tried making a variety of delicious sauces with just honey and chilli peppers. They have succeeded in growing their small startup to a highly successful e-commerce store that now expands into retail industry too. Their first product, Bees Knees Spicy Honey, combined raw honey and chili peppers to create the most versatile hot sauce ever. But being unique is not enough if you want to make a dent in the market.
They raised their first $1,000 by emailing their own contacts asking them to share their product on their Facebook pages. Afterwards they listed down potential press targets that could help market their brand through their platforms and pursued them aggressively. This turned out to be huge source of success for them. Started from smaller sites, they caught attention of bigger sites like CNBC. This boosted their sales.
Take Home Message
MixedMade is the perfect example of a business that serves as an inspiration on how easy it is to launch and succeed in something of your own.
For gaining media attention, start small. Target being featured on the smaller sites first, and slowly make your way up to the top. You will automatically attract attention of the bigger platforms if your product has something unique to offer.
6. [eCommerce Case Study #6] Dewalt Saw 17% Increase In Click-Throughs Just By Changing Its “Buy Now” Button
Dewalt is a brand from Black & Decker that makes power tools and hand tools. They also sell their products on their website.
They were testing their call-to-actions on the different pages on their sites. Their aim was to direct more visitors to their vendors landing pages to increase sales. In testing, they changed the “Buy Now” button from the product page to “Shop Now”.
Another test that they ran was to change the label of “find a dealer” link on their homepage. They tried three variations, “Where to Buy”, “Find a Dealer” (original) and “nearby retailers”
There are various CTAs on multiple pages of the website that are important for the purchase decision of the customer. This experiment showed them that the original “Buy Now” CTA was better in terms that it drove 17% more customers to click on the CTA. This also resulted in a six-figure positive change in the revenues.
Similarly in the other experiment, the variation, “Nearby Retailers” drew 4.1% more clicks than the others. The team believes this could be because the rest of the two options could imply locating online retailers, whereas “nearby retailers” indicated the dealer’s physical location.
Take Home Message
This experiment showed that factors as small as the words used on the website or a CTA button can have a serious impact on the business goals. Therefore, it is vital to keep testing out your options and see which ones work the best for you. Having done this, try to come up with a reasoning for the results and implement similar strategies on the rest of the pages of your website.
7. [eCommerce Case Study #7] How Owen And Fred Built As A Menswear Brand
Owen & Fred was founded with the aim to provide high quality men’s accessories along with being affordable. The founder wanted American-made accessories to be available at cheaper prices. So he created this company that made great fabric products and helped others do so too. Owen & Fred made 35% of their revenue from repeat orders, which is amazing compared to the industry they are in. This was made possible because of their incredible marketing strategies coupled with an amazing line of products. They made their marketing campaigns and the products an entirely unique experience for the customers.
This made them emerge as a well-respected brand quite quickly. They also were featured in many blogs and articles and got press attention.
Take Home Message
To make an ecommerce business successful, both your product and the marketing need to be amazing. If the product is great but the customers do not know about it, you are not doing a good job, and the product will not sell in the very first place. On the other hand, if the product is bad but you spend too much on marketing, it will not be a sustainable business since you will not have any repeat customers.
Therefore, your product should speak for itself; it should be look good and perform better. Then you need to have a killer marketing strategy to get customers to talk about your product.
Over To You
I hope you enjoyed the eCommerce case studies. Utilize these top tips to take your e-commerce company to the next level of sales success!
Now I would like to hear from you: which eCommerce case study has inspired you? Tweet @MikeSchiemer #BootstrapBusiness along with this article link with your thoughts and experiences in eCommerce sales and marketing.
I hope you enjoyed this blog post about successful and inspiring ecommerce stories that your online retail business can learn from.
Interested in more articles about ecommerce and success stories?
Read Related Resources:
• Top New Ecommerce Store Ideas
• 5 Stories Of Epic Entrepreneurs Overcoming Obstacles
More Bootstrap Business Blog Below