How to Sell More Through Your eCommerce Store

To sell more through an eCommerce store, you need to complete six tasks before thinking about promotions: define the sales process, get to know the buyer, collect data in a CRM, solve the integrations, implement an inbound marketing methodology and align marketing with the sales team. None of them requires a new platform, and all of them determine how much the platform you already have will deliver.

Picture the monthly meeting of a marketing manager whose online store has been live for a year. The platform is modern, the site is elegant and traffic is growing. Even so, sales are not moving at the pace she presented to the committee when she asked for the budget. The commercial director says the leads he receives are poor quality. The technology lead answers that the system runs without errors. And the customer, who is the one paying for all of this, gets lost somewhere between the ad and the cart. Nobody is entirely wrong, and that is precisely the problem.

Companies have begun to move their commercial processes from traditional channels to digital ones, and eCommerce has become so relevant that it is now the channel of choice for selling products and services. However, adoption and results are not as fast as marketing managers might expect. The gap is rarely in the catalog or the design. It lies in the preparatory work, and that work is summarized in the six tasks we carry out time and again whenever we create a new eCommerce project or advise a client on an existing platform.

There is an economic reason to take them seriously. The Baymard Institute, which has studied the checkout experience in online stores for years, estimates that the average large site can gain a 35.26% increase in its conversion rate if it fixes the checkout problems that can be solved through design alone, according to its checkout usability report and benchmark. In other words, a good part of the available growth does not require attracting more visitors but serving better the ones who have already arrived.

1. Define the process

It is important to define the commercial process you want to automate. The eCommerce platform will automate the process you define, but if you do not know your own process, your platform will automate the default programming that comes with the system and not the one that suits your business. It is the difference between adapting the tool to the business and adapting the business to the tool.

Tools such as SIPOC, As-Is/To-Be analysis and the customer journey map will help you gather requirements, understand your processes and improve them. A simple exercise is to ask one person from sales, one from logistics and one from service to draw, separately, what happens from the moment the customer clicks buy until they receive the product. The differences among the three drawings point to the business rules that nobody has written down.

2. Define your buyer persona

One of the most powerful and highest-impact exercises for a business is to carry out the diagnosis of its buyer persona. This exercise defines the specific profile of your buyer and helps you understand which products you should sell to that type of customer.

For example, if you believe your buyer persona is a 25-year-old, describe every consideration about that person, such as where they work, how much they earn, what activities they do during the week and what their metrics are at work. With that profile you can estimate their salary, expenses and interests, and you can understand whether a product may seem cheap or expensive to them, and whether it is better to communicate on Facebook or LinkedIn, among other decisions. When done well, the buyer persona stops being a marketing document and becomes the criterion for choosing the assortment, the price and the tone of every message.

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3. Collect data in a CRM

Your eCommerce store is at a major disadvantage if it is not integrated with a CRM. A CRM helps you extract data and gather information about your prospects and customers, such as their product needs and purchase history. That information is the raw material for any effort to sell more, because it lets you offer what each customer is likely to need instead of what the company wants to move.

The consulting firm McKinsey has documented the size of that opportunity. In its analysis The value of getting personalization right or wrong is multiplying, personalization most often drives a revenue lift of between 10% and 15%, with results that the firm says range from roughly 5% to roughly 25% depending on the sector and the execution. Personalization leaders generate 40% more revenue from those activities than average players, and 71% of consumers expect personalized interactions. These figures cannot be taken as a promise for a particular case, but they serve as an order of magnitude to understand why the most advanced commercial teams invest in their customer data first, and why a customer who does not receive a relevant offer starts looking at the competition. Without a CRM that consolidates who bought what, when and through which channel, personalization is reduced to putting the customer's name in the subject line of an email.

Keep in mind that a CRM automates marketing, sales and service processes, and that traditionally these three modules are sold separately. Know your commercial process and define which modules are most suitable for your business.

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There are many options on the market. If your company has complex processes, a system such as Salesforce may be your best option because of its programming and integration capabilities. If your company has standard, non-complex processes and does not have a large technology department, or does not have one at all, software such as HubSpot is possibly your best option. The decision depends more on the complexity of your processes and the capacity of your team than on the fame of the brand.

4. Solve the integrations

Integrations are key. Every eCommerce store must be integrated with inventory, databases, CRM, invoicing, banks, shipping and analytics. If an eCommerce store does not have a clear technology architecture and does not integrate all the elements needed for the purchase process to flow, its chances of success decrease considerably.

Baymard's data on the reasons for cart abandonment shows how much weight this point carries. According to its compilation of cart abandonment statistics, 40% of those who abandon, not counting those who were only browsing, do so because extra costs such as shipping, taxes and fees are too high, and 20% because delivery is too slow. Both problems are solved with well-built integrations that calculate the total cost transparently and show real delivery times based on inventory and the logistics operator.

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Draw the processes, identify the integrations you must build at each stage and then define the systems and integrations architecture your eCommerce store needs. Once the drawing exists, conversations with vendors change, because you stop buying modules and start buying connections with a clear purpose.

5. Implement inbound marketing

An eCommerce platform will not generate sales on its own. You need to implement a methodology that helps increase traffic to the site and creates the flows that generate qualified opportunities and close them. Consider the inbound marketing methodology as one of your company's best commercial tools. If you want to review its fundamentals, the article What is inbound marketing is a good starting point. This methodology will also give your platform monthly maintenance, because it forces a recurring review of content, offers and results.

Inbound works because it serves the buyer at the moment they research, not when the company decides to advertise. A store that publishes buying guides, comparisons and answers to the frequent questions of its ideal buyer attracts qualified visits at a lower cost, and converts them with offers and reminders suited to their stage. If the store handles complex inventory, it is also worth reviewing the 8 inventory management tips for your eCommerce store, because nothing damages a campaign as much as advertising a product that is out of stock.

6. Talk to your salespeople

There is a methodology called SMARKETING that aligns sales and marketing requirements to achieve commercial objectives. Most commercial departments do not have joint metrics, and this creates a gap between marketing goals and sales goals. It is the source of the discomfort in the meeting with which this article began.

It is important that marketing and sales sit down and define joint metrics, such as what a qualified lead is and what it is not, the average close rate by leads, sales assertiveness and the average sale per category, among others. To begin, it is worth answering a set of key questions together.

The first is what the business unit is, that is, which service or product is sold. Then, the average deal size, or how much a sale is worth in year 1, and the average sales cycle, or how long it takes to close a deal. Next come the typical close rate, or how many deals close for every ten qualified opportunities worked, and the Quality Lead Ratio, which answers how many of the ten leads that marketing delivers are qualified for sales, that is, able to do business with the company. This leads to the three calculations that organize the plan. The new revenue target the business unit is meant to generate, the number of deals that must be closed given the average size and that revenue, and the potential customers that must be generated according to the proportion of quality leads.

A numerical example shows the value of the exercise. If a business unit needs 600 thousand dollars of new revenue, the average deal is worth 20 thousand and one in four qualified opportunities closes, 30 closed deals are needed and therefore 120 qualified opportunities. If only three out of every ten leads that marketing delivers are qualified, the target for marketing is not 120 but 400 leads. Before that calculation, each area worked with a different goal. Afterward, both work with a single one.

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Conclusion

eCommerce stores are complex systems that must be part of an architecture. They are not a simple website. If a vendor offers you a website with payment functionality, rule them out, because they do not know how complex an eCommerce store is and should not be your advisor. Do not forget to document the business process, because the process defines how to develop your eCommerce store.

Your platform will have a lot to do with the success of your eCommerce store. Consult the Gartner Magic Quadrant for commerce platforms, where you can see which are the best platforms. The most recent edition, published on November 3, 2025 according to the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Digital Commerce listing, evaluates 19 vendors, including Adobe, Salesforce and SAP, based on their ability to execute and the completeness of their vision. And remember that an eCommerce store does not have to be expensive. Even Magento, which is rated one of the best eCommerce platforms in the world, has a free version and a paid enterprise version.

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What this means for the C-level

For the chief executive, these six tasks are a way to protect the investment. An eCommerce store with no defined process, no customer data and no agreement between marketing and sales is an open shop that nobody knows how to make perform. For the commercial director, SMARKETING turns blame-driven discussions into a conversation about shared numbers. For the chief financial officer, the calculation of leads, deals and expected revenue makes it possible to budget the channel based on the demand that needs to be generated, not on intuition. And for the chief technology officer, the map of processes and integrations is the input that prevents parallel projects with incompatible objectives.

It is also worth recognizing a common risk, which is starting with the tool. When the CRM or automation platform is purchased first, the strategy tends to be adapted to what the tool allows. The right order is the one in this article, which moves from the process and the customer toward data, integrations, lead capture and commercial alignment.

How to measure whether the six tasks are working

Carrying out the tasks is not enough if nobody measures their effect. A good practice is to set, for each one, an indicator reviewed every month in the same meeting where marketing and sales review their shared goals. For the process, the time an order takes from payment to delivery. For the buyer persona, the conversion rate of campaigns aimed at that profile compared with general campaigns. For the CRM, the percentage of customers with a complete history and the repurchase rate. For integrations, the number of orders that come in without human intervention. For inbound, qualified traffic and cost per opportunity. And for SMARKETING, the proportion of leads accepted by sales.

The point is not to build a complicated dashboard. With six figures and a monthly conversation, management quickly detects which of the tasks has weakened and where it is worth investing the next effort. The stores that manage to sell more over time are usually the ones that turn that review into routine, not the ones that launch more campaigns.

Execution tips

Before starting an eCommerce project, have the figure for your company's inventory quantity, information on the systems you have and, if possible, some commercial processes at hand. That preparation saves weeks of requirements gathering.

An eCommerce store must be updated every month. It is not an investment to make if you are not willing to give it the same or more maintenance than an office or physical store. That discipline includes reviewing prices, content, integrations, security and results, and it is what distinguishes the stores that keep growing from those that stagnate after launch.

How ICX helps

ICX Consulting supports companies in these six tasks, from the commercial process map to the integration of the store with the CRM and the alignment between marketing and sales. Our B2C eCommerce practice and our marketing automation services work on your own data, and the CRM and Customer Experience Technology Selection Toolkit helps you decide which platform fits.

Frequently asked questions

Where do I start if my store is already online and does not sell as expected?

With the process and the data. Review the customer journey from the ad to delivery, measure where customers drop off and compare those figures with the goals agreed by marketing and sales. Almost always a leak appears in checkout, in shipping costs or in lead quality.

Do I need a CRM if my store is small?

Yes, even a simple one. Without a record of who buys, what they buy and when, it is impossible to personalize offers or measure repurchase. The complexity of the CRM should match that of your processes and the capacity of your team.

What is a qualified lead?

It is a contact able to do business with the company, with budget, need and authority to decide. The exact definition must be agreed between marketing and sales, because the goals of both teams depend on it.

How often should I update my eCommerce store?

Every month. Updates include the platform, security, content and integrations, and they should be budgeted as a recurring expense, just like the maintenance of a physical store.

Selling more online is the result of orderly work that almost always happens before launch and is sustained after it. If you want to review which of these six tasks will give you the most return in your store, talk to an ICX consultant and start with a realistic plan.