Online storemarketing campaigns can be exciting to dream up—from eye-catching digital billboards in busy areas to Instagram ads with stunning product photography. But behind every creative idea is the need for measurement and accountability. If you invest $10,000 in advertising, you need clear proof it’s generating sufficient revenue.
Ecommerce ROI gives you the clarity you need to validate your marketing spend and keep your customer acquisition cost in check. With a simple calculation, you can gauge the impact of each investment and identify which efforts fuel growth.
Here’s how to calculate your ecommerce ROI, plus proven strategies for boosting your returns.
What is ecommerce ROI?
Ecommerce return on investment (ROI) is a metric measuring how much your online store makes relative to the costs of running your business. The term is often used for the ROI of ecommerce marketing campaigns, and helps you determine if your customer acquisition cost is sustainable. A high ROI means you’re efficiently acquiring new customers through your marketing efforts. A negative ROI indicates you’re overspending, losing money, and need to reassess your strategies.
How to calculate ecommerce ROI
To calculate ecommerce ROI, subtract your marketing expenses from net profit, divide by marketing expenses, and multiply the number by 100 to get a percentage.
Here’s the formula:
Ecommerce ROI (%) = [(Net profit − Marketing expenses) / Marketing expenses] × 100
A positive percentage means your marketing efforts are profitable, while a negative one means you’re spending more than you’re earning in returns.
For example, let’s say your online store has:
- Net profit: $3,250,000
- Marketing expenses: $780,000 (including ad spend, salaries, influencer campaigns, technology, and contractor costs)
The calculation would be:
Ecommerce ROI = [($3,250,000 − $780,000) / $780,000)] × 100
Ecommerce ROI = ($2,470,000 / $780,000) × 100
Ecommerce ROI = 317%
This means your marketing efforts yield a 317% return, or for every dollar spent on marketing, you get $3.17 back in profit.
10 strategies for boosting your ecommerce ROI
- Elevate your store’s SEO
- Fine-tune ad spend and performance
- Implement CRO strategies across your funnel
- Set up an email marketing program
- Craft a PR and press strategy
- Build an engaged social community
- Create a standout content marketing strategy
- Cultivate distribution partnerships
- Deploy AR tech for customer experiences
- Establish customer feedback systems
From smarter ad spending to a stronger content marketing strategy, here are 10 tactics to boost your online store’s ecommerce ROI:
1. Elevate your store’s SEO
Effective search engine optimization (SEO) improves your visibility in search results, making it easier for potential customers to find your ecommerce business without paying for ads. Optimizing your ecommerce site for search engines can boost ROI by reducing customer acquisition costs and attracting high-intent shoppers actively looking for your products.
To improve your ecommerce SEO:
- Refine product descriptions using relevant keywords.
- Create detailed category pages targeting specific search terms.
- Implement properly formatted URLs and meta descriptions.
- Build quality backlinks through partnerships and public relations.
- Ensure your site loads quickly on all devices.
Polysleep, a Montreal-based mattress company, successfully used local SEO by optimizing for location-specific terms. It targeted terms like “best mattress store in Laval” (a suburb of Montreal) while developing a broader content on sleep and product-related topics. This helped the brand capture a significant market share in its home province of Quebec before expanding to other regions.
2. Fine-tune ad spend and performance
Leaving your ads on autopilot is a sure way to drain a budget without driving customer growth. Whether you’re running search campaigns on Google ads or ads across Facebook, TikTok, and X, every one of your marketing channels needs ongoing attention to increase sales.
Monitor and adjust your campaigns by A/B testing variations, refining audience targeting, and improving platform bid strategies. Keep a close eye on conversion rates and reallocate spending to top-performing ads and audiences. When a campaign shows fatigue, refresh your audience segments, creative assets, and copy to maintain performance and prevent ad saturation.
3. Implement CRO strategies across your funnel
Conversion rate optimization (CRO) is a fancy way of saying “making it easier for visitors to become buyers.” By refining how visitors experience your store and purchase your products, you can increase conversions while getting more value from your existing traffic. Just a 1% increase in your conversion rate can lead to thousands in extra revenue without spending more on ads.
Here are key CRO tactics for ecommerce:
- Streamline your mobile checkout flow to reduce shopping cart abandonment.
- Feature user-generated reviews and social proof close to purchase buttons.
- Include photos, detailed descriptions, and product specs to help buyers make decisions.
- Create urgency with real-time stock levels and limited-time offers.
- Test different button placements, colors, and copy on product pages.
4. Set up an email marketing program
Email marketing connects you directly to prospective and existing customers, bypassing the unpredictability of advertising algorithms. Unlike social media, where platforms control your reach, your email list is truly portable and owned by you. This ensures direct communication with subscribers and lets you shape their customer experience on your terms.
Your email strategy should cover all the important moments that drive sales. This includes announcing new inventory drops, sending reminders about abandoned carts, and following up after purchases to build loyalty and ask for feedback. These messages, along with educational content like product care guides and customer case studies, help you stay connected with shoppers and encourage repeat purchases.
The Body Deli, a Palm Desert–based skin care brand, has built a list of over 100,000 subscribers. It sends thoughtfully crafted bi-weekly emails driving sales. The brand’s success shows consistent, high-quality email communication can outperform trendy, fleeting marketing channels.
5. Craft a PR and press strategy
A strong public relations (PR) strategy helps you reach your target audience without investing in paid advertising. Building genuine relationships with journalists at relevant publications can drive press coverage, creating lasting credibility. When pitching stories, focus on sharing data and trends that genuinely interest your ideal readers, rather than just promoting your ecommerce business.
Pluto Pillow, a custom sleep pillow company, turned to PR when it first opened for business, landing features in Business Insider, Fast Company, and The Wall Street Journal. Its Today show appearance alone generated thousands of sales. By dedicating three hours daily to personalized media pitches, it achieved a 30% to 35% response rate from journalists while keeping marketing costs minimal.
While traditional mainstream media remains influential, diversifying with podcasts, newsletters, and trade publications lets you reach niche audiences.
6. Build an engaged social community
Building a social media presence increasingly requires ad spend, with organic reach declining across platforms. For instance, Instagram’s organic reach declined sharply in 2024, though engagement rates actually improved.
However, compelling and authentic content—like behind-the-scenes factory snapshots and customer unboxing videos—can still break through the chatter and find your target audience. Video-first platforms like YouTube Shorts and TikTok let you create and upload content that spreads well beyond your follower count. Unlike traditional social media, where reach depends on your follower base, these platforms’ discovery features put your videos in front of entirely new audiences.
Whether you choose to invest in stunning photos, vertical videos, clever tweets, or all of the above, stick to a consistent posting schedule. It is also important to maintain a cohesive visual style and respond quickly to comments and DMs. This approach helps audiences build familiarity with your brand. Your business becomes a regular part of their daily scroll, increasing the likelihood they’ll engage with your content and share it.
The luxury knitwear brand GOGO Sweaters specializes in après ski fashion. It grew its following by maintaining a skiing and winter sports theme across its Instagram, capturing lifestyle photos to help customers see themselves in the products. GOGO’s focus on authentic, aspirational content helped secure partnerships with notable retailers like Free People and Revolve.
7. Create a standout content marketing strategy
Content marketing has gone from simple SEO-driven blog posts to a sophisticated strategy for building customer trust and solving real problems. Create videos, podcasts, and social tutorials to show your expertise and forge connections with your audience.
While content creation requires an initial investment, evergreen content—timeless, reusable content—can generate returns for years, making it cost-effective. In the long term, good content can reduce your reliance on paid ads. When someone searches “how to choose a water filter” and finds your detailed buying guide, that’s an organic click instead of a $2 paid search click.
Luxy Hair, a hair extensions company, built a YouTube channel with over three million subscribers by producing evergreen hair styling tutorials and educational videos. This approach attracted more than 250,000 customers before Luxy Hair was acquired by Beauty Industry Group, demonstrating how consistent, high-quality content can drive sales growth.
8. Cultivate distribution partnerships
Smart distribution partnerships get your products in front of new customers by teaming up with other businesses. Instead of spending to find new customers, you tap into your partners’ existing customer base and brand trust, turning their website visits into sales for your brand. This could mean getting your skin care line into Sephora, having your hot sauce on restaurant menus, or selling sustainable bedding through eco-friendly marketplaces.
To form impactful brand collaborations, investigate your competitors’ partners and identify brands you admire to spark ideas. Seek complementary fits that aren’t direct competitors and start small to build up to larger collaborations. Something as simple as a cold email could kickstart a lucrative distribution deal.
Here’s how three brands expanded through partnerships:
- Bite Toothpaste grew beyond direct-to-consumer (DTC) by partnering with Erewhon, bringing their sustainable oral care products to eco-conscious grocery shoppers.
- Millennial Lotería, a modern take on a traditional Latin American card game, went from selling out their initial 1,000-unit run in four days to securing major retail placement in Target stores nationwide.
- Fly By Jing expanded its Sichuan sauce and condiment line from ecommerce into retailers and restaurants, letting diners experience their products in dishes before buying.
9. Deploy AR tech for customer experiences
Incorporating technologies like augmented reality (AR) into your customer journey can create shopping experiences that set your brand apart.
AR tech lets shoppers virtually try on clothing, place furniture in their homes, or test makeup shades on their skin tone. This interactive approach improves the online shopping experience and reduces return rates by helping customers make more confident buying decisions. Shopify’s built-in AR features make it easy to create immersive, life-like experiences, turning any space into a virtual showroom for your products.
To start, convert one or two bestselling items into AR-ready files through a low-cost 3D service. Then upload them using Shopify’s AR tools and add a “View in your space” button beneath the product images. Test it on your phone, include a short note on how shoppers can activate it, and after a few weeks, check if it boosts sales or helps prevent returns.
10. Establish customer feedback systems
Rather than chasing general market trends, focus on what your customers tell you. Customer feedback helps you make improvements that directly impact your bottom line, from fine-tuning product features to refining your checkout process. Establish multiple feedback channels—like customer satisfaction surveys, reviews, and social listening—to ensure you capture insights that keep you in touch with buyer needs.
Lulus, a fashion brand now generating a 10-figure revenue, has its leadership team review every single customer exit survey. This allows them to make quick adjustments. The commitment to customer feedback has helped the company maintain strong growth for more than 25 years while making customer-focused decisions, including opening a physical retail store.
Boosting ecommerce ROI FAQ
What is a good ROI for ecommerce?
A good ROI for an ecommerce store varies by industry and business model, but generally, you want to earn at least $2 to $3 in revenue for every dollar you spend on marketing—an ROI of 200% to 300%.
How do you calculate ROI for ecommerce?
To calculate ecommerce ROI, subtract your marketing expenses from your net profit, and divide by your marketing expenses. Then, multiply by 100 to calculate your percentage return.
How do you boost your ecommerce ROI?
You can boost your ecommerce ROI by reducing marketing waste and putting targeted strategies in place, like elevating your SEO, fine-tuning ad performance, implementing conversion optimization, building an engaged social community, and developing strategic distribution partnerships.
