Success Story: How CarCoverUniverse Achieved 2x Monthly Growth with OpenCart

There’s nothing more inspiring than a beautiful story of how one business experienced the dream of every entrepreneur - rapid growth.

We will show you the story behind the immense success behind CarCoverUniverse. It proves the fact that focusing on priorities such as finding multiple channels, doing the right research and investing wisely in promotions can make a world of a difference for your E-Commerce site.

Dive into the enticing experience that this OpenCart store owner is going through and take notes for the tactics you can apply to your online business as well. Enjoy!

Introduce your business with a few words

My name is Aaron Kushner, I'm the President of CarCoverUniverse.com. We supply vehicle covers for hundreds of thousands of vehicle models. Our site is unique in that we have a cover to fit virtually every car, truck, SUV, motorcycle and more. We've recently added camper covers and ATV/UTV covers, which have become some of our top sellers.

We've been online since 2015, and have experienced rapid growth month over month due to aggressive search engine optimization and paid ad campaigns. We're also an authorized distributor of the only car covers, hood covers, and sunshades officially licensed by both NASCAR® and Hendrick Motorsports®.

Tell us about your website and the tools you are using?

We use OpenCart for our E-commerce platform. It provides just about any functionality we can dream up, and processing daily orders is easy. The best part about OpenCart is that it's fully customizable. With a knowledgeable developer by your side, you can create almost any functionality you can think of.

We looked into other platforms like Magento and Shopify before choosing OpenCart. Magento was simply too labor- and cost-intensive for the type of website we were building, and while Shopify provided a nice platform, it did not offer the custom capabilities we were looking for. We also weren't interested in hosting our site on a 3rd party platform that we had limited control over.

So we ultimately went with OpenCart and it proved to be the right decision. We're using a bunch of plugins, including One-Page Checkout, AdWords Conversion Tracking, iBlog, and many small custom modifications.

The largest modification on the website is our "Year Make Model" database tool, which we had iSenseLabs put together for us. It's a massive module that provides the ability for our website to serve vehicle fitment data for 300,000+ vehicles, enabling customers to find the perfect cover for their specific vehicle.

This also allows us to populate Google Shopping with all of our products as well, which is proving to be immensely powerful. This modification has been very important to our core business, and has put us on a level playing field with the largest vehicle cover companies in the world. It's a great example of how far you can go with OpenCart customization.

What has been your growth for the past few years?

We launched CarCoverUniverse in 2015, and we've experienced consistent 2x growth month over month. This has been due to a combination of our PPC and SEO efforts, great customer service, and one of the largest selections of vehicle covers in the industry. We've experienced an increase of returning customers simply by offering fair pricing, great products, and taking care of our customers.

Over the last six months we've been focusing very strongly on on-site usability, and have improved our bounce rate from 80% to 20% site-wide, resulting in a significant increase in conversions as well. We have some big things planned for 2017 and we anticipate continued growth moving forward.

How did you promote your products online?

We run fairly robust PPC campaigns, and we're always working on our SEO efforts. We also promote on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. It's hard to track social metrics in comparison to the data that PPC gives us, but it's clearly beneficial to create a well-rounded presence online to promote a brand. This includes everything from social media engagement to PPC and SEO.  

We've recently added our 300,000-product catalog to Google Shopping, and this is quickly becoming a very important revenue channel for us as well because it serves our products to customers who may not have otherwise visited our website.

What’s your advice for new entrepreneurs and future store owners?

There's no substitute for hard work. If you work consistently on a goal, and make directional changes on an ongoing basis based on what the market is telling you, you will see success build over time.

Many people get swept away by the romance of setting up an E-commerce shop and anticipate instant sales. It's absolutely possible to create a successful business online - we've done it as well as many others - but my biggest piece of advice is to have a plan before you jump in.

Do your keyword research to ensure there's sufficient traffic for your product type, find products and suppliers that offer enough room to operate profitably, and create a great marketing plan.

Lastly, go where the eyes are. By that, I mean find out where your potential customers are online, and bring your products to them. Whether this is through banner ads, 3rd party marketplaces like Ebay, Amazon, or Google Shopping, or social media campaigns, you can always funnel people back to your site once you have their attention.

With these things in place, and with consistent work towards your goal, you'll be well on your way to operating a successful E-commerce company!

It’s Your Turn

If you are planning to step into the E-Commerce rollercoaster, there’s no better time than now. Nobody said that it’s easy, so you need to be prepared to handle the load if you want to reap the benefits. With the right partners and smart investments, you can be well on your way to achieving the entrepreneur’s dream.

 
 

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