Ecommerce is one of the world’s biggest growth engines, with global online retail sales expected to reach $6.8 trillion by 2028. Keeping up with this pace requires solid ecommerce practices and mechanics. Many businesses aren’t there yet: more than 70% of online carts are abandoned for reasons that range from a lack of stock during the holiday shopping season to overly complicated checkout processes. Successful businesses build their products and systems, then tweak them as things change.

Below, we’ll explain how to scale an ecommerce business successfully.

What’s in this article?

• What are the foundations of scaling ecommerce businesses?
  
• How can your products and inventory help you grow?
  
• How do checkouts affect scaling?
  
• How can you enhance customer acquisition and retention?
  
• How can technology accelerate ecommerce growth?
  
• What financial strategies support sustainable ecommerce scaling?
  
• How Stripe Payments can help
  

What are the foundations of scaling ecommerce businesses?

Ecommerce businesses that scale successfully have a few things in common. First, scaling an ecommerce business begins with the product itself. Sustainable growth requires strong unit economics: a high gross margin, clear product-market fit, and a repeatable path to meet customer demand.

Next, you need a reliable yet flexible supply chain that supports demand surges without eroding margin. That involves dependable sourcing, resilient logistics, and transparent timelines and costs. If your margin collapses when acquisition costs rise or your fulfillment costs peak as volume increases, scaling becomes self-defeating.

Then, you have to ensure your financials keep pace by understanding fixed versus variable costs, modeling how they behave at different volumes, and planning your cash flow.

Finally, your marketing needs to scale properly. Businesses that grow sustainably treat acquisition as a complete system rather than a series of campaigns. They track cohort performance and reinvest efficiently. When you’re happy with your product, supply chain, financials, and marketing plan—and they work well together—you’ll have a solid foundation to build on.

How can your products and inventory help you grow?

Scaling products and inventory hinges on knowing which products to invest in, how to keep them in stock, and when to let someone else handle the logistics.

Here are some tips for managing your products and inventory.

Expand product lines strategically

Rank your products by contribution margin and speed to find the ones that sell quickly, profitably, and repeatedly: these are your growth engines. Then, look for natural extensions: new colorways, bundles, or add-ons that use the same supply chain and fulfillment flow. You want tight product lines that move quickly so they’re easier to forecast and fund.

Build an inventory system that scales with you

A real-time view of inventory across channels brings control and confidence. Use data to set realistic service levels: your core products should maintain fill rates between 85% and 95%, while slower movers can run leaner. Then, automate stock updates and reorders so that no one is stuck chasing spreadsheets. If you see drops in accuracy or lead time reliability, it’s time to update your setup.

Broaden coverage with flexible fulfillment

Third-party logistics partners can help you expand coverage and reduce shipping costs as you scale, while dropshipping allows you to test new categories without tying up cash. Many businesses blend both tactics, stocking their top individual products while outsourcing the niche ones.

How do checkouts affect scaling?

Capturing existing customer intent is important for scaling, but nearly 20% of shoppers abandon carts if checkout is too complicated.

Convert interest into revenue with a simple, predictable checkout:

• Use fewer steps and fewer forms: Every extra click or field adds friction. Ask only for what’s necessary, use autofill wherever possible, and combine shipping and billing screens. Reduce errors in real time with instant field validation.

• Let customers choose how to pay: Offer cards, digital wallets like Apple Pay and Google Pay, and local payment methods.

• Keep things fast and clear: Display shipping costs and delivery times, and build confidence by showing secure payment icons and online security indicators such as Transport Layer Security (TLS).

Some tools apply these best practices, payment options, and secure payment systems automatically. But regardless of platform, the goal is the same: to make buying effortless.

How can you enhance customer acquisition and retention?

Growing sustainably means bringing in new customers while increasing the value of the ones you already have. Companies that scale well use data to guide efficient acquisition and strong customer retention.

Build an acquisition engine, not a campaign

Successful ecommerce teams treat growth as a continuous feedback loop. They test their advertising quickly, refine their landing pages for clarity and speed, and direct their marketing spend to what delivers long-term returns on investment. Meanwhile, outside channels synchronize to bring people in: search engine optimization (SEO) converts existing demand, paid social and influencers create awareness, and emails and content drive repeat intent.

Make retention the growth multiplier

Once customers find you, ensure they want to stick around. Offer a product that solves a real problem, then build usefulness and reliability into your business model. Prioritize a positive ecommerce customer experience, including a simple checkout page.

Start with the basics:

• Deliver consistently: Reliable fulfillment, responsive support, and transparent policies create trust, which is the real conversion driver for second and third purchases.

• Add value over time: Instead of upselling, use data to help customers get more out of what they’ve already bought.

• Reward genuine engagement: Loyalty programs and personalized offers should make customers feel appreciated rather than strong-armed. When recognition matches a customer’s real relationship with the brand, they tend to stay.

Businesses earn loyalty by making their customers’ lives better, which turns one-time buyers into a durable customer base.

How can technology accelerate ecommerce growth?

Technology supports growth by shrinking the gaps between demand, data, and decision-making. The best teams use tech to sync their systems so they can react in real time.

Here’s what technology can help you do.

Unify your data

Disconnected platforms make it difficult to scale. Integrating ecommerce, customer relationship management (CRM), payments, and fulfillment creates a unified view of customer behavior and cash flow, which helps pricing, inventory, and marketing decisions shift instantly. Stripe Terminal, for example, gathers online and in-person payments into one system for simpler reconciliation, forecasting, and performance tracking.

Automate decisions that improve margins

Machine learning tools can predict demand, trigger reorders, and adjust ad spend dynamically based on real-time conversion and inventory data. AI-driven product recommendations can lift average order values by double digits when they’re trained on customer behavior.

Build for speed

Flexible cloud infrastructure, global content delivery networks, and refined checkout flows can prevent downtime and shorten the distance between idea and execution. When teams can launch tests, campaigns, and products without running into bottlenecks, growth compounds.

What financial strategies support sustainable ecommerce scaling?

Many growing ecommerce businesses hit a point where revenue is strong, but cash is tied up in inventory, ad platforms, or unpaid invoices. Scaling sustainably means improving cash flow.

The following strategies can help you keep up with cash needs.

Balance liquidity with speed

Know how long every dollar stays tied up, from inventory purchase to customer payment. Shorten that cycle to fund your growth. Negotiate supplier terms, automate payouts, and use short-term, performance-based capital when momentum outpaces cash.

Widen your margins

Expansion multiplies both profit and waste. Rather than use averages, track contribution margins specifically by product and channel. Use scale to renegotiate freight and fulfillment costs, and monitor how discounting or returns affect margin. Each order should strengthen your unit economics.

Turn finances into a live system

Automate reconciliation and reporting so your cash, costs, and performance update in real time. When finances move at the same pace as operations, decisions can drive growth.

How Stripe Payments can help

Stripe Payments provides a unified, global payment solution that helps any business—from scaling startups to global enterprises—accept payments online, in person, and around the world.

Stripe Payments can help you:

• Optimize your checkout experience: Create a frictionless customer experience and save thousands of engineering hours with prebuilt payment UIs, access to 125+ payment methods, and Link, a wallet built by Stripe.

• Expand to new markets faster: Reach customers worldwide and reduce the complexity and cost of multicurrency management with cross-border payment options, available in 195 countries across 135+ currencies.

• Unify payments in person and online: Build a unified commerce experience across online and in-person channels to personalize interactions, reward loyalty, and grow revenue.

• Improve payment performance: Increase revenue with a range of customizable, easy-to-configure payment tools, including no-code fraud protection and advanced capabilities to improve authorization rates.

• Move faster with a flexible, reliable platform for growth: Build on a platform designed to scale with you, with 99.999% uptime and industry-leading reliability.

Learn more about how Stripe Payments can power your online and in-person payments, or get started today.