How do you grow a store without a big advertising budget?

By being findable and by keeping who you get. Search, an owned list and a repeat purchase are the three growth channels that do not scale with spend.

Why the answer is what it is

In practice: one page for each real question your buyers ask, an email or push list built at the order, and a reason to come back within the repurchase window. Slower than advertising and it compounds, which advertising never does.

What this looks like in practice

Traffic is the expensive problem and conversion is the cheap one. Doubling a 1% conversion rate is usually easier than doubling visitors, and costs nothing per month.

Retention beats acquisition on every measure, and almost every store spends the other way round.

The slowest part of most mobile stores is images nobody resized. It is the most common performance problem and the easiest to fix.

Where a mobile app comes into it

Push notifications are the one growth channel you do not rent. Every other route to a customer is paid for again each time.