It’s no surprise to know that today e-commerce sales are exploding.
However, there are so many online stores out there, how can you drive traffic to your e-commerce website?
It’s not rocket science. If you really follow these 9 below best practices.
Yes, today in this article, we’ve compiled a list of the 9 best practices to drive non-stop eCommerce website traffic.
So, that you can build upon your current success and start competing with your rivals.
9 Best practices to Drive e-commerce Website Traffic
1. Invest in Google Ad Words
This is one of the fastest ways to increase traffic to your eCommerce site.
However, Google Ad Words is a pay-per-click advertising method.
This means that you only have to pay for your ad whenever someone clicks on it, views your video, or calls your business from Google ads.
Furthermore, this helps in driving tons of potential customers to your eCommerce site. There are different ways to take advantage of this advertising method:
- Display your eCommerce store ads in Google search results
- Show text or banner ads on websites, in Gmail, or in apps
- Demonstrate video ads on YouTube and target your customers based on their demographics or interests.
- Promote your eCommerce website across Android and IoS mobile devices.
On the other hand, it’s important to accurately track the performance of your running ad campaigns and manage them to increase your ROI.
For proper ads tracking, you can also add UTM parameters to your landing page URL.
Lastly, set your pay-per-click price before it goes live, so that you never cross your allotted advertising budget.
2. Create a Sales Campaign
Another best practice to drive traffic to your e-commerce website is creating an exceptional sales campaign.
You can create a sales campaign that can either be a banner, lightbox, or ribbon leading to the discounted products.
To get you started, here are some attractive campaign ideas you can deploy:
- Offer a competition or giveaway: Everyone loves being rewarded. You can offer an incentive where your audience can receive free shipping or a coupon on their first purchase if they sign up for your mailing list. This on the other hand motivates them to enter your site, and later to shop.
- Create a sense of urgency: Whether it’s free shipping until the end of the month or announcing an enormous upcoming sale, urgency is the only method that will definitely drive huge visitors to your site. For example Market like “Hurry up!!! Few days you will Miss Out Your Favorites!!!”
- BOGO (buy one, get one) deals: Clothes, hats, shoes: You name it. Most of us are more likely to buy anything when we know we’re getting something for free. At the very least, we’ll come to check out the website to look at what that deal is all about.
- Create a coupon available on your website only: Who doesn’t choose a good deal? Coupons are one of the best ways to attract customers in, whether it’s 15% off or 50% off. Therefore, by making the coupon accessible strictly through your website, you can definitely invite huge guests to come to your way and find themselves shopping.
However, just creating a sale is only step one. Without the right promotion plan to back this action up, you will end up running down lost roads.
That’s why marketing promotion comes into play. Whether you optimize your advertising efforts via email marketing, social media, or any other efforts, promotion is very important to your sales success.
So, are you ready to leverage more e-commerce website traffic? Then, combine the efforts of a creative campaign with the following promotional tips, and you’ll have the formula for success.
3. Premium Content
We all know content is the king. If you publish consistent, valuable, and highly engaging content, it drives tons of traffic to your eCommerce site.
Unfortunately, though 92% of content marketers believe blog content is an important aspect to the success of their business.
However, only half of them have an established method of producing highly engaging content on their websites.
Your eCommerce store is not just about selling products and services. In fact, most of your audience expects more than being a retail shop to purchase from.
That’s why we recommend you to start a WordPress blog. This is a great way to give your customers more of what they want.
Furthermore, great and informative content gives your buyers a reason to come back to your shop more than once.
Therefore, always consider publishing high-quality product reviews, tutorials, news pieces, and other informative articles. This will help in their purchase decisions and encourage people to visit and buy from your e-commerce site.
It is reported that 84% of millennials make their buying-decision after reading the user-generated content.
4.Leverage SEO
If you decided to drive huge traffic to your e-commerce website using content, then, it’s very important to understand the role of SEO.
SEO is a marketing tactic used to help your eCommerce site “get found” in search engine results pages by people.
When it comes to SEO, there is a lot to take into consideration. However, focusing on the basics will get you started in the right direction.
Take a look:
- Try to add keywords related to your eCommerce store in your blog content
- Add external links in your content that redirects to relevant experts in your industry
- Include a web of internal links so Google indexes your complete site
- Create a sitemap and submit it to major search engines
- Include the keyword in ALT images and in the product description on all product images
- Write detailed meta descriptions, meta-title that includes keywords
- Optimize your website images, videos to perform at high speeds
- Build backlinks that allow other website audience to your e-commerce website
- Taking some valuable time to do SEO tricks will help your website content rank higher in search engine results and drive traffic to your online shop.
5. Start a Referral Program
The easiest way to drive huge traffic and to utilize existing customers is to start a referral program.
For example, Let’s take Evernote that offers users the chance to invite friends to sign up in exchange for free premium services.
Thus, encourage your existing customers and blog followers to share their favorite products with their friends and family via email and social media.
As a result, offer them coupons, discounts, or free shipping on future purchases, free gifts, or even credit to use on their next shopping spree with you.
6. Submit Guest Blogs
Creating eye-catching content on your eCommerce site is essential for engaging loyal customers and to lure new users to click on your site.
However, do not underestimate the power of guest posting that brings traffic to your e-commerce website.
Take, for instance, SitePoint. Dedicated to inspiring, informing, and engaging the web community, SitePoint encourages experts in their field to submit guest posts.
Once you publish a guest post on a high ranking website, you generally receive a link that leads people back to your website.
Furthermore, if the webmaster allows you to add 2 or more backlinks in your article, you can include within your content.
Therefore, once their website audience clicks that link to know more, they are directly redirected to your website. By this way, you can gain huge traffic and potential customers to your website.
Although, this is a time-consuming method for driving heavy traffic to your online store. But, it helps expose you as an authority in your industry, spreads the word about your online store, and establishes your brand to a customer base you may have never reached before.
7. Email Marketing
It is an old and effective marketing method to drive potential customers to your online store.
One of the biggest mistakes every online store owner is focusing so much on attracting new customers that you forget about your existing else.
Therefore, by email marketing, you can actually target new customers who have never purchased from you, existing customers as well as lost customers.
For example, you can encourage new visitors to sign up for your list, target existing customers with personalized promotional campaigns, and even target abandoned customers to complete their transactions.
So are you ready to create a personalized marketing campaign that addresses the needs of individual users?
8. Video Content + Social Media
Video consumption is on the rise and social media platforms are well aware of it. Moreover, today many video contents are posted to Facebook feeds.
Here are some startling facts about the power of Facebook that may have you ready to start your video advertising now:
- Online video ads are expected to account for more than 80% of all internet traffic by 2020
- More than 67% of United States marketers run Facebook video ads
- Facebook is the number one social media channel for video content
- Video content on Facebook receives 135% more engagement than images
- 4x as many consumers claim they would rather watch a video about a product than read about it
And this is just Facebook.
Keep in mind that YouTube and Twitter are chasing Facebook when it comes to raising brand awareness, connecting with potential customer bases, and driving heavy traffic to your online store.
9. Engage with Influencers
As we discussed above, writing guest posts drives heavy traffic to your online stores by expanding your reach to a whole new audience.
Likewise, Influencers are those that have exposed high credibility in their industry as trend-setters, with a large following of users (generally on Facebook, Instagram, or YouTube).
Moreover, customers tend to take their advice seriously – particularly when it comes to their shopping experiences – since it’s usually retable, honest, and unbiased.
In fact, 70% of millennials prefer product endorsements from their “peers” rather than celebrities.
So, how do you begin? Start by researching your social platforms and look for popular accounts related to your industry.
Once you find it out, create a list that you want to start conversations, letting them know why they will find your product useful and worthwhile.
- Common ways to get them to speak about your brand is.
- Send them some product samples
- Pass along special discounts.
- Offer commission for every new person
The other way to do this is, creating an affiliate program to automate the process, allowing you to work with a wide range of influencers in the most efficient manner.
These are some of the excellent ways to drive traffic to your online store.
Conclusion:
We hope these 9 best practices help you to drive more traffic to your online store and ultimately increase your sales.
So, if you’re looking for any digital marketers to help you drive huge traffic to your e-commerce website by promotion, SEO, referral, and so on.
Find an experienced and expert partner to guide you through such an endeavor and you will see its positive effects on your business in no time.
Zuan Technologies is such an expert and experienced web development and digital marketing company. We have equal expertise in e-commerce website development and design too.
So what are you waiting for? Connect with us today to connect your business with the digital audience.
And don’t forget to follow us on Twitter and Facebook for more eCommerce tips and tricks.