According to Practical eCommerce, eCommerce brands are seeing a staggering failure rate of 80%. The reason for this is that they are not considering the strategies they use when implementing their online store. An online store is a complicated endeavour that requires a lot of thinking and consideration, given the competitive age for eCommerce we live in.
Take for example Feigenson, who launched a brand of eco-friendly accessories called Mushie in July 2018. They generated $27,800 in revenue in their first month, and now generate around $450,000 in sales.
Today competition from sites like Amazon, which holds 50% of the online sales, can seem impossible. But Mushie proved that implementing the right strategies can take your eCommerce brand to the next level.
In this article, we will show you 10 strategies you can use to drive traffic to your eCommerce site and make it more successful.
Top 10 Ways to Increase Traffic to Your eCommerce Site
Increasing your eCommerce traffic boils down to improving the ability of people of finding your store, as well as leveraging your best products, reviews, and content to increase the visibility and appeal of your site. Take a look at these 10 strategies you can follow:
- Improve Your SEO
SEO has an increasingly important role in driving traffic to any website and as such should be one of your first considerations to driving traffic. After all, 93% of total web traffic comes from search engines, so you need to play nice with them.
Writing blogs, ranking higher on Amazon and Google, and creating content that connects to your customers is all part of SEO and significantly helps in driving traffic to your site.
SEO begins with keyword use. You need to consider the words that people use when looking online for products like yours. You can use online tools to find this information, or make use of SEO experts.
Include the relevant keywords in your URLs, content, product pages, and anywhere else where it can have an impact. Just make sure not to overdo it to the point that it detracts from the quality of the writing, you want to make it all look natural.
- Rank Higher On Amazon
55% of all online shoppers do their research on Amazon when looking to buy a new product. This means that Amazon is the equivalent to Google for online purchases and eCommerce.
Amazon provides plenty of tools to help eCommerce stores grow naturally and helps them in driving traffic to their websites, with Amazon Fulfillment, analytics and keyword research. Even if Amazon could be considered the main competitor in the eCommerce landscape, it can easily be turned into a valuable by using it to learn more about your potential customers. Their product reviews, for instance, are a great way to win the trust of customers.
- Think About Your Content
You can’t simply write the first thing that comes to mind, hit publish, and think that it will have the desired effect on your customers.
Furthermore, even if you have a great idea for a blog it isn’t enough to just write articles anymore. Videos, images, podcasts, and anything in the realm of media are considered content for the sake of your audience. Creating content randomly will only hurt your endeavours, so you need to strategize about what type of content your page needs.
To start, you should organize the different content formats that you’ll need. For example:
- Articles about the uses and advantages of certain products
- Images of your product
- Content created by your users
- Descriptions of products
Or anything else you can use to improve the appeal of your product and the engagement of your user base.
You also need to consider the best time to publish the said content in order to reach maximum engagement, as well as promote it on your social media channels.
- Leverage Your Bestsellers
People want to buy your best, so you should make sure to put them right in front for the world to see. When you go to Amazon, for example, they usually show you the bestseller products in the specific category that you are searching for, which saves a lot of time. Reading reviews on recommended products is also common for people looking to make an online purchase.
Adopting a similar strategy of putting the spotlight on recommended products and bestsellers, you increase the trust of your users and tell them right on that these are products that people enjoy.
Use the data you have to ensure that your bestselling products for specific keywords are always showing up when customers look for them. Using tags like recommended, bestsellers or brand’s choice can help in driving traffic to your site as well.
- Invest in Influencers
Users don’t like ads, and it has been made clear by them. Although, in the past. paid traffic used to be very popular but nowadays it’s organic unpaid traffic that really helps in driving traffic to your eCommerce website.
And a better option to create and increase your organic traffic would be to take on the potential of influencers. You can reach out to influencers with low to medium followers or even ones with high follower counts with offers to collaborate, such as sending them your products to review.
A study of Silk Almond Milk revealed that the return of investment for a brand is 11 times greater from investing in influencer marketing rather than the standard ad uses.
A lot of brands think that influencer marketing is expensive and unreliable, but you don’t have to reach for the top players in the market. The smaller more niche influencers often have very loyal audiences and are more than capable of increasing your traffic.
- Enhance Your Social Media Presence
Being on social media platforms is very necessary if you want to build a reputation for your brand. 54% of millennials use social media channels as a way to research products. Instagram videos, Facebook posts, and even tweets on Twitter have an incredible reach that can often be underestimated. Create pages for your brand on popular social media channels such as Instagram and publish content consistently. It will improve your reach significantly as well as make your store and brand feel more like a statement rather than a product.
- Take Advantage of Reviews
Almost 70% of consumers rely on reviews to help them make a decision when looking to purchase a product. Any proof from previous customers can help improve the trust in your brand and hence, increase the traffic to your website. Sites like Amazon use reviews as a powerful tool to increase the appeal of the products they sell, often reaching out to customers to have them review something they recently purchased. Not only do reviews increase the trust in your product, but they also act as a form of user-generated content to boot.
- Use E-mail Marketing
E-mail marketing still carries a lot of power and potential, especially for eCommerce websites. You can use e-mail marketing to motivate previous customers to return to your store by highlighting new products or updates to products they have previously purchased. It’s an excellent form of promotion for content. You can use newsletters to promote new products, discounts, special offers, and even just provide them with interesting content in the form of anecdotes.
You can also use e-mail marketing to finalize purchases from people that leave products in their carts but never move forward. You can subtly nudge these users to finish their purchase by reminding them about it.
- Create A Referral Program
Referrals and loyalty programs are an excellent way to drive traffic to your site. You can create programs that give benefits to users that get their friends and family members to purchase on the site as well, such as discount links or free products. Sharing through social media is a powerful experience that people love, so leveraging this need to share to get people to share information and offers about your products is an excellent way to increase traffic to your eCommerce website.
- Give Shipping Benefits for Higher Orders
A simple way to increase the value of your orders, and give people looking to purchase in your site an added benefit, is giving them free shipping. However, free shipping on all orders would be too expensive. Instead, motivate people to purchase more by giving them free shipping after their order has exceeded a certain amount. This threshold would depend on the type of product you sell and what makes sense for you.
Bonus Tip: Work with an Expert on eCommerce Marketing
Another way to drive traffic to your eCommerce website is by working with experts that understand exactly what is needed in today’s competitive landscape.
ECartize offers a myriad of services at affordable rates intended to increase the traffic and improve the marketing of your eCommerce website.
We provide:
- SEO services
- Social Media Content and Media ads
- Google Ads Support
- Monthly Reports and Dashboards
- 30-day money-back guarantee
- Plans that start at $49!
Conclusion
Online traffic nowadays is all about organic traffic, so you need to implement strategies that motivate people to visit your website without resorting to ads. Things like improving your SEO, working together with influencers, using referrals, and boosting your social media presence will help drive traffic to your eCommerce website. By implementing these strategies, you’ll see the traffic to your eCommerce site increasing significantly.
Another option is working with experts like Ecartize. Our team of experienced eCommerce marketing specialists will help increase the traffic to your site without breaking your budget.