4 simple (yet effective) ways to drive traffic to your eCommerce site

In eCommerce, the amount of traffic that comes to your site is going to determine your overall success. After all, if you don’t have anyone coming to your site, you can’t possibly generate any sales.

Unfortunately, launching an eCommerce shop is easier than ever these days — and people know it.

As a result, the competition is only getting tougher, and standing out enough to convince people you’re the brand they should trust is proving to be just as difficult.

In fact, 61% of marketers claim that generating traffic and leads is their top challenge, and only 22% of businesses cite satisfaction with their conversion rates.

So, there seems to be a lot of work to do.

But driving traffic to your online store doesn’t have to seem impossible.

In this post, we’ll share with you some of the best ways to generate more traffic (and high-quality leads) to your eCommerce shop.

So, let’s get started.

Evaluate Your Current Traffic

The only way you can successfully drive more traffic to your eCommerce shop is first to determine just how much traffic you’re currently getting.

One of the best ways to do this is to sign up for a free Google Analytics account and connect it to your online store so all sorts of helpful data, including site traffic, can be tracked and monitored.

Audience Overview

If you go to Audience > Overview, you can get a great idea about how much traffic your site sees on a regular basis.

Also, check out metrics such as:

• Users
• New Users
• Sessions
• Sessions per User
• Pageviews
• Pages/Session
• Average Session Duration
• Bounce Rate

And this is only the beginning.

If you really want to gain a deeper understanding of your customers’ purchasing journey, learn how monitoring cross-channel reports in Google Analytics can reveal how people behave as they switch between eCommerce channels.

You can also check out tools such as SimilarWeb and Alexa to learn about not only how much traffic your eCommerce shop sees, but how popular your site is, where site visitors are coming from, and what search engines people use to find you.

Alexa Traffic Ranks

How to Drive More Traffic to Your eCommerce Shop

Now that you have a good idea where your site stands in relation to others, and how much traffic you’re currently getting on a daily, weekly, or even monthly basis, it’s time to look at ways to ramp up your efforts to get more.

1. Invest in Google Ads

One of the fastest ways to drive more traffic to your website is to pay for it. And it just so happens that Google Ads (previously known as Google AdWords) is an easy way to do just that.

Create ad campaigns that display in Google search results whenever someone searches for a term related to your ad.

Google Ads

When someone sees your ad and realizes you offer what they’re looking for, they’ll click on your site and check you out.

Not only will you get paid for every click your ads receive (yay for site monetization), you’ll reap the benefit of the added traffic.

And, since the person clicking your ad saw something they liked, the chances of them making a purchase once on your site are much higher than someone who just happened to come across your website.

2. Ramp Up SEO Efforts

Understanding the role SEO plays in driving traffic to your site is crucial to your success.

If you don’t focus on SEO, you run the risk of two things happening:

1. Showing up in the wrong results. You might rank well in Google search results, but if it’s in results that have nothing to do with your online store, no one will click to visit. And even if they do, they’ll abandon your site immediately when they realize you don’t have what they need.
2. Not ranking well. You might show up in relevant search results, but if you haven’t done your keyword research, chances are high you’ll end on page 2, or 3, or worse. Since 95% of all web traffic goes to those on Google’s first page, you’ll have no one clicking on your site to visit.

If you notice that your eCommerce conversion rates are low, check out these SEO best practices that will help you show up in the right search results so better leads land on your site and buy:

• Include keywords in your online shop and blog content
• Externally link out to authoritative sites
• Create a Google sitemap so your online store indexes properly
• Add keyword rich product descriptions to all images
• Include detailed meta descriptions
• Internally link to your own website, so Google indexes everything you have

And lastly, optimize your eCommerce shop for speed and performance.

Monitoring your site’s desktop and mobile speed is easily done using Google PageSpeed Insights.

PageSpeed Insights

See how fast your pages are loading and receive recommendations from Google for optimizing further.

After all, even a 1-second delay has the potential to derail your site’s conversion rates by as much as 7%.

3. Submit Guest Posts

It’s likely you know who your biggest competition is.

And, while it’s natural to want to beat them when it comes to traffic, conversions, and sales, sometimes it’s a good idea to network with your competition too.

One great way to expose your brand to a broader audience, and drive more traffic to your site, is to scope out industry leaders in your field and ask if you can submit a guest post on their website.

Doing this does many things:

• Gives you the opportunity to offer their audience a solution they may not have
• Shows people you too are an industry leader
• Gives you a chance to include backlinks to your website within the content
• Nets you an author profile that links back to your website
• Allows you to interact with a new customer base in the comment section and on social media when the post goes live and people engage

Although guest posting is a time-consuming thing, the benefits you receive are tremendous – including the fact that it helps you drive a whole new group of people to your store to buy.

4. Add Video Content to Facebook

We all know that social media plays a vital role in most marketers’ lives.

But what you may not know is how powerful Facebook advertising can be in the digital marketing world when you add video content to your arsenal:

• By 2020 video ads are expected to account for nearly 80% of all internet traffic
• Facebook is the number one social media channel for video content, including ads
• 4x as many customers state they’d rather watch a video about a product than read about it

Amazon

If your target audience is found on other channels such as Twitter, Instagram, or YouTube, you can expect the numbers to be similar, even if on a smaller scale.

Using social media and video content helps build brand awareness and drive traffic to your online store in ways many other marketing efforts can’t.

Final Thoughts

Whether you’re a startup looking to build brand recognition, or an established online retailer looking to grow your business, you’re always going to face challenges when it comes to driving traffic to your eCommerce site.

Luckily, there are many ways you can help increase traffic, conversions, and sales on your site.

All it takes is using some of the above-mentioned tips and tricks. Trust us, with enough focus you’ll see your numbers continue to rise, along with the quality of your leads.