How To Increase Traffic on Your Online Store
Make no mistake that the right customer acquisition strategy along with persistence is the fuel for success for any online venture and these tips help you to increase traffic for an online store.
Engage with Social Influencers
There is nothing more convincing and a great boost to an online store than an endorsement from an influencer, not only does this give you access to thousands of customers in a single-go, but it also embeds an element of trust that is little achieved through conventional mass-media advertising. Use tools like BuzzSumo or Hoot Suite to find influencers on Twitter, Facebook, SnapChat, YouTube, Pinterest etc and engage with them for a reach-out campaign.
Massive Social Media Out-reach
Tap into the power of social media and give your online store or your promotional campaign wings. It is important to have a concerted effort to build your community online, that is not only high in engagement but also has the potential to become ambassadors of your online store. Organically it may take time to build a follower base, but if done well and with constant engagement, you have a base that will constantly drive traffic to your online store for free.Keep in mind though, that every social networking platform has it own unique character, and hence when engaging with the followers of these platforms one must customize the message for maximum impact. Popular social networking platforms to tap into are Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube
Post Daily Content for Continued Growth
One of the easiest ways to grow your social communities over time is to post content consistently. The minimum should be once a day on Facebook, 4-6 times a day on Twitter and 2–3 times a day on Instagram. Also pay attention to what time of the day you post, the timing of social media is very important.
Reduce Abandoned Carts
You’re losing money by missing out on potential orders. But don’t take it personally. Every online store is missing out on potential orders.
The phenomenon is a well-studied one: Customers add items to their carts but abandon their carts during checkout. According to the Baymard Institute, 67.45% of shopping carts are abandoned before they’re completed. Think about that for a minute. Your sales are one-third of what they may potentially be.
Run a Twitter Q&A
Engagement is critical to keep any online community alive and well. A great tactic to grow your Twitter community and dramatically increase engagement is by hosting a weekly Twitter Q&A. The idea is to pick a day of the week, and then encourage your community to post questions related to your product, business, industry or really anything. You then provide answers to their questions and then choose the best questions and use them in a blog post.
E-mail Marketing
E-mail marketing is still one of the most potent means of driving traffic to an online store. Though ISPs have introduced stricter SPAM regulations around email marketing, a good opt-in campaign done at the right frequency to the right audience has the potential to yield much better conversion. If you do not have a substantial database to deliver the mails to, you can use third-party vendors that will send your email communication to their database.
If you have built a good opt-in database of email ids over time, it is important to segment them and send timely emailers with the right offers to get them coming back. You can also set-up auto emailers that are triggered on events like cart abandonment, stock availability etc.
PPC Campaigns
Supplement your organic traffic with PPC (pay per click) traffic to give a boost to your online store. It is important to arrive at the right set of keywords to target, and this can be achieved by getting suggestions from Keyword Planner (Google AdWords), peeking into keywords that your competition is bidding or using any of the keyword suggestion tools available for free. When done right, PPC campaigns can be cost effective and also yield high conversion returns (in comparison with other campaigns).
Popular PPC platforms include Google AdWords, Facebook Advertising, Bing, LinkedIn Advertising…
Content Discovery Platforms
Use content discovery and recommendation platforms like Outbrain and/or Taboola to drive traffic to your online store, or to a particular blog post in your store. Because these content discovery platforms usually use contextual matching, you are more like to attract users who are interested in your content or the store. Note: this approach usually works well for experiential brands or services that can be powered by content.
