How to Increase Traffic to Your Website

Whether you own a successful online store or you are just starting out a common concern is how to increase traffic to your store so that you can maximize your potential sales.

The good news is there are a number of strategies and approaches you can take, from improving the efficacy of your site’s content to increasing engagement on social media.

The important thing is to choose the strategy that works for you. Much like narrowing your target audience, choosing the right marketing strategy for your business is key. Rather than trying to throw everything you can at the board, try one strategy at a time. This way you can clearly identify what works and what doesn't without expending too many resources on a chaotic mixture of approaches.

Optimize Your Content

Before we begin to think about how to increase traffic to your store, you’ll want to be certain that your existing customers and future visitors to your site have a memorable experience. This is why it’s important to review your existing landing pages, content, descriptions, images and everything else that makes the customer experience what it is.

Make sure that your customers know exactly what you are offering and where to find it. An easy to navigate website with clearly defined calls-to-action and clearly written product descriptions are a delight for customers to use.

Know your customers and cater your content and products specifically to them. It's much easier to narrow your focus to a customer base you know than to cast a wide net and hope for the best. Identify the type of customer you want to appeal to and target them. Be it a specific age range, occupation or whatever it is that uniquely ties your customers to your product.

Once you’ve identified your customers, you need to remember that original content is the crown jewel of your store’s website. Especially original photography. Not only are original content and photos more engaging and eye-catching, but they increase the SEO value of your site (which we will discuss in more detail later).

Use Mailing Lists As A Tool to Increase Traffic

If you’ve already developed a significant mailing list from previous customers, one way to increase engagement with your website is to launch an email marketing campaign. In order to do this effectively it takes more than just sending a mass email. 

Here are a few things to consider when writing an effective email to your mailing list.

Remember that your subject line is the first thing your potential customers will see when they receive the email. That’s why it has to grab the reader’s attention in a sea of daily emails. It’s also likely that most people will look at marketing emails the same way they look at fliers in their mailbox, so it’s important to have engaging images that can hold the reader's attention with clear calls-to-action, links and directions on where to find the products you're offering. 

For example, a bold subject line like SALE 50% OFF with photo heavy content that features a linked “Shop” button next to each product.

Use Social Media to its Full Potential

If you haven't already created a Facebook page for your business, this is a good place to start in order to increase traffic to your site.

Customers often look for a business's Facebook page because it is a convenient place to find all of the basic information they are looking for and a direct way for them to engage with your business.

There's plenty of potential for engagement with a Facebook page, be it a post about a new product your offering, an announcement for a sale or just getting to know what kind of posts your followers and potential customers respond to can give you a hint at what they're interested in purchasing.

Facebook also offers the valuable tool that is their ad service. They allow you to customize your ads, setting goals for engagement, spending limits and timeframes. They also allow you to target specific audiences beyond those who are already following you, ensuring that your products will be seen by those most likely to buy them. With Facebook's Dynamic Ads, customers who have already visited your site will receive customized ads for products they've already shown interest in.

As one of the largest online platforms, where 90 percent of users follow a business account, Instagram can also be an excellent way to increase traffic to your website. The image heavy platform can be very rewarding to businesses that produce original content, and its use of hashtags connects your business to users who are browsing for the products you can provide.

Instagram ads are a hidden gem that can be one of the best options for growing traffic to your site. It offers the versatility of a variety of ad types from videos to stories and engaging photos that blend seamlessly with the user’s feed.

Both Instagram and Facebook also allow you to link your website to your social account, allowing customers to browse for your products through their social platforms and click through directly to your website. In this way, your business’s social media doubles as an ongoing ad campaign.

Increase Traffic With Giveaways and Viral Contests

Giveaways are a great way to get customers to engage with and enter your store. It's a great way to get creative about growing your customer base while offering customers deals they'll love. For example, you could offer coupons for first purchases and customers who sign up for your mailing list.

A good way to use a contest to increase traffic and engagement is to encourage sharing. For example the contest could require that a person share your post and tag three friends in order to be entered to win.

Limited time offers can also create a sense of urgency that brings customers to your site and closes the deal. You could offer free shipping, pair products as special offers, buy one get one deals, flash sales. There are plenty of options to get creative with.

Partner With Influencers

Word-of-mouth can be a very effective way to build a business. After all, think of how many times you’ve asked a friend for a recommendation on a product or turned to your social community for advice. In this same way, partnering with influencers can be like bringing on a word-of-mouth spokesperson that people already trust.

This can be much easier than it sounds. Seeking a partnership with a social influencer doesn't have to mean that you should shoot for celebrity endorsements, in fact, the best thing you can do is find a blogger or online personality with a significant following who happens to review products or bill themselves as an expert in your particular type of product. Influencers are a great way to grow organic traffic to your site because their followers already trust their opinion.

When looking for an influencer to partner with, you should consider whether they would make a good customer. Is this someone who aligns with your brand and would buy your product even if they weren’t partnered with you. If so, you could send some free sample products for them to review. If they consistently post reviews or other content related to your products they can even provide some advice on what their followers are looking for.

It’s also important to consider the influencers engagement level. High follower rates don’t always mean that someone can drive more traffic to your store. Keep an eye out for how your chosen influencer engages with their audience. Do their posts get at least 2-3% engagement? Are there a lot of comments on their posts? Do they post the kind of content that solicits opinions and inclusion of their audience?

Lastly, you don’t have to limit yourself to a partnership with a single influencer. Depending on the kind of products you offer, there could be a variety of bloggers and reviewers who could help to promote your product and if more than one recommends your product it could greatly increase the reputation of your brand.

Optimize SEO to Increase Traffic to Your E-Commerce Store

On the more technical side of things, one of the most effective ways to increase traffic to your site is to master SEO. Search Engine Optimization is essentially crafting your website’s content in a way that ensures it will appear on Google before your competitors' websites when customers are browsing for your products.

SEO can be something of an artform as Google and other search engines often change the parameters for what allows a website to rank in their search results. Most of the time, SEO relies on the use of keywords that will be picked up by the search engine when customers browse. This is why most of the time you’ll find content that tries to optimize SEO by being very repetitive, but striking the right balance between something that gets the search engine’s attention and something that keeps a customer engaged is important to consider. After all, the reason for focusing on SEO is to bring customers to your site, but once they’ve arrived you want them to stay.

Here are a few things to consider when trying to optimize your SEO.

Original content is key. Search engines like Google prioritize original photography and content that can’t be found anywhere else, so having professional photos of your products and original descriptions is ideal.

Understanding keywords is one of the most important aspects to using SEO to increase traffic. Luckily, there are programs like Google Trends or SEMrush that can show you which keywords are most effective for your particular product.

From there, you’ll want to add these keywords to something called metadata. This means using these keywords in your descriptions, titles, subtitles and headings, URLs, slugs and backend.

With this in mind it’s important to keep your titles short and keyword rich, relying on words and phrases that customers are likely to type into the search bar when they look for your product. It’s also important to remain consistent across your content using the same terms and keywords across the board.