9 Tips on How to Drive Traffic to Your Online Store

You have created your online store and are ready to start selling, but how can you make people know about your ecommerce? It's time to learn how to drive traffic to your online store.

The digital market is a very competitive place where you are going to compete not only with the stores in your neighborhood or the same city as yours but with companies from all around the world. 

It's fundamental to develop strategies to make your brand stand out, bring people to your website, focus on your target audience, and create ways to convert them into customers. The good news is that you will find several tools to help you with that, but, you need to start planning. 

1. Apply SEO Best Practices#

It isn't possible to talk about how to drive traffic to your online store without mentioning SEO. Short for search engine optimization, SEO includes several actions that are going to help your pages to rank better at Google and other search engines. This increases the chances of having them linked at the first search result pages of keywords related to them.

According to a Google report, 53% of buyers affirmed to always research before buying a product to make sure they are making the best choice. Just think about your behavior, or your friends and family.

When you need to buy something or to answer a question, do you look for it on Google? Thousands of people around the world do that daily. If your website pages appear in the first results of the searches related to your product, you not only increase traffic but also find more qualified leads with a high potential to become customers. 

How to do that? Here are some tips:

• Use strategic keywords in your content;
• Customize the URLs according to the main keyword of each content;
• Use keywords in the products descriptions;
• Add meta descriptions to the pages;
• Write alt text to images;
• Have a mobile-friendly website;
• Provide high-quality content;

2. Provide a Great User Experience#

Imagine the situation: you access a website, the information is all disorganized, the design seems made by an amateur, and when you click on anything it takes a long time to load. The first move is to exit the page, isn't it? Certainly, you don't want that to happen when people visit your website.

Driving traffic to your online store isn't only about making the person get into the website, but also wanting to stay on it, navigate through the sections, and buy. Besides, exit rates, time spent on pages, and bad user experience can affect if a page is considered relevant to appear on Google's search results. 

To invest in providing an amazing user experience, pay attention to creating a design that has good readability, is aligned with your brand's visual identity, and is well-structured, so it's easy to focus on the main information. Usually, a minimalist design is better because readers can concentrate on the page better, and find what they want.

Test the pages before publishing, and make sure the load time is good as well. That's another factor that has a big impact on user experience. Besides, keep your attention on the feedback visitors send to improve constantly.

3. Use a Responsive Design#

A Statista research showed that more than 90% of the global internet population uses mobile devices to go online. If your website doesn't have a responsive design, you may lose a significant amount of visitors.

If you are building your site from scratch right now, pay attention if the template is mobile-friendly and functions properly on desktop computers, laptops, tablets, and smartphones. Users want to be able to navigate and enjoy your website regardless of the device used to access it.

If your ecommerce is already live, enter on the pages using different mobiles, to test usability. Then, make the necessary changes to guarantee a responsive design. That's another factor that influences SEO, a responsive website helps you to rank better on search engines. Besides, it encourages people to buy on your online store since they will be able to easily do it on their cellphones too.  

4. Promote your Ecommerce on Your Social Media#

Is your brand present on Social Media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter? They are valuable marketing tools and some of them can also be used as marketplaces. Enjoy these spaces to straighten the relationship with your leads, and loyal customers, and to promote your website content too. 

You can include on your editorial calendar for each social media page, posts about products on your online store, and, if you have a blog, always let your followers know when a new article is released. 

For Instagram, and Facebook, use the posts on the feed and also the stories where you can insert a link directly to your website. Create posts that are attractive to your target audience and compel them to access the website.

5. Develop Content Marketing Strategies#

Creating a blog section on your website is an opportunity to develop content marketing strategies based on the use of keywords to conquer visibility organically and drive traffic to your online store. The first step is to plan your blog,  start by answering those questions:

• Who is your target audience?
• What are their pain points?
• How can you help solve their demands?

Once you know that, it's easier to think of the topics that should be approached on the blog, and find keywords to work on. Use SEO tools, such as Google Trends and Ahrefs they will help you to find keywords that are most searched, for instance. 

However, remember that it isn't only about putting keywords in the middle of a text. On the contrary, it's fundamental to write high-quality articles, which deliver valuable information to your target audience. 

Update your website regularly with new posts, and write articles for the different stages of the buyer's journey as well. This will help you to talk from potential leads to customers that are in the final process to decide to make a purchase

6. Create Email Marketing Campaigns#

If you already have a base of loyal customers from your physical store, for example, including a list of emails, you can use that to promote your online store with an email marketing campaign. For example, you can create a campaign launching the website, sending a coupon discount for the first online purchase.

Another possibility is to make a newsletter where you will send links to the latest articles from your blog, notify about sales, and also recommend products. Beyond helping you regarding how to drive traffic to your online store, it's also going to be useful to increase sales. 

7. Research Your Competitors#

What do your competitors' websites look like? How do they rank on search engine results? Do they have a strong presence on social media? Researching your competitors is also an important practice that can help you to get new insights and to identify how you can make your website stand out from them.

8. Partner with Digital Influencers#

Influencer marketing has become a powerful tool when it comes to how to drive traffic to your online store and increase sales. Digital influencers have developed a strong base of followers on social media, who give credibility to them and pay attention to their tips and the brands they mention. 

You can create ad campaigns with digital influencers who are related to your target audience. It's possible to partner with influencers who have millions of followers or the ones that are smaller but talk to a very specific niche. Evaluate how to create effective strategies to promote your online store.

9. Invest in Ads #

Online advertising is a very effective way to drive traffic to your online store. You can create pay-per-click campaigns on social media and advertise on Google too. One of the main advantages of these types of campaigns is that it allows you to segment who you want the ad to appear to, increasing the chances to reach potential customers.

Improve Continuously to Drive Traffic to Your Website#

Web analytics tools such as Google Analytics, which you can integrate into your website, providing valuable information about your website performance. You have the opportunity to see, for instance, which are the most visited pages, the average time spent on each one, and the main sources of traffic.

With that information, it's possible to understand better how to drive traffic to your online store. You can identify what catches your target audience's attention, check the types of content they prefer, and the most effective calls to action. Use this to enhance your website, and grow the number of visitors and conversions.