7 techniques to increase your shop’s (qualified) traffic

Imagine that you open up a shop in your city’s downtown area.

Since it’s your first time, you spend a lot of time (and money) on interior design, the shop window, the stock, and other hundreds of other things. You don’t want to miss a thing.

Once you have everything just right, you open the doors – full of hope and excitement – and you wait at the door for the first customers to come in.

But…

After a few hours, nobody has come through the doors of your shop. You can see people passing by without even realizing your shop is there.

As hard as it may sound, a business simply can’t survive like that. You may have the most beautiful shop around, but if you don’t have visitors, you won’t have sales.

It’s that simple.

The same goes for your online shop. No visitors, no sales.

In this post, we’re explaining 7 techniques you can use to increase (qualified) visitors to your ecommerce and get more sales.

Let’s see how it’s done.

What web traffic is and why you need to generate it

First things first – the definition:

Web traffic is the amount of users who visit a website.

And, logically, just like with a physical shop, the more potential customers who come through the door, the more opportunities you have to sell. For ecommerce, getting more visitors carries the same meaning.

However, we need to take into account one very important idea.

In a physical shop, there are shop assistants that can advise clients about what’s best for them. That’s to say, it’s easier to build trust.

On the other hand, it’s more difficult to get people to buy directly on the Internet. Before they make a purchase, we need to:

• Compare different options.
• Analyze some reviews.
• Read comments from other people who’ve bought the product.
• And more and more and more.

That’s precisely what we talked about in this post about sales funnels.

Your website gets a lot of visitors, but the key is to optimize your strategy so that most of them reach the end of the funnel (and become clients).

How to increase your ecommerce traffic (and, obviously, your sales)

By now you may be thinking, “that’s all sounds nice, but how exactly do I do it?”

One of the most important aspects of turning visitors into clients is making sure they are qualified visitors.

Qualified traffic refers to users who reach your website that have already shown interest in your products and, therefore, can be considered potential clients.

It’s true that you will inevitably get some visitors who are not really part of your target audience, but all the actions that you undertake to capture traffic should be directed toward your buyer persona (because they’re more likely to buy).

Here’s how to do it.

✅ 1. Organic positioning: Let’s start with SEO

The determining factor behind traffic going to your shop is organic positioning (visitors who come from Google). That means you have no choice but to work on your SEO. Web positioning is a rather broad topic that we’ve talked about previously in our blog. To avoid driving you crazy with repetition, have a look at this post first:

>> Our mega guide about SEO for ecommerce.

And then, complement that guide with these two posts.

• Everything starts with keywords: SEO means keywords, the terms you want to position. This post gives you the definition, the different types that you can find, and how to find them.
• Don’t overlook the category pages: It’s not only your posts that are positioned (as we’ll see in a minute), but also the pages where you have your products (and those are essential since we’re talking about transactional keywords). Here you can read more about that.
• And, of course, your product cards: Indeed, your product cards can also be positioned by the product model that you’re selling. A very transactional keyword too. This post explains how to plan your product card SEO and all the other topics that you need to take into account so that your product cards generate sales.

That should give you plenty to work on. 😉

✅ 2. “Feed” your clients with content marketing

This section isn’t here by mere coincidence; content marketing is very much related to organic positioning.

You remember what it is, right?

Content marketing is about creating and distributing relevant content to get qualified visitors and turn them into clients.

The first thing that usually comes to mind when we talk about “creating content” is starting a blog.

SEO-optimized writing is obviously a great method to get visitors to your website. If you want to try it out, here you have a comprehensive guide on writing posts that generate traffic (also useful for writing category names).

But, as we explain in this post, content marketing is not just about posts. Traffic can also make its way to your website via:

• Videos: Learn how to create them to promote your products and start a YouTube channel.
• Podcasts: Audio is an incredibly easy-to-consume format for clients that drives qualified traffic to your ecommerce site.
• Images on social networks: Advertising on social networks will have its own section because it’s worth talking more in depth about that one.

Important note: Generating content can be a total nightmare if you don’t do it in an organized way. That’s why it’s essential to plan your content creation and set up an editorial calendar.

✅ 3. Invest in advertisement: Now we talk about SEM

You can choose among the many different online platforms when it comes to advertising your shop.

A. Google Adwords

It’s still the best bet to get traffic with a buying intention (remember what we said about qualified visitors).

The reason is that Google Ads pop up when users use the search engine to look for the keywords that you have previosuly selected.

If you choose Google, here’s an explanation about how to design a successful campaign step by step.

B. Facebook Ads

The power of Facebook Ads is based on its segmentation. If works really well locally, but also for international companies. If you don’t believe us, just ask Hawkers.

Here you have a link including everything you need to know about creating a campaign for your ecommerce with Facebook Ads.

C. Instagram Ads

This is the biggest eye-opener when it comes to digital marketing for ecommerce because it’s the platform with the best ROI.

It belongs to Facebook, so campaigns are managed quite similarly. Before you start your own campaign, have a look at some of the characteristics of Instagram Ads to make sure you get the biggest reach with the lowest possible CPC (cost per client).

D. YouTube Ads

Instagram belongs to Facebook and YouTube belongs to Google. In addition, it’s the second most used search engine after Google.

The most interesting thing about YouTube Ads is that you can choose to pay only when clients watch the entire video.

Here you have loads of information about creating YouTube Ads campaigns.

✅ 4. Expand your reach with an affiliate program

You don’t need to be a lone ranger in the battle to capture traffic.

Affiliate marketing allows you to reach more people by means of affiliate partners that recommend your website or your products in exchange for a commission if they generate a sale.

If you create an affiliate system, your partners will take care of driving visitors to your website in order to get a commission. This way, you’ll have a network of salespeople working for you and they’ll only be paid if their work leads to a sale: effective and profitable.

This post goes over the best tools and tricks to create an extremely effective network of affiliates.

✅ 5. Organize a contest or raffle that appeals to your buyer persona

A contest or raffle is an excellent lure for your clients, but you have to plan it carefully. The goal is, once again, to get qualified traffic – users who can become potential customers.

You need to avoid “contest professionals”, people whose job is to look for these types of giveaways on the Internet just to get the immediate prize but never buy anything.

The easiest way to run a contest is through your Facebook page and the keys to doing it successfully are explained in this post.

✅ 6. Work with influencers who share your values

A study by Nielsen said that 83% of online consumers trust recommendations made by people in similar settings to themselves.

When the person we trust is considered to be an expert on a given topic, we’re talking about influencer marketing. The idea is to get that influencer to recommend your brand or your products on their channel.

There are two key factors for this strategy to work:

• Choosing the influencer properly (they could also be a microinfluencer): Loyal followers, an audience similar to your target audience, and a good interaction ratio are all necessary features (usually the influencer will send you a dossier including results obtained in other campaigns).
• Not making the commercial interaction too obvious: If the intention to sell is too obvious, the action loses credibility.

If you go with this strategy, have a look at this post where we explain all the steps involved with influencer marketing.

✅ 7. Invest in offline marketing

This one is essential if you have a physical shop in addition to your online shop. There are several actions that you can carry out:

• Register yourself with “Google My Business”: Doing this means that you’ll appear on Google Maps, which helps generate organic traffic.
• Advertise in local media: Newspaper, radio, associations, etc. Always remember to include a link to your website.
• Collaborations (or appearances) on other local websites: This is a nice way to reinforce your brand image and even get some external links to your website.

And what if you don’t have a physical shop? What about opening a temporary one?

Pop-up stores can be a great option to make your business tangible.

It’s time to choose how you’re going to increase traffic to your website

Remember, you don’t have to immediately start using all of the methods we’ve discussed. Choose the ones that fit best with your business and target audience, and do it right.

With a bit of perseverance, you’ll see how visitors start knocking at your door.

And with them come the sales!