How to Drive Traffic to Your Online Store: 9 Proven Ways

An online business without steady traffic is not going to succeed. You need a growing stream of new and returning customers to your website in order to convert and make a profit online

After all, the more people visit your online store, the more products you will end up selling. In short, website traffic is what pushes a business forward and makes it grow.

However, increasing traffic effectively will take time and effort. Figure out the best ways to attract customers to the website and consistently use those methods to see results. 

What’s more, you have to attract the right audience. There’s no point in having a massive stream of traffic that is not going to convert into sales. 

Taking all of these aspects into consideration, we created this guide to help you get started. Here are nine methods that cover tips and tricks on how to increase online traffic to your eCommerce store and make sure it converts into profit.

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How to Drive Traffic to Your Online Store

Here are nine proven ways to get more traffic to your online store:

1. Social Media Marketing

The easiest way to find a pool of potential customers is by leveraging social media networks. Considering it’s estimated that around 54% of the world’s population is using some sort of social media platform, you’re bound to find people who will be interested in what you have to offer.

Before we look at the social media platforms, there are three suggestions to keep in mind when it comes to marketing on social media:

  • Understand how your target audience interacts. Research what type of content drives the most engagement, what’s the best time to post updates, and what devices your target audience use. For instance, 52% of marketers claimed that Facebook videos are more effective in driving traffic than other types of visual aid. What’s more, nearly 94% of users access the same platform via mobile phone only.
  • Don’t directly promote your business. Instead, focus on creating good content that your audience will enjoy.  Only mention the products and services when it’s an appropriate time for an upsell. This way, you don’t come off as too pushy, and the interaction with your potential customers will be much more organic.
  • Show genuine interest in your audience. Ask questions, conduct surveys, polls, and generally interact with your followers. Doing so will provide more insight into your target market and help build up the credibility and trust of your brand.

Now that you know more about how to market your business on social media, let’s look at the four major social networks – Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook, and Twitter.

Instagram

Instagram offers a type of service that’s perfect for an online store – Instagram Business. It’s designed to help online businesses reach a wider audience and market their products simultaneously.

Instagram Business account comes with the Shops feature that lets you display the products with links to the checkout page. Tag products in posts for an easy and convenient way to drive traffic to the online store. 

Another great feature that Instagram provides is Stories. It lets you post photos and videos that expire after 24 hours. Use it to announce daily, weekly, or monthly deals and attach links to lead users to the appropriate landing pages.

The potential to boost your eCommerce traffic here is significant, as nearly 83% of Instagram users admit they use the platform to explore and discover new products.

Instagram’s main demographic is adults between 25-34 years old. If that matches your target market, create an Instagram Business account and begin marketing your online store.

Pinterest

Pinterest is a place for sharing various hobbies, interests, recipes, DIY methods, and more. More than 450 million active users use the platform regularly to research new products or find inspiration. 

Pinterest Business can connect your online store to your Pinterest account. Categorize products into Boards and create Rich Pins that display information about the products straight from the website. 

Take advantage of these features and use them to drive traffic to your store. Use visually appealing images, write appropriate titles, and include related hashtags to attract your target market. 

Convince even more users to visit your online store by signing up for the Pinterest Verified Merchant Program – it will assure the visitors that you’re a trusted seller.

Facebook

Facebook is one of the most popular social media platforms used as a marketing tool.

Not only is it the most popular social media platform, but it comes equipped with extensive marketing tools to run and promote your business.

Use Facebook Pages to create an official profile for your brand. This can help increase user engagement and reach a wider audience of prospective customers. 

You can change the Facebook Page into a Facebook Business Page and unlock a collection of marketing tools for getting traffic to your site. 

Fill in the information about the business, connect it to your website, and display products on the Facebook Store that links straight to the checkout page. 

Include additional information about your business and sign up for the Facebook Business Manager. With this marketing tool, launch paid advertising and marketing campaigns, promoting your business more effectively. 

Twitter

Twitter’s primary purpose is to connect people and let them share their thoughts in the form of a short message.

When it comes to using Twitter for Business, brands can create profiles to build a following and connect with their target audience. Paid advertising is also an option for more visibility. As more people start to follow your Twitter account, the bigger the traffic you can direct to the website.

Make sure to utilize Twitter Analytics when using Twitter for your business. It will provide a better understanding of your tweets’ performance and provide more information about the demographic of your audience.

2. Influencer Marketing

Influencers are people who have a solid social following and are usually regarded as experts in their respective markets.

Influencer Marketing is a kind of social media marketing that uses influencers’ promotional product mentions to drive traffic to an online store.

Influencer marketing is estimated to be worth $13.8 billion in 2021

Having your products promoted by influencers can be very beneficial because they generally have a high amount of trust with their followers. Meaning, whatever an influencer promotes as a great product has a chance of becoming the next big trend.

When looking for influencers interested in promoting your products, pay close attention to what their niche is first. Make sure their followers match your target demographic to increase the chances of them becoming your new customers.

3. Run Social Media Ad Campaigns

Social media advertising is effective because it targets groups of people with specific interests. Tailor ads in detail to match your demographic, increasing the chances of user conversion. 

Facebook Ads Manager is one of the best tools for social media marketing since it lets you create ads that run both on Facebook and Instagram. You can also customize who gets to see the ads and monitor their performance.

As an example, we’re going to show how to run ads on Instagram. However, before we begin, make sure to have a Facebook Business Account ready.

Here is how to connect the Instagram Business account to the Facebook Business page:

  1. On your Facebook Business page, go to the side menu on the left and click Settings.
    Side menu with Settings selected
  2. On the new page, go to the left side menu and click Instagram.
    Side menu with Instagram selected
  3. Enter your Instagram business account’s username and password. Click Next, and save the changes. Your Instagram Business account is now linked with  Facebook Ads Manager.

2. Create Instagram Ad

Here’s how to create an Instagram ad via the Facebook Business page:

  1. Go to the main side menu on the left. Click Ad Center -> Create Ad.Ad center with Create Ad selected
  1. Choose the type of goal you want to achieve with the Instagram ad and click on it.Choose a goal selected
  1. Customize the look of the ad in Ad Creative. Add an image, description, headline, and call-to-action text. You can read the 3QDigital guide to get some ideas and inspiration regarding this.Ad creative customization and preview
  1. Identify your target audience by narrowing down the people who will be exposed to your ads, increasing conversion rate as a result.Example of targeting audience by age and location
  1. Choose your budget and duration of the ad.Ad duration settings with 2$ as daily budget

Set a Daily Budget that shows the maximum amount of money you want to spend per day or determine a Lifetime Budget that will put out ads in accordance with a single set amount of money.

Determine the timespan the ad will run for. Either run ads indefinitely or at specific times of the day. There are also optimization and bid strategy options that can help analyze how the money will be spent. 

The estimated daily reach scale on the right shows how many people you can expect to reach each day with your ads.

  1. Select ad placement and payment method.Example of placement methods selected: Facebook, Messenger, Instagram

Choose whether the ads can be seen exclusively in your stories, feed, or even both.

4. Create Quality Content

Promoting a website, online store, or branded social media profile is fruitless if there’s no quality content on them.

What’s more, regularly publishing quality content on your blog can increase a site’s search engine ranking and draw in more organic traffic.

Here are some tips to help you come up with good content ideas.

Focus On the Audience’s Interests

The best way to captivate readers’ attention is by offering content they are interested in. Use a keyword tool such as AnswerThePublic to find out what that may be.

AnswerThePublic helps discover the audience’s interests by compiling search queries from Bing and Google based on a keyword entered.

Then, those search queries are put into categories such as what, who, and where questions, and finally visualized into a search cloud – a list of possible searches related to the keyword.

Once there’s enough information on what the target market may be interested in, it’s time to think of the related topics. 

Ubersuggest can be used to generate good content ideas for a blog. Just as AnswerThePublic, simply type a keyword in the search bar and click on the Content Ideas button. 

A list of the most popular articles in that category will show up, along with a measure of how well they tend to convert users on social media.

Content ideas with "jackets" as example keyword

Create Content Specific for Social Media

Different platforms may require different types of content. In other words, something that works on Instagram might not be as effective on Facebook.

When marketing on Instagram, one of the best tactics is to pair high-resolution photos of your products with relevant hashtags, as this will help, reach a wider audience. Using quality images sent in by the customers is also a good idea, as it helps to build customer trust. 

Upload different formats of content as well. Publish videos that demonstrate the product in action and upload amusing GIFs to keep it engaging.

Facebook is not all about visual content, though. Written content should be prioritized when posting on the platform, but it should also be paired with a visual or two to grab the attention. 

Post product launch announcements to keep the audience up to date with the latest products. Write posts on the company blog and share them on Facebook to attract more readers.

5. Optimize the eCommerce Website

Search engine optimization is a practice that makes a website rank higher on search engine result pages. It involves multiple different aspects of the website, content included. 

One of the best-known SEO practices is using specific keywords. Research what kind of keywords rank highest in your industry by using such tools as Google Analytics and use them in your text. 

Keywords should also be naturally placed in content elements like the meta description, product pages, and headings.

However, keywords alone aren’t enough to increase an online store’s search engine ranking substantially. Other aspects like site speed, alt text in images, and good quality content are also crucial for SEO. 

Here’s what to look for when optimizing a website for search engines:

  • Site speed. The time it takes for web pages to load. This is an important ranking factor for Google, as it determines how long visitors have to wait to use a site.
  • Title tags. The first thing people see in search engines. These should be catchy and no more than 60 characters long.
  • Meta description. A summary of the content that’s displayed on search engines, right below the title tag. Its purpose is to convince people that a website has the answers they’re looking for.
  • Internal page linking. Interlinking helps users find related information and increases the ranking of the pages being linked to.
  • Alt text for images. In short, it describes images in words and is especially helpful for search engines. The alt text is also displayed in case the images don’t load.

6. Launch an Email Marketing Subscribers List

Building an email address list that consists of existing and potential customers is a handy way to get traffic to an online store. Send emails about your latest offers, products, or news that lead customers back to your eCommerce website.

Targeting is also easier with emails. For example, if you’re going to launch a product in a specific city or country, you can easily announce it to the most relevant customers via an email notification.

The first step to creating an emailing list is to choose a reliable business email service provider – a service that can handle a large number of emails being sent at once.

Next, integrate and place the sign-up form so customers can input their email address. 

We recommend placing it either on the website’s header, under blog posts, or in the sidebar, as these are considered to be some of the places with the highest conversion rates.

Finally, don’t forget to interact with your subscribers frequently. Send regular updates about the online store. It doesn’t have to be product promotions – simply send relevant blog posts or ask to provide feedback.

7. Create More Buzz With Giveaways

Generating buzz is important because it can help a brand become more visible and memorable, increasing website traffic.

One of the best ways to generate buzz is to create exciting giveaways when you’re about to launch a new product.  

Before launching a new product, running giveaways will ensure that your giveaway posts are shared on social media and spread through word-of-mouth. This will increase awareness of the brand, and more specifically, your product launch.

Create giveaways by using a tool like Gleam.io, which helps to promote businesses by running campaigns. It’s a great giveaway platform as it comes with lots of amusing ideas for possible giveaways.

Other than that, you may create a new contest from scratch:

  1. Give a name for the giveaway and determine when it should start and end.
  2. Choose whether users should use their social media or website account to confirm their identity. Or simply provide a form to fill out.
  3. Select the conditions for users to enter the giveaway. This can be anything from asking them to like and share the post to having them share a photo with your tag next to it.
  4. Publish the giveaway to the chosen platform.

You can also reach out to influencers and other people in the industry to help promote your giveaway. 

8. Use Referral Programs to Drive Traffic to the Site

A referral program is the best way to encourage other people to drive traffic to your website. It works by making a deal with other websites by offering them something in return for directing visitors to your site.

Creating a referral program is also one of the best ways to promote a product to a broader audience and bring in new customers. 

Here are the steps to get started with a referral program:

  1. Determine the goal of the referral program. Decide whether to drive more traffic, build brand awareness or increase sales for a specific product. Doing so will help you keep track of how successful the referral program is.
  2. Make a list of people that are most likely to promote the product. This list could include current customers, influencers, and even industry leaders.
  3. Look for the perfect timing to launch the referral program. Think of the date and time that will be most appropriate.
  4. Create resources to notify customers. Create Instagram and Facebook ads, send out email newsletters, and use other means to let customers know about the new collaboration.
  5. Track referral program progress. Keep an eye on who was referred and when and whether those referrals converted into paying customers.

9. Leverage Web Analytics Data

We’re going to briefly explain how to use Google Analytics to track and analyze the parts of your website that are already attracting a lot of traffic, learning where to direct your focus.

Google Analytics tracks many aspects of the website, including the content of the online store. It examines which pages and what content on the website gets the most attention, giving insight into what engages and converts customers and what doesn’t. 

There are several elements of the website that Google Analytics tracks when it comes to content:

  1. All Pages. Shows how productive each page could be and tracks page views (number of times a page is loaded), unique pageviews (first-time visits), and average time spent per page.
  2. Content Drilldown. Allows previewing which sections of the website are more important.
  3. Landing Pages. It shows how long visitors stay on the website and which landing pages are more engaging than others.

Conclusion

To ensure the success of a business, it’s crucial to know how to drive traffic to your online store.

First of all, engaging in social media to drive traffic to the online store is essential. Understanding how the audience interacts and showing that you are genuinely interested in the audience are the most effective ways to do so.

Once that is done, run social media ad campaigns with Facebook Ads manager, which can be set up for Instagram as well. 

Make use of influencer marketing to help promote an online business. Influencers are usually looked up to as experts within their niche and have a strong following.

Building an email list and launching giveaways can also help increase eCommerce traffic. Email marketing can help to build brand awareness and create more buzz around products.

Lastly, use Google Analytics to track and analyze which parts of the online store are already doing well with traffic and make more of that type of content going forward.

We hope that this article gave some fresh ideas and inspired you to try new marketing tactics. Good luck! 

Author
The author

Andzelika V.

As a technology enthusiast and a digital marketing specialist, Andzelika loves to help people learn about tech-related topics. When not doing techy stuff she's responsible for helping maintain Hostingers' brand by working on marketing campaigns.