An increase in traffic on commercial projects is the prospect of increasing the number of sales and your eCommerce business.

Today we’ll talk about how to increase traffic to an online store, and consider the most effective ways and channels to attract targeted website traffic.

1. SEO-optimization of the online store

To attract traffic from search engines, an online store, like any other website, must be optimized with SEO tools in compliance with certain rules.

What you should pay attention to first of all:

• All texts, whether descriptions, articles, etc., must be unique. You can check this indicator in special services (Grammarly, Copyscape). Without this item, it is unlikely that you will be able to get on the first page of search results.
• The project must have a semantic core around which all texts, meta tags, and other elements are built. This is a critical point because incorrectly distributed requests across pages will significantly complicate promotion.
• Home page, categories, products, etc. must have prescribed meta tags (Title, Description).
• Using occurrences of keywords from semantics in texts, titles, and meta tags. Recall that they must first be divided into clusters.
• Fast loading pages, as well as their optimization for mobile devices, significantly increase the quality of behavioural factors (the bounce rate decreases). You can check the page loading speed in the service Page Speed ​​Insights and if you host your site with SeekaHost.app you can check the disk space in your SeekaPanel dashboard.
• It is necessary to optimize not only texts but also images by giving them the Alt tag.
• The structure of the store should be as thoughtful as possible, you should not use a large nesting level (recommended up to 4-5). Good internal link building will help speed up the indexing of the site, its usability, and conversion rate.
• Products must be in categories. If products have different characteristics (for example, colours, sizes, and models), then it is recommended to implement filters by them.

In general, the easier it is for the user to navigate the online store, the easier it is to promote it in search engines.

2. Contextual advertising

It is one of the popular ways to attract traffic to commercial projects. The essence of this promotion channel is that there is an ad block before the organic issue.

Contextual advertising allows you to almost instantly start receiving a stream of incoming requests. Unlike SEO promotion, there is no need to wait for a certain period of time.

Of the minuses:

• It is not always possible to find a competent specialist the first time, who is able to correctly optimize the work of campaigns and not “drain” the budget at the same time.
• It’s not free. Each action (click, view, or conversion action – depending on the settings) will cost a certain amount, depending on the level of competition in the niche, the blocks in which ads will be shown, etc.

By the way, Google Ads offers options for setting up campaigns that will be optimized automatically. But before you use this, you should understand that the work of the algorithms is completely opaque, so if you need details and want to make frequent changes to the campaign, then this method will not work.

3. Targeted social media advertising

When answering the question of how to increase eCommerce sales and traffic to an online store, one cannot ignore such a traffic acquisition channel as targeted advertising. Social networks are leaders among sites in terms of traffic; they have almost any audience that can be stimulated for conversion actions.

In such advertising, the main role is played by the correct selection of the audience and high-quality (exactly those that will be positively perceived by the selected audience) creatives. However, initially, you need to install a pixel on the site, set goals, and test traffic, allocating a certain budget for this.

4. Email Marketing

Email marketing allows you to increase the number of sales by reminding the client base of certain events, such as promotions that have appeared. The client base itself can be collected in different ways, the main goal is to motivate the visitor to leave his Email, for example, by giving a discount in return.

5. SMS mailings

The principle is similar to e-mail marketing, but you need to be even more careful. First, the mailing should be sent to people who actually left their phone number, while voluntarily agreeing to it. Secondly, messages should be valuable, not intrusive. For mailing, you can use the services: smsaero.ru or smsint.ru.

6. Promotion on aggregator sites

Marketplaces are gaining popularity among users and are increasingly getting into the TOP search results for “hot” queries. This channel of attracting traffic is able to increase traffic to the eCommerce website and increase its sales.

The marketplace is an intermediary site between a buyer and a third-party online store, which has high traffic, a convenient product navigation system, etc. The user chooses the conditions for the purchase of goods that suit them, after which they get to the pages of your online store and make a purchase. Marketplaces offer placement under different conditions, there are also opportunities for paid promotion of commodity items, detailed analytics, and more.

7. Crowd marketing

Crowd marketing is a tool that relates to digital marketing and SEO promotion. It solves tasks such as:

• Increasing brand awareness.
• Attracting additional traffic from other sites.
• Improves the domain’s link profile.
• With the right approach, it has a positive effect on behavioural factors.

With this method of promotion, it is necessary to leave messages in profile branches on forums or any places where commenting is allowed indicating the advertised brand (or product/company name) with a link to the online store.

This method of promotion can be implemented independently, or by entrusting it to agencies. The problem is to find relevant sites with the ability to publish links.

8. Content marketing

This method involves the publication of informational articles within the online store itself (for example, in the ”Blog” section), or on third-party sites (formats: press releases, reviews, interviews, research, etc.). Purpose: building trust on the part of users, demonstrating to them their level of expertise, reliability, etc.

In general, content can be absolutely any kind: from video content and text to interactive podcasts. The main thing here is to focus on the specifics of your audience and the proposed product.

The design of the site should be as simple and clear as possible, not distracting from the user’s purchases. At the same time, the visual content on the site must be of good quality. A graphic editor will help you work with pictures and photos, and a simple and functional movie editor will be useful for video processing.

Keeping a thematic blog will allow you to get traffic from search engines (with the right approach to promotion), which can then be converted. And publication on third-party sites with an active link to the online store, in addition to the SEO effect, will also help bring targeted traffic.

9. Affiliate programs

An affiliate program is a type of cooperation between a promoted project and a third-party resource that receives a reward for a perfect sale of a product or a transition to the pages of an online store. The remuneration is expressed as a percentage or a fixed amount.

The main advantage of affiliate programs is that in most cases you do not need to pay for placement – payment occurs only after the agreed action is completed. The main thing is to choose the right partner: how similar your audiences are, where your ad will be placed (for example, a banner), whether it will be too lost against the background of other offers, etc.

10. Bulletin boards

This option is not suitable for all types of goods. However, listing on eBay often generates additional targeted traffic, especially for online furniture, building supplies, and plumbing stores. In some cases, online stores are published on such resources, displaying goods in a paid placement. It is difficult to say for sure whether this option will work or not, but it is worth testing the channel.

Conclusion

So, we have proposed the 10 most popular ways to increase sales and traffic to an online store. We hope that by using them together, you will get the desired result.

Author bio:

Vital Shpakouski

Philologist with higher education, professional translator, former volunteer and teacher, entrepreneur, and salesperson with 13 years of experience. Now I’m a copywriter in the field of Internet marketing, and I write about everything that helps businesses grow and develop. In my free time, I create music and songs that no one hears and take photos and videos that no one sees.