Everyone needs a little boost in their life. For some, that is a morning coffee, maybe a fun new workout, but for those running an Ecommerce website, you might be looking for ways to boost traffic and ROI. While quantity is important, the quality of your website traffic will make a larger impact. Your target audience is the ideal quality traffic for your website, because they have the best chance of increasing exposure, sales, and ROI.
The Ecommerce landscape is highly competitive. Millions of companies are present in the industry, which leads to fierce competition. To combat this competition, it is important to incorporate effective strategies for increasing traffic to your website.
Understanding Ecommerce Traffic Generation
Ecommerce traffic refers to commercial transactions that are conducted electronically on the internet, also referred to as user visits. Using visits as a measurement is a common way to measure an online business’ effectiveness when it comes to attracting their audience. Why does this matter? Well, without site traffic, you won’t make a profit.
There are three types of traffic – organic, paid and referral. Organic traffic comes from search engine results that are earned, rather than paid. Paid traffic comes from online advertising, which is funded by the business. Referral traffic occurs when a user finds your site on another website rather than through a major search engine, which can either be paid or not.
Increasing targeted traffic is one of the best ways to improve conversion rates. A conversion happens when a potential customer becomes a paying customer. Your targeted visitors are most likely to convert, which could mean an increase in sales, subscribers and more. When you tailor your website to your target audience, this can also reduce irrelevant traffic, which leads to higher bounce rates.
Search Engine Optimization for Ecommerce
You must understand the relationship between Ecommerce and search engine optimization (SEO) before trying to boost your website. SEO refers to the process of improving your website’s visibility in search engines. It gives you the opportunity to increase organic traffic, increase ROI and enhance user experience. SEO influences your site’s rank on Google’s Search Engine Results Page (SERP).
Keyword research is essential for driving traffic to your website as it helps optimize your content to align with what users are searching for. By identifying relevant keywords and incorporating them strategically into your website’s content, you can increase your visibility in search engine results. This, in turn, improves your chances of attracting organic traffic from users actively seeking information or solutions related to your offerings, ultimately driving more targeted traffic to your website.
Ecommerce is highly competitive, and the business’s success relies on capturing potential customers’ attention. One way to grab the attention and interest of customers is meta descriptions. Meta descriptions are short summaries that describe what a particular web page is about, and they appear on the search page. You can think of them as a pitch that persuades users that the page is what they are looking for.
Now that you have a better understanding of SEO for Ecommerce, here are some examples of successful Ecommerce SEO strategies:
- Find relevant and optimized keywords
- Establish an easy site architecture
- Improve site loading speed
- Create unique product descriptions for each product
Pay-Per-Click Advertising
Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising occurs when an advertiser pays each time a user clicks on one of their ads. PPC helps you attract new customers and make your brand stand out. It allows you to reach your specific target audience, which helps avoid wasting advertising spend.
Google Ads and social media are two mediums through which you can employ PPC advertising. Some research studies have shown that Google Ads accounts for approximately 18% of all Ecommerce revenue. Social media marketing can be relatively cost-effective, giving it this advantage over Google Ads in the PPC game. Most social media platforms allow businesses to create free accounts and reach large audiences without a significant advertising cost.
But how can you optimize PPC advertising on social media? One way is by creating compelling ad copy and landing pages, through which you speak directly to your target audience’s desires and fears. Good copy is clear, focused, concise and intriguing.
To create effective landing pages, you should:
- Put important features above the fold
- Write a compelling headline
- Use a strong call to action (CTA)
- Include testimonials and case studies
- Use trust symbols to build credibility
- Implement good media
- Eliminate excessive loading times on pages
A typical budget for advertising allots 40-50% for digital marketing, 20-30% for traditional marketing, 10-20% for events and sponsorships and 5-10% for research analytics. Bidding is also important when creating budgets. Some effective bidding strategies are Target CPA, Target ROAS, Maximize conversions and Maximize conversion value.
Marketing Strategies for Ecommerce
Content marketing is one type of marketing strategy that allows brands to establish themselves while building awareness and trust. It increases visibility and lets brands engage with their audience. One example of content marketing are blog posts, which can be used to generate backlinks, helping with branding and engaging with customers for longer durations.
Videos can also help with brand exposure and build an emotional connection with the target audience. When this content is shared, it increases the amount of viewers, which leads to the main goal – brand awareness.
The power of social media can significantly impact your Ecommerce business if it is used correctly. To leverage social media, you must first understand who your target audience is because different demographics engage with different social media platforms. Once you know which social media platforms will work best, you can use the platforms to get people to your website by using referral links and backlinks in posts.
Ecommerce Social Media Campaigns
One example is Spotify Wrapped, one of the most successful social media campaigns. It is truly unique because of its highly personalized deliverables, showing that customer data is a powerful tool for effective social media campaigns. When users were sharing their Spotify Wrapped to social media in 2020, Spotify app downloads increased by 21% because the posts included a link that drove traffic directly to their website.
With the help of Rivers Agency, Fantastic Sams was able to implement a strategic content marketing campaign that consisted of both organic and paid advertising and social media. Each week, three blogs and three social media posts were created that contained relevant content for the target audience. In addition, search and display ads were run to target users searching for keywords affiliated with Fantastic Sams.
The campaign had favorable results. Compared with the previous year, there was a 23% increase in website traffic. Fantastic Sams saw a 37% increase in the number of users and it had a 57% decrease in bounce rate. There was also an increase in the average time users spent on the site, which increased from 3.01 minutes to 4.3 minutes.
Influencer Partnerships and Affiliate Marketing
Influencer partnerships can help create buzz around a brand, especially among influencers’ followers who may not have been aware of the company previously. Influencers have the ability to generate substantial exposure among their audience and send them to your website, either by linking the site directly or through referrals. However, the influencers you choose to partner with should be people whose content aligns with your business goals.
Affiliate marketing is another way to leverage external partners for website traffic. Affiliate is digital marketing centered on relationships, which are leveraged to generate brand awareness, traffic and conversions. The intended outcome of these relationships is a win-win partnership.
Win-win partnerships attempt to meet the goals of all the negotiating parties, which allows everyone to gain something from the negotiation. For example, affiliate marketers are able to capitalize on traffic they already have and the company is able to reach a larger audience and increase sales.
Email Marketing Strategies
Email marketing is a powerful tool for driving traffic back to your ecommerce website. You can send personalized emails to subscribers, keep them engaged with your brand, build relationships and increase sales with email tracks that focus on personalized product recommendations, cart abandonment and promoting new products or services.
Delight your email subscribers with personalized product recommendations to show them that there is more shopping to be done on your website. Personalized emails have been proven to drive higher engagement rate than generalized emails. Test email components such as imagery size, removing product price, and layout to drive the highest click through rate to your website possible.
Abandoned cart emails are also valuable because they draw customers back to your website to complete the purchase they were already considering. Cart abandonment is extremely common amongst online shoppers and is highest for consumers that are shopping on a mobile device, despite the fact that online shopping sessions account for more than two-thirds of all ecommerce sessions at 68%.
Around 70% of shoppers abandon their cart, which means only 3 out of 10 customers are successfully completing a purchase. This is why it is important to remind customers to complete their purchase in the form of these emails. Abandoned cart emails have about a 40% open rate and a click-through rate of 23.33%. This is impressive considering the average email open rate is around 20%.
Keep customers coming back by creating compelling email content, enticing subject lines, and testing to find the content that is most effective for your target audience.
Leveraging User-Generated Content and Reviews
User-generated content (UGC) is crucial in building trust and authenticity. UGC allows brands to establish a community, which enhances customer engagement. It can provide users with reliable recommendations, which will increase traffic to your ecommerce site.
Product reviews are another form of UGC that can help improve SEO ranking, boost traffic and reduce bounce rate. Some ways to encourage feedback are to:
- Use social listening
- Send follow-up emails
- Conduct customer interviews
- Offer incentives for providing feedback
User Experience and Website Optimization
User experience (UX) increases customer retention and is important to understand when running an Ecommerce website. If you prioritize UX, you can create a seamless experience for users, which leads to higher engagement and ultimately improves conversion rates. When you have a responsive web design, it helps users navigate your website seamlessly.
Another way to improve UX is through intuitive navigation, which can also make your site look more professional and organized. Use A/B testing to evaluate UX, which is a randomized experimentation process where two or more versions of a web page or page element are shown to different users at the same time to see which version has the most influence on business metrics.
Analyzing website traffic is the key to identifying improvement areas. When you better understand how visitors interact with your website, you can tailor to user experience, which will drive conversions. You can also see which channels are sending you the most organic or paid traffic.
Google analytics can be a great tool for monitoring traffic, behaviors and conversions. When a user visits a web page, the tracking code will collect information about how that visitor interacted with the page. Continuous optimization can help maximize value and performance. The goal of analyzing your website is to assess the impact and keep adjusting your strategies accordingly.
Get Your BOOST
Boosting website traffic and conversions doesn’t happen overnight. But, by utilizing these strategies, you can steadily grow your online presence and drive more customers to your site. It is important for Ecommerce businesses to tailor their approach based on their target audience to avoid wasting resources and advertising on the wrong demographic. These strategies will ensure that you stay on top of adapting to the digital landscape.
The traffic you are looking for might shift, and that’s okay! Rivers is ready to help you make adjustments when necessary, and utilize these strategies to boost your Ecommerce website.