How to Increase Traffic on Your Ecommerce Store?

by alex| in Web to Print on August 23, 2019 9:14 am 2839 /

0

Now, if you are trying to increase web traffic, it may sometimes feel impossible to get there as soon as you start your website. At first, nothing seems to work, no matter what you try and how much you work. It gets frustrating when you are spending a lot of the advertisement and other marketing ventures yet it doesn’t return any. However, you have nothing to worry as this is exactly why we are here today to give you a birds-eye view and more details on how you can increase traffic on your eCommerce store without breaking the bank. 

How You Can Increase Website Traffic?

So, let’s dive right in! Here, I will discuss how you can climb up the traffic hill even if you are at the bottom. This blog is both for those who are just starting out and for those who are already underway.

Here are the top 6 rock-solid ways to drive traffic to your online store

1. Get in touch with influencers and interview them.
2. Run a few contests online and give free gifts. The giveaways could be promotional products.
3. Make partnership with influencers.
4. Write on forums.
5. Make use of content marketing.
6. Get featured in various publications

We can also say that the aforementioned 6 ways are not the only way, but they are certainly a great place to begin, especially if you are just starting out with your eCommerce business. 

Make Partnership With Influencers

Influencers are attention magnet and the source of all marketing space. You can easily get in touch with them if you know who are the influencers in your industry. They are free to approach and talk and they do have a large and engaging fan following. When you make a partnership with influencers, you are sure to get highly engaged and targeted traffic to your eCommerce website. Here, you have to remember that engagement is more important than just numbers on paper as they have a greater conversion rate.

By the way, who exactly is an influencer? To know this you have to understand that an influencer is someone who has a significant impact on a large group of people, it could be on social media or on email. There are typically 5 classes of influencers i.e.

1. Authorities
2. Journalists
3. Bloggers
4. Celebrities
5. Connectors

Each of these classes of influencers has a different reach and association in the industry. The ability to build relationships will also vary depending on the type of influencer. But first, to partner with influencers, you have to target people who you want to work with and try to reach people who are:

• Relevant to your services and products, but they shouldn’t be competitors
• Quite and influencer in social media with a large and engaged fan following
• They must have a large email list
• They must have a high domain authority on their blog

The good news is that there are many free tools such as BuzzSumo and influence.co which will help you find influencers in your niche industry.

Now, after you have found out at least 5 influencers to partner with, you have to start building a relationship with them. You can start by sending an email but it has to be damn good and not your average joe like “Hi, would you like to partner with me?”

You have to understand that all influencers love to engage with people and they would love to be with those who would make them even more influential. You can start by engaging them on social media profiles by liking and sharing their posts. Comment on their posts with an insightful message. Give a link to them from the most relevant and popular blog of yours. After you have spent at least some time doing this, you should spend some time like a week or so in engaging with them and then finally reach out with an email. 

Here’s an email template that you can follow

“Hey, John! I would like to let you know that I have a following your blog for quite some time now and I absolutely love what you give out. You would be happy to know that I was able to generate 30% more sales just by referring your article on “How to get more sales on eCommerce website.”

I am Denver, the owner of puppyproduct.com and I sell all kinds of products for dogs, puppies, and pets. I think you would be a perfect fit for them. 

I want to offer you the opportunity to review our products for free and if you write or post an update on our product, that would be awesome. Would you mind if I send you a sample of my like of cat products to you? You could also join our affiliate program and get 10% of profits for every sale you send out for us. Would you like to try out our product to see if it’s right for you?

Thanks for your consideration

Ron Howard”

Write on Forums

By forums, we also mean Q&A’s and groups that you can join and contribute with your knowledge and assistance. The trick is to get more traffic, you have to get more attention and the best way to get more attention is to go where more people are hanging out. This is where forums, groups, and Q&A sessions some in.

Here are some places you can write a contribute:

• Reddit
• LinkedIn groups
• Slack groups
• Facebook groups
• Quora

REDDIT

Reddit is a highly engaging forum site with real influencers and experienced individuals on the board. It can be a scary place for new ones. The group here don’t tolerate any scams or anything that’s out of the topic or just straight out bullshit. However, don’t be scared, we are here to help you steer through the crowd by giving you some best practices that will keep you on the safe side.

• Be as Transparent as Possible – Always speak the truth on Reddit. It is better to write your heart out than trying to be shady and lying about stuff. It’s ok if you are not that impressive or interesting as others, what matters that you must contribute and be a part in a good way.
• Post-High-Quality Content – Don’t write anything crappy or you will be called out for. There isn’t just space for lousy content on Reddit. And definitely, don’t just share a link to your blog site or landing page, it would definitely ban you out of the group. Make sure, each content is unique, interesting and entertaining. If you can’t write it yourself, you should hire an expert Redditor for the job. 
• Only Write in Relevant Groups – It’s not like other forums where you can just spread all your stuff everywhere and expect it to work. In Reddit, you have to make sure you post relevant content in relevant groups. Find out your subtopics and post what is relevant to the reader. If you are posting about vines, make sure the subreddit is about plants, vines, and stuff. 
• Strictly follow Reddit and Subreddit Rules – Make sure you go through the rules of each Reddit and Subreddit which you must abide by at all cost. If links are not allowed to the subreddit, don’t post it. If links allowed, by all means, post it but make sure it is relevant and interesting. 

LINKEDIN GROUPS

LinkedIn groups are a great way to drive traffic, especially for online business because most of them are actively participating in the discussion and the participants are in tens and thousands of members. You should target a group based on your niche. 

Here is how you can use LinkedIn groups to your advantage:

• Join up to 99 groups on LinkedIn – You should definitely take advantage of the group feature as LinkedIn allows you to join up to 99 groups, where you can exchange valuable information about your business. 
• Find Only Relevant Groups – The key to any forum or group discussion is to first find a relevant group. A relevant group has highly targeted users who are more likely to take an interest in what you have to offer and write. For example, if you sell headphones, you should be joining a music enthusiast group.
• Don’t Spam – By spamming we mean don’t just post your personal business products and services, people hate these kinds of things. A group is a place to exchange relevant and important information and is all about building a relationship. You should be posing cool articles, interesting products that you think the group would like and other interesting stuff. 

Like any other group, you should focus on being genuine and not just try some marketing tactics. Whatever you post on the group, be it yours or somebody else’s makes sure that it is worthy for that group.

SLACK GROUPS

A slack group is an interesting place! Slack is basically an online tool where the team get together to keep a track of their projects and communicate with each other. Some of the slack groups allow users to post products and blog posts. You just have to find them and get your on the group as well. 

FACEBOOK GROUPS

Facebook groups are as sensitive as Reddit and LinkedIn. That said, with Facebook, you have much easier access to people in the community. You can take a look at the members of the group, message them directly and can even promote your content after building a rapport after a few months of being in the group. 

QUORA

This is a Q&A community where you can answer questions posted by others. The topics vary widely starting from science to business and farming to politics. You can also ask your own questions to get great insights from a community of millions of users. 

Make Use of Content Marketing

Content marketing is just another name for writing good content and then sharing them to the world. The easiest way would be to start your own blog for your eCommerce site, no wonder you will find almost all e-commerce websites have their own blogs. It briefly contains three things:

• Starting a blog
• Guest posting
• Content Syndication

Starting A Blog

With a blog, you can make it or break it! It is a really good way to start getting relevant free traffic simply by publishing good quality content. You can create through leadership and authority in your niche if you can produce that level of articles and blogs. It will also help you build a relationship with both influencers and customers. 

To start a blog, you will need to have a consistent blogging schedule, a list of ideas on what you want to write, and you just have to start writing from day one. Moreover, you need a digital marketing team who will help you with keyword research as most of the traffic to your blog will come organically from the search engines; which is why you also want to rank higher in crowd. 

Guest Posting

Guest posting or guest blogging is all about writing blog content for someone else’s blog site with your name as the author. If you can write good stuff and write an interesting and engaging article, you can easily start guest posting for other high authority blog sites in your niche. This is important for several reasons such as getting high-quality backlinks from high domain authority sites, getting quality traffic to your website from relevant and targeted users and gain authority in the industry as an authoritative blogger.

Content Syndication

Now, you need content syndication which is basically getting another site to publish your content on their website. The reason for content syndication is the same as for guest blogging. You get good traffic, backlinks, and authority. However, this is a little more advanced than guest posting. It contains processes that you could be completely new to; here’s a blog from Niel Patel (https://neilpatel.com/blog/the-step-by-step-guide-to-syndicating-content-without-screwing-up-your-seo/) which you can refer to learn more about content syndication.

Run A Few Contests Online And Give Free Gifts

People love good content and the best part is that they are free and are highly effective. However, you do have to provide a giveaway and this tactic gives only short-term high-value traffic. To start and eCommerce giveaway you need three things i.e.

1. A goal such as traffic or social following or collecting emails etc.
2. A prize such as cash, free products a trip to Hawaii, etc.
3. Promotion by joining hands with influencers and existing customers

For promotions you need to:

• Reach out to influencers who will help you promote the giveaway
• Send out emails to the existing email list
• Share it on your social media channels
• Also, promote it on your homepage and blog

When you have a winner, you have to announce it to everyone via email or on social media or blog post. This is to make sure that your customers know that it was genuine and they will definitely look out for or would be interested in your future contests. 

Get In Touch With Influencers And Interview Them

Like we said before, influencer shaves tremendous power to get you high-quality traffic. Which is why interviewing traffic is yet another great way to get traffic but you should know that it doesn’t give you immediate traffic boost. It takes time but over time you will build strong brand value of your own.

The strategy behind interviewing influencers is to:

• Build long-term relationships with influencers. And get them to work with you consistently in order to increase website traffic and promote your products and services.
• Inspire your audience with inspirational, or helpful information
• Learn more about the industry from the influencers directly

Two key things to keep in mind while looking for influencers

• The influencers should be relevant to your industry or your niche
• They should be willing to take the interview and share their insights to the public

After setting your target, it is time to reach out to them. You should do the following before reaching out to them:

• Follow and communicate with them on social media profiles. 
• Read their blog posts or any books they have written. Try to understand how they perceive the industry.
• Engage in their social media and blog post. Comment and give you own view to their posts. 

Next, you should send an outreach email asking them for an interview. Here’s a template of an email asking for an interview with an influencer.

“Hey, John, I really like the blog you wrote on increasing sales on an ecommerce website, which has in fact helped me get a 30% boost in my sales from your tactics. Your advice on retargeting ads especially helped me get an increase in my sales. 

I was wondering if you would be willing to take a quick 30-minute interview next month in our studio.

I run a blog site for my eCommerce i.e. blog.crazypuppy.com where I post everything from marketing to product reviews to help customers make an informed decision and purchase better products and the best price.

I recently read your article on cryptocurrency in eCommerce as well as the role of mobile payment. I would love our audience to hear it directly from your one the topic. The interview will be pre-recorded and we will make sure to keep it within 30 minutes. 

I will send you some of my questions ahead of time on your email. Please let me know the time that would be good for you to take the interview. I’ll set up as per your needs. 

Thanks!

Ron Howard”

Get Featured In Various Publications

Publications are a great way to get high-quality traffic and publicity. Local papers, online publication and a great place to start looking for businesses to feature you in their publications. On the brighter side, local publications are looking for local businesses to feature in their papers. To find the best publication you could do the following:

• Find a list of local newspapers using USNPL (https://www.usnpl.com/). This is the United States Newspaper Listing website that will find out all the newspaper you need in your state and area. 
• To find local ration station use Radio Locator (https://radio-locator.com/). 
• To find local TV stations use the TV Guide (http://www.tvguide.com/listings/). 
• To find local business coverage site use Business Journal (https://www.bizjournals.com/). 
• To find contact information, check their website, connect with them on LinkedIn, and call them to ask. 

Next, you have to keep in mind, that businesses usually get a low response while reaching out to them. However, you should send a couple of follow-up emails to make sure. It is recommended that you wait at least 5 days before sending a follow-up email. If you still didn’t get any response, you can follow up again after 4 days. With your final follow up you should politely let them know that if you don’t receive any response it will suggest that they are not interested and then you take them off from your contact list. 

To get some coverage, you can try donating to a local charity; sponsor local events; contribute to a local cause; pitch to a local talk show; send PR to local journalists.