Ways to Increase Online Store Traffic in 2023

Want to improve traffic to your online store this year? This article goes over the most effective ways to get more customers to visit your ecommerce website.

The catchphrase “If you build it, they will come” doesn’t always hold true, especially for online stores. As it were, online businesses don’t get the benefit of real-world foot traffic that physical stores in busy malls or crowded main streets have.

When it comes to opening an online store, having a strategy to attract customers is just as important as developing and designing a cool storefront and product page. It's crucial to your success that you attract online customers with the help of great content and marketing strategies.

Improving your online store traffic takes some work and marketing effort, but you’ll certainly see more improvements than if you do nothing and wait for someone to discover your online store by accident—taking into account the heaps of competition.

In this article, we’ll show you how to create brand awareness with some of the best and most popular ways to get the word out about your store, so that you can reach your target customers and have them land on your website.

Before we get started, here’s a hot tip on marketing your online business: The key to marketing your online business doesn’t come down to a high budget for ads. It’s all about consistency. Whether the main strategy in improving your online store’s traffic is in social media, SEO, or Youtube, you have to stay consistent and keep the content flowing to build resources that will help you see more site visitors over time.

Below we talk about the top free and paid ways to improve your online store traffic in 2023:

1. Target Your Audience on Social Media

With more than half of the world’s population using social media, having a social media presence isn’t an option for your brand. Instead, it’s an indispensable brand asset for connecting with customers, gathering insightful data, and growing your online business.

Social media plays an important role in promoting brand awareness and driving traffic to your website. You can use your social media page to directly promote your brand, its products, and sale deals. You can also use your social media accounts to share relevant and interesting content, like your latest blog posts, and even create shoppable posts.

You don’t have to be on every social media platform. Determine which platforms your target audience is most likely to be on and concentrate your efforts there.

Your social media shares can be key in driving more traffic to your website in 2023. Many brands, National Geographic, for example, use Instagram to tease content on their feeds, encouraging their followers to check out the link in their bio that leads to their site. Numerous online brands also use social media to share shoppable posts, increasing brand revenue.

Here are some social media platforms you should be on:

• Facebook- the most popular social media platform Facebook has over 1.5 billion active daily users. Facebook can be great for building brand awareness and directing users to your products and site.

• The Instagram-This popular social media platform has over 500 million daily users. Instagram is a photo-sharing app where many users follow and discover new brands. Ecommerce businesses benefit from Instagram's shoppable features.

• Pinterest- with over 445 million monthly users. People who use Pinterest use the app to follow creative ideas and to plan their purchases. Pinterest is great for improving traffic as photos redirect to your site.

• TikTok- the 3rd biggest social media platform, with TikTok you can build brand awareness and drive traffic to your site. TikTok ads also allow you to include external links.

2. Work on SEO

Increase traffic to your online store in 2023 by doubling down on your Search Engine Optimization efforts. Working on SEO means optimizing your site for organic search.

The process of optimizing your website for search engines increases the likelihood that your site will appear higher in search results when users type in a search query with keywords. Since 75% of clicks go to the first three results on a search engine results page (SERP), you want your store to be one of the first results buyers see when they search for your products. That coveted position on the SERP is essential for driving traffic to your online store.

It takes time and effort to master the rules of search engines like Google, and search engines don’t even reveal what these rules are, but here are ways for you to improve your online store’s SEO game that will drive organic traffic to your store: 

• Blogging: Starting a blog could be excellent for SEO. Blogs are helpful and engaging, they are also more shareable, and set up your brand as an authority in your niche.

• Optimize Images: When you optimize your images, you reduce the load time of your site, which is great for SEO.

• Use Keywords: Use keywords throughout your website’s content. Keywords are the phrases your prospective customers input into the search bar and are an important part of SEO.

• Use Meta Tags: Meta tags give search engines and your target customer additional details about your website and content. Examples of meta tags are meta descriptions, titles, and alt text.

3. Work With Influencers

A social media influencer is someone who has a substantial following on a platform and can feature your products in a genuine way to increase brand awareness, boost your social media presence and therefore improve your online traffic.

If you wish to engage with social media influencer marketing to boost traffic to your website, it's important to find an influencer whose values and content align with your brand, and whose followers are likely to be drawn in by your products.

Creating a business relationship with an influential member of your target market can significantly influence how your target clients behave and drive traffic to your website. If you have a product that can attract an influencer’s audience, influencers will be interested in working with you. Work in collaboration with influencers by to providing valuable content for their viewers or followers, such as insider tips, posting online competitions, or offering freebies for follows, likes, etc.

Another fantastic advantage of influencer marketing is user-generated content or UGC. People generally place greater faith in other people than they do in brands. Having pictures and content from people using and praising your products is extremely valuable to your business as it increases brand awareness and will have your target audience landing on your website. You can ask an influencer you're working with for permission to use their content on your page. Then, you'll be able to repost their content so that both their images and copy and the association you have with this influencer are visible to your audience.

Influencer marketing isn’t typically free, but you can leverage the help of micro-influencers (influencers with 10,000 followers) who post content if you give them free products or a referral code.

4. Use Paid Ads

Search engine sponsored listings and social media advertising, where companies pay to be included in search results or in feed, are an excellent way to increase visibility and attract high-quality visitors to your website.

Paid ads are great for extending your reach and increasing the number of people exposed to your products and services. Ads appear in-feed on social media or at the top of the SERPs, blending in with the rest of the content so as not to look like an obnoxious advertisement.

For ecommerce businesses, paid advertising—in particular, PPC and Facebook ads—has emerged as one of the key avenues for improving website traffic and customer acquisition. Paid advertisements are successful because they offer businesses a wealth of data, aid in brand optimization, and offer a selection of ad styles that the business may experiment with to find which methods get the best results.

There are many places online to post ads to reach a wider audience and improve your site traffic, including Google, most social media, YouTube, and more.

To ensure that the results are worthwhile, track your ROI.

5. Create Video Content

Video content continues to engage more users, with Youtube, TikTok, and Instagram reels becoming even more popular with internet users, especially those on mobile. Text-based media is all well and good, but video content may draw in more viewers, garnering a bigger audience and more traffic.

Many ecommerce businesses and online entrepreneurs are starting to use video marketing to engage users and draw them to their websites. In fact, as much as 63% of companies use video marketing to increase website traffic.

Videos are great for brands because it improves brand presence online and increases trust. Online Shoppers feel that watching videos gives them the assurance to make online purchases, creating a feeling of familiarity with your brand. Video material is also great for SEO, making your brand more visible to users in an organic way.

Strategies for video content include adding videos to your blog entries so that they can be found through video search engines. An extensive collection of multimedia content will draw in viewers, and may even garner repeat visits for those who find your content valuable. It’s also always a good idea to provide a call-to-action that links viewers to your site.

Video content works because it is the ideal blend of value and amusement, attracting the attention of even the most disinterested potential customer. Online shoppers today demand to see goods and services in use, and not just read about them on your product page.

So brush up on your video editing skills for Youtube, get on TikTok, and learn how to make reels on Insta to get your customers engaged and ready to visit your website today.

Ready to improve your online business website’s traffic?

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