Launching a new Shopify website for your e-commerce business is so exciting! You’ve poured time and resources into a beautiful website to display and sell your products… It goes live… And then what? Without sufficient traffic to it, that new website will collect digital dust. If you want to increase web traffic to your Shopify website and start growing your online sales, you can take a few steps to see quick results.
Search Engine Optimization
First thing’s first: You have to be on top of your store’s SEO to increase web traffic to your Shopify website. You don’t need to be an SEO expert (though that doesn’t hurt!), but you need to cover your Shopify store’s essential SEO elements to bring more shoppers to your site.
For your Shopify website to show up on search engine results pages, you’ll need to optimize it. This requires taking the time to determine and complete these aspects of your site:
- Keywords
- Meta descriptions
- Image alt text
- Product information (titles, descriptions, and alt tags)
- Optimizing site speed
Check out my blog on SEO Best Practices For Shopify for an in-depth, step-by-step guide on how to get your Shopify site’s SEO on point.
Use Social Media + Your Website
It’s 2022, folks: Social media is a must if you want to increase web traffic to your Shopify site! For an online retail business, the whole purpose of your social media profiles and activity should be to grow your audience and generate traffic to your website.
Your social media platforms are important places to connect with your target customers, engage them, and build brand awareness and affinity. Don’t miss the opportunity to guide your audience to your site!
Instagram, alone, has more than one billion users. 80% of them follow at least one business on the platform, and 30% of them have purchased something they found on Instagram.
Shopify Basic plans give shop owners the ability to sell their products on Facebook, Messenger, Instagram, and Pinterest, while Shopify Lite is limited to Facebook and Messenger. Whichever plan you might have chosen for your business, be sure to take advantage of its social media integrations so you don’t miss out on this major traffic opportunity.
Call On Your Email List
Whether you have a modest and growing email list, or a large and established one, marketing to your email subscribers is essential to increase web traffic to your Shopify website. What makes email such a valuable tool for improving your website traffic is that you can use it to nurture your audience — A key step in driving sales.
Using email marketing, you’re able to share exclusive promos, sales, launches, and other communications directly to your subscribers. Using audience segmentation, you can categorize your subscribers by their interests, actions, and other variables, in order to send them targeted mail based on what you know about them.
Within your emails, there are ample opportunities to link to specific products and include Calls to Action (CTAs) to take your email readers to your website.
Social Media Advertising
Beyond promoting your Shopify store and products on your social media profiles, social media ads are a highly effective way to increase web traffic to your Shopify website. Social media ad campaigns can be paid or organic (paid will get you more traffic), and give you the ability to target specific audience members with ads for your site.
With demographic and interest targeting, Shopify store owners can choose audiences for ads that have chosen characteristics. These might be audience age, gender, education, jobs, hobbies, etc.
There’s also the option to target lookalike audiences, or people who have similar characteristics to your existing customers.
Haven’t you ever been scrolling Instagram only for a sponsored post to appear in your feed, with a new-to-you brand or product that’s right up your alley? That, my friend, is thanks to the magic of social media advertising.
Consider Influencer Marketing
Influencer marketing can be a touchy subject in the world of online businesses. But, there is definitely a way to collaborate with influencers to increase web traffic to your Shopify website, that’s authentic to your brand and values.
Influencers are essentially social media users or bloggers with sizable followings. When influencers plug a product or a business, they’re advertising it to their following and promoting sales. An influencer’s followers look to them for inspiration, and recommendations, and are typically pretty loyal. If an influencer says, “Hey, this product is great and I really like using it,” their followers will want to try it out themselves.
Influencers won’t promote your products out of the kindness of their hearts, though, and should be considered a paid advertising activity. You can expect to give them free products or payment in turn for their promotion of your Shopify business, and different influencers will require different investments based on their influence level/following.
Run Google Ads
I’m including Google Ads campaigns last, here. Not because it isn’t a really valuable tool to increase web traffic to your Shopify site, but because it’s one you’ll probably need some professional assistance with.
Google Ads gives you a pay-per-click (PPC) advertising platform, meaning you only pay when people click on your ads. It’s great for pushing a lot of traffic to your site because Google Ads are seen by a lot of internet users. The ads can appear on Google search pages, Gmail, and YouTube.
The tricky thing about Google Ads campaigns is that you need to know what you’re doing when you set them up. So, if you’re up for getting an education on Google Ads campaigns and how to run them, go for it! But if not, you might want to hire a pro to set up ads for your Shopify store.
Conclusion
Want to set up a traffic-generating digital storefront for your growing online retail business? My Branding & Web Design service gives you a custom brand and Shopify store, complete with page & product SEO, app integrations, and more. Fill out my inquiry form here and let’s chat about how we can bring your e-commerce store dreams to life for your biz!
