Attendance of the Online Store: 7 Ways to Improve It

Everyone is familiar with the sales funnel — the more traffic you bring to your website, the more visitors you can convert into customers. And if you've managed to generate substantial traffic to your e-commerce store, rest assured — there's never such a thing as too much traffic. You must constantly seek ways to boost it. In this article, we'll discuss seven effective strategies for driving traffic to your website.

You've likely encountered the term SEO numerous times. Indeed, search engine optimization is crucial for website promotion, and you should never overlook it as secondary. If you understand how to employ various SEO techniques to your advantage, you can attract copious amounts of practically free traffic to your online store.

When someone uses a search engine, such as Yandex or Google, they're seeking answers to their questions. Therefore, if you can provide answers relevant to their queries, they'll be inclined to read your content, likely browse your site, and perhaps make a purchase. That's why your e-commerce website should include a blog.

Want to ensure that you have the right SEO in place to increase traffic to your e-commerce site? Consider an SEO checklist to help you identify all the areas you need to monitor.

Your blog is the perfect place for publishing articles that resonate with your target audience. It should be optimized for search engines using relevant keywords. However, remember to pay attention to the other pages on your site. Their optimization is also crucial. For instance, your product pages should have descriptions containing relevant keywords.

If you don't have a blog yet, ask yourself these questions:
● What challenges do my customers face?

● What types of questions might they ask?

● What are their interests, hobbies, habits, etc.?

● How can I meet their needs and solve their problems?

Once you have the answers, you can start thinking about your content strategy. Create a comprehensive plan about what topics you'll write about, the format you'll stick to, what types of content you'll create (alongside articles), and so on.

To enhance the SEO level of your e-commerce site's page, employ specialized extensions and tools for SEO optimization. They significantly reduce the workload and cost. You can set up multiple templates for automatic creation of meta tags, extended snippets, canonical tags, alternative image tags, and much more.

Here's a list of some tools and extensions that aid in site optimization:

Google Analytics — a free tool providing information about site traffic, user behavior, and other metrics.

SEMrush — a tool assisting in competitor analysis, search queries, and content optimization.

Ahrefs — a tool for analyzing a site's backlink profile and finding new potential links.

Yoast SEO — a WordPress extension that helps optimize content, metadata, and other site parameters for search engines.

MozBar — a Chrome browser extension that provides information about the domain, page, links, and keywords.

Screaming Frog SEO Spider — a software for scanning your website and identifying technical issues that may affect its SEO.

Majestic SEO — a tool for analyzing a site's backlink profile and determining its authority.

It's important to understand that using specialized extensions and tools for SEO doesn't guarantee success in site optimization. These are merely instruments that aid in analyzing and optimizing your website.

Search engines place significant emphasis on page usability, which refers to a set of features determining how easy and comfortable it is for users to interact with it.

To achieve a higher page ranking, pay attention to:

● Core Web Vitals

● Mobile device optimization

● Ease of use

To improve page effectiveness, start with Google's tips and strategies. This is one of the best tactics to attract traffic to your e-commerce store, as search engine algorithms give this factor considerable weight. Pages with high rankings appear at the top of search results, making it easier for users to find your site and, consequently, leading to an increase in site traffic.

Here are a few tips to enhance your page's effectiveness:

● Improve loading speed: this metric indicates how quickly your page and its most crucial content load so that users can view it.

● Include internal links: this is one of the best practices for SEO, but it also allows users to explore your content and spend more time on your site.

● Optimize your URLs for SEO: your URL structure is part of your SEO. Keep your URLs short and include keywords in them.

Another excellent way to increase traffic to your e-commerce store is to set up effective email marketing. If you already have an email list of your customers, sending out marketing messages via email should be no problem. If you haven't started doing this yet, we recommend starting with the existing customer base you have and gradually expanding your email list.

You might think that email marketing is no longer relevant, but you'd be wrong. Email newsletters are one of the most effective marketing methods, leading to high conversion rates and sales. According to a study by the DMA (Direct Marketing Association), the ROI (return on investment) in email marketing averages $38 for every dollar spent on distribution. Statistics show that the open rate for email newsletters is between 20% and 30%, and the click-through rate is between 3% and 5%, which is a reasonably high figure.

Email newsletters can be personalized for each recipient, increasing the likelihood that the email will be opened and read.

In a good email marketing strategy, each stage should be well thought out to guide customers at each stage of the sales funnel. Well-written "warming-up" email chains can organically transition "cold" clients into buyers.

Here are a few tips on how to make email marketing as effective as possible:

● Provide value: always send high-quality content so that your readers want to open emails and then click on the links in them. Your audience is ready to receive relevant and useful information.

● Segment your audience: segment your audience by interest, so that each group receives the content they need. Also, divide your audience into groups according to the actions they have taken (for example, subscribed to the newsletter, filled out a questionnaire, participated in a gift draw, made a purchase, etc.)

● Work with your mailing list: don't just expand the list, but regularly review it to see who you can remove from it. If you see someone who hasn't opened your emails once or hasn't done so in a long time, it may not be worth spending resources on them, and it's better to focus on attracted target subscribers.

Email newsletters can be used for various purposes, such as notifications about new products, promotions, discounts, reminders about abandoned carts, etc.

A Call to Action (CTA) is an element of a web page that encourages a user to perform a specific action, such as placing an order, registering, writing a review, etc.

The goal of a CTA is to motivate the user to perform a specific action and increase website conversion. A good CTA should be noticeable, clear, attractive, fit the context of the page, and be easily executable for the user. The placement of a CTA on a page is crucial—it should be noticeable on the first screen and repeated further on different parts of the page.

Soft and hard CTAs are differentiated.

Soft CTAs don't suggest buying a product but offer to learn more about the company and its products. Soft CTAs can include offering demo access to a service, subscribing to a newsletter, downloading a checklist, or a presentation. A "cold" site visitor is unlikely ready to make purchases right away, and these offers are designed to deepen their acquaintance with the product or brand by providing useful and free information.

Hard CTAs are direct calls that stimulate a purchase. For such a call to be effective, it usually contains a profitable offer. For example, this could be a profitable, but short-term, discount, or an offer for a free trial sample/free period.

Experiment with CTA buttons and conduct parallel tests, such as A/B testing. Through experimentation, you should check how different button colors and page placements work, as well as different call-to-action texts.

Think about which pages of the site, besides the main one, should include CTA buttons. And remember that CTA requires the application of certain efforts before you find the most effective option.

Retargeting is a marketing technology that allows you to show ads in Yandex.Direct and social networks to those users who have already visited your site or shown interest in your product or service.

Retargeting helps increase conversion and reduce costs for attracting new customers, working with those who have already shown interest in this topic. This is achieved by using cookies, which save information about the visitor and later show them ads on other sites that support this system. There are persistent rumors that the use of cookies will soon be banned, but they will be replaced by other solutions that can solve this problem.

Retargeting will only work well if you have many ads to show your potential customers. For example, if someone visited your site and read a blog post about how to combine summer dresses with summer hats, you need to show them an ad with an image of either one of your summer dresses or one of your summer hats. If someone looked at a bracelet that you trade but didn't buy it, you should show them an ad with an article about bracelets.

It should be noted that retargeting can be an effective tool not only for promoting goods and services, but also for improving the user experience on the site. For example, it can be used to remind users about products that they have added to the cart but did not place an order, or to suggest alternative product options that may be of interest to the user based on their previous actions on the site. It helps increase user engagement and reduce purchase refusals.

For retargeting to be effective, you will have to segment your audience significantly. In the settings, you also need to exclude clients who have already made a purchase, as they are unlikely to make a second purchase within a short period of time. It's also worth limiting the number of impressions to one visitor, as it quickly starts to annoy. People start to feel that you are following them all over the internet, no matter which resource they visit.

In recent times, social media platforms have become an essential source of traffic for online stores. Social networks allow companies to conduct targeted advertising, which we wrote about earlier, increasing the overall effectiveness of marketing campaigns.

Among the reasons for the development of advertising on social networks are:

1. Growth in popularity of social networks. Social networks have become the main place of communication and interaction for users on the internet, which has led to the emergence of new forms of communication, including the possibility of conducting trade operations.

2. Convenience and simplicity of use. social networks provide users with the ability to quickly and easily find information about products, compare them, share opinions and reviews.

3. Development of mobile technologies. mobile devices have become the main way of accessing the internet, creating additional opportunities for promoting goods and services.

Last but not least, influencer marketing is one of the best ways to drive traffic to an online store from social networks or blogs. Influencers, bloggers, and brand ambassadors have a wide and loyal audience. The likelihood of a purchase in case of a recommendation from a popular or influential personality significantly increases.

Advertising with micro-influencers, who have several thousand followers, also has a significant effect. In recent years, consumers are increasingly inclined to trust the opinion of their acquaintances and friends, not advertising. Thanks to the creation of high-quality and unique content that is interesting to the target audience, native promotion of products by such persons evokes trust and allows for effective selling of goods and services.

Another advantage of influencer marketing is the wide range of collaboration formats: from advertising posts and videos to blogger participation in a company's event. This allows companies to choose the most suitable format for achieving their goals.

With the development of special online platforms such as Getblogger, YouScan, Adinblog, Popsters, TrendHERO, it has become easier for small and medium-sized companies to collaborate with bloggers and influencers on mutually beneficial terms.

Influencer marketing allows companies to strengthen their reputation and consumer loyalty to the brand using the opinions of experts and regular users.

In conclusion, it can be said that creating high traffic to an online store without serious investments in increasing visitation will not work. In addition to standard costs for direct advertising, it is necessary to seek and utilize other ways to drive traffic to your site. The methods described in this article, when used correctly, should be sufficient.