13 Essential Traffic Sources for your eCommerce store

13 Traffic Sources for Online ECommerce Stores

Traffic is the basis for product sales in eCommerce stores. In this blog post, we present the 13 best measures that will bring more visitors to your store in the long term. Find out how you can increase the number of visitors to your store with search engine optimization, content marketing, social media, Google Shopping, and other measures.

1. Search Engine Optimization

Search engine optimization (SEO) is essential for online stores to have good rankings on Google & Co. Online shops with good positions in the search engines get significantly more traffic than stores that have poor rankings.

The road to well-optimized e-commerce stores is long, many things have to be considered. Including the loading time of the store, relevant keywords with a high search volume in the headlines and body text of the shop, compressed photos, intuitive navigation, ease of use, the use of meta tags, and rich snippets. In addition, your online store should be responsive and optimized for mobile devices (AMP for online stores). 

Another important measure that you can use to improve the visibility of your shop in the search results from Google & Co is optimizing the link profile. To improve this, you can register your store with company portals and company databases and integrate a link to your shop there. In addition, you can promote editorial contributions in blogs relevant to the topic, which also contain links to your shop.

Would you like more information about SEO for eCommerce? Get in touch with us for a non-binding consultation.

2. Content Marketing for Online Stores

Content in your blog is a suitable means that can bring constant visitors to your online store. With new content, you are constantly providing new material that search engines can index and is also fodder for social media. You can also establish yourself as an expert in your field and offer your customers relevant content. 

For example, you can publish informative texts and high-quality photos and videos of new products, provide information about industry news or announce marketing campaigns.

3. Social Media Marketing

Social media like Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter, and YouTube can bring more visitors to your website. Which platform makes sense for your store depends on your target group and your products. Your competitors can give you an initial orientation for suitable platforms and sensible content. You can examine what content is posted and how high the interaction of the target group is (shares and likes).

Generally suitable content is short summaries from the web shop blog, announcements of marketing campaigns (e.g. vouchers), or information about new products. When it comes to social media marketing, however, you should take heed that customers primarily use social media to exchange ideas with friends and acquaintances and are therefore less receptive to advertising. Promotional content should therefore be posted in moderation, relevant and personal content is better, for example, information about your company, employee introductions, or similar.

Other possibilities in social media: You can present the products in a kind of shop on Facebook. Each product is shown on a detail page, including description text and product photo. By clicking on a button, the user goes directly to the corresponding product page in your store. Instagram lets you publish shoppable posts. 

You can feature one or more products from your shop on the post photo and place clickable dots in the photo that link to the corresponding product page in your store. You can post your products on Pinterest and integrate a link to your shop under the product. These and other classic measures (image ads, video ads, carousel ads) can be an important source of traffic for your store.

Repurposing your content on other platforms is a good way to reach new customers. For example, you can repurpose your Instagram video by downloading it and posting it on Facebook or Twitter.

4. YouTube

To increase the traffic of your online store, you can become active on YouTube yourself or work with influencers. You can send the influencers your products and ask for a video presentation on YouTube. Common formats are unboxing videos (a product is unpacked in front of the camera), product presentations, or product tests. 

If you publish your YouTube videos yourself, you can motivate potential customers to visit your shop by showing a voucher in the video. Users can access your store via a link to your shop in the video description on YouTube.

5. Newsletter Marketing

With a newsletter, you can encourage customers to return to your shop. In order for customers to subscribe to your newsletter, you should provide reasons for doing so. For example, you can offer attractive content (discount campaigns, sweepstakes, new products) and entice customers to sign up for the newsletter with a voucher. It is best to place a prominent call-to-action for subscribing to the newsletter on every subpage of your online shop. 

In general, you should not send too many newsletters to your customers, as this can quickly become annoying. 1-2 newsletters per week are ideal. 

Newsletters work well on certain days, then customers can adjust to it and expect your newsletter in the best case. For example, a newsletter with a product presentation every Monday and a newsletter containing a voucher every Friday. If you offer relevant content in the newsletter and find the ideal frequency for sending it, the newsletter can bring more visitors to your shop every day.

6. Posts in Forums & Blogs

You can provide users in forums and blogs with assistance on specific topics. You can respond to a user's question and (discreetly) place a link to your online store in your post. If a large number of users read the post, there is a high probability that some (potential) customers will access your online shop via the link.

Another traffic bringer can be posted in blogs. For example, you can publish guest posts on an external blog that is thematically related to your store’s product range. Alternatively, you can force a post about your shop to be published on an external blogger's blog. In exchange for the blog post, the blogger may receive coupons, free product samples, or other considerations. Publishing blog posts about your store on (high-reach) blogs can not only bring you additional traffic but also strengthen the SEO of your shop.

7. Google Ads

Google Ads are a classic way to bring new visitors to your shop. The principle is simple: you pay Google when a user clicks on a text ad that contains a keyword you are bidding on. The user clicks on the text ad and gets to your shop via the linked page. A useful addition to Google Ads is Google Shopping ads, especially visually appealing products.

8. Google Shopping

On Google, Shopping Products are not advertised with text ads like Google Ads, but with Product Listing Ads (PLA). The ads are significantly more sales-promoting than Google Ads because they consist of a large product image. The display also provides information about the product name, price and shipping costs, ratings, and shop name. A link in the product display takes the customer directly to the relevant product page in your store and they can shop there. 

Google Shopping is a very effective channel for generating additional traffic for your shop. To use Google Shopping, you need a Google Ads account and a Google Merchant Center account. To publish the products on Google Shopping, the product data must be uploaded via CSV list.

9. Price Search Engine/Price Comparison Portals

Many customers start their product research on price search engines or price comparison portals. The big advantage here: If a customer is looking, a later purchase is quite likely. Therefore, price search engines or price comparison portals can bring many additional customers (who are willing to buy). 

The product data can be imported into the price search engines by uploading the product data feed (CSV list), similar to Google Shopping. The use of some (small) price search engines is free of charge, the large providers calculate according to cost-per-click.

10. eBay Marketplace

eBay Marketplace is particularly interesting for young online shops that have hardly any traffic and generate few sales. The advantage of eBay is that you sell the first products shortly after the publication of your products on the marketplace (provided your products and prices are attractive to customers). 

To bring new visitors to your shop, you can put product flyers and coupons in eBay sales packages. Incidentally, this and any other form of advertising is prohibited on Amazon Marketplace and can lead to the merchant account being blocked.

11. Coupon Marketing

To gain more traffic for your online shop, you can distribute vouchers via external service providers. The return rate of the vouchers is particularly high if the product advertised on the voucher matches the offer of the store in whose packages your insert is included. For example, if you sell ties in your shop, you could have your coupons placed in packages at a men's leather shoe store.

12. Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is another way you can increase traffic to your store. In affiliate marketing, a publisher advertises your products, e.g. in a blog. Links and/or advertising banners for your product are then integrated into the blog, which refers to your shop. They usually provide advertising material (e.g. advertising banners) and descriptive texts for the products. The publisher earns a commission for each sale generated through the blog. Affiliate marketing is particularly worthwhile for publishers who operate high-reach sites.

13. Retargeting

Retargeting can be an important traffic supplier when marketing your online shop. With retargeting, users who have already been to your store and left it again are "marked". If the user then surfs on other websites on the Internet, advertising banners are shown there. What is special about the banners is that they show the last products that the user called up in your shop. 

Since the relevance of the personalized banners is high and the user already knows your store, a return to your shop is quite likely. Retargeting not only delivers traffic but can noticeably increase the turnover of your store. When retargeting, you should reduce the number of banner displays (frequency capping) so that the advertising is not too intrusive. You should also tell customers who have bought a product in your shop

Do you need professional support in setting up your online store?

Then please contact us for a personal conversation. You can reach us at any time via our contact form. We would be happy to discuss with you in detail how you can market your online shop and which traffic sources make the most sense for you.

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