6 Handy E-commerce Practices to Boost Traffic & Sales
Over the last couple of years, the e-commerce market experienced a genuine explosion. Sure, it took us a couple of years of getting used to and one global pandemic to realise that pretty much any item, including food and clothes, can be purchased from the comfort of your sofa. Now, with that hard earned knowledge in our back pocket, e-commerce sits at a historic high $4.1 trillion in sales volume.
But, this skyrocketing popularity obviously has some drawbacks. The first thing that comes to mind is that what once was seen as a niche, stand-out business component has now become a very competitive market where you need to put in a fight for every bit of traffic you can get.
Well, let us take a look then at a couple of handy ecommerce practices to help you along the way.
Get into the SEO game
As you are probably aware, most online experiences start with a search engine query. You enter the keywords you are interested in and let the Google ranking algorithm sort out the rest. Well, if you want to stand out from the myriad of similar businesses, you need to compete for those valuable keywords. In other words, you need to step into the SEO ring. So, start researching the competitive keywords, create your content marketing strategy, and start reaching out to get backlinks. As for the technical side of this story, be sure to:
- Make your site mobile-friendly
- Speed up loading times
- Write meta-data correctly
Start an enticing referral program
Peer recommendations always held a special significance in the eyes of consumers. Well, these recommendations can be incentivized and referral programs are probably the best way to approach this issue. What’s even better is that these resources have a very game-like feel built into them so as long as you set clear goals and give your clients a tangible reason to become your apostles, you can count that the word will be spread. The only thing to take away from this idea is that referrals work only if you have some existing base of clients to tap into, so don’t kick-start your campaign with this one.
Make your store scalable
One thing most companies fail to understand is that, as their brands grow, they need to be able to sustain the increased traffic and new customer demands. So, when their store stops expanding it’s because it has nowhere to expand. This is why using some third-party all in one e-commerce solution really sounds like a good idea. These website builders have the infrastructure already sorted out – you only need to add options like discounts and coupons when you need them and shut them down when you don’t. This way, you are always able to keep pace with the market with no delays.
Create appealing sales campaigns
Yeah, never underestimate the power of good old discount pricing marketing. No matter how many new digital advertising strategies we come up with each year, discounted prices always draw the most attention. How you are going to approach this issue and whether you are going use coupons, competitions or slash the prices is really up to you. As long as you create some sense of urgency (the so-called FOMO) and make sure the campaign is visible across various channels (this is the instance where you aim for the broadest possible demographics), sales campaigns are as close to sure bet as possible.
Put out valuable content
In this case, we are not talking exclusively about starting a blog, although that is a great way to get on the radar of people who are still on the fence about your brand and create a killer foundation for your SEO strategy. Your social media profiles need to provide something of value as well. If you use them simply to promote discounts and share the info about your products you will cripple one of your most valuable online resources. So, try to be fun, creative, and, most importantly, help people with their problems free of charge. Building a brand is much more valuable than simply promoting a store.
Don’t forget the email marketing
Last but not least, let us forget that, even though you should always look for new customers, you shouldn’t forget that a large chunk of any SMB revenue comes from repeat business. So, you need to find a way to gently nudge your existing clients into giving your store another go. We have already mentioned sales campaigns and referral programs. Well, e-mail marketing makes a third piece of this puzzle. With a rock-solid ROI of $36 for every dollar spent, this resource is more than worth using to complement other resources. But, everything we said about valuable content earlier, applies here as well.
Well, there you have it – the top six handy ways to boost your ecommerce traffic and put your store on the mainstream radar. And, you will need to work very hard to motivate every single visitor to make that precious click. The ecommerce arena is becoming increasingly competitive and being lazy, generic, and not working hard enough to offer something truly unique is the best way to grind your brand into the ground. Pay attention to everything we have covered above, and you will avoid this unfortunate outcome.