eCommerce
eCommerce
Whether you are a seasoned online merchant or are just launching your first e-commerce business, you definitely want to know how to increase Shopify traffic.
If you’ve struggled with driving visitors to your online store, you are not alone. Littledata.io polled about 3.5K Shopify store owners in February 2022 and discovered that the average conversion rate for Shopify stores was 1.5%. In other words, for every 100 prospective visitors that come to you, fewer than two people make purchases.
What does it mean to you as a Shopify vendor? Only that you need to buckle down and seriously work on attracting more visitors and converting them into paying customers.
Luckily, there are a lot of channels that can drive traffic to your Shopify store. Do you need to use all of them? Not necessarily. Everything depends on your marketing budget and business specifics.
In this article, we’ve collected ten proven strategies to help you find out how to get traffic to Shopify and which channels work better for your store.
But before digging into the details, let’s define the main traffic sources to have a better understanding of how to drive traffic to your Shopify website:
Many online shoppers prefer looking for goods using search engines like Google, Bing, or Baidu, instead of going to particular online stores directly. So, your products should show up in one of two ways: through ads you paid for, or through the search engine’s algorithms (organically).
Referral traffic is about visitors driven to your online store through other sites (not search engines). Usually, this traffic comes from a third party linking to your website directly.
This is the traffic generated by your email marketing campaigns. The volume of email traffic is a clear indicator of how engaging and effective your emails are since it means recipients took the time to follow your link and leave their inbox to visit your store.
Social media traffic is the traffic coming to your website from all kinds of social media platforms and networks. A great way to measure social media ROI is to track how much social traffic comes from each platform and how it converts.
Direct traffic means that users know your URL and type it right into their browser. It happens when shoppers have already visited your website and their browser search bar remembered the URL.
Branded traffic comes from shoppers who have specified your brand or product name in the search queries. For example, “Bvlgari,” “Bvlgari Ring,” “Bvlgari Jewelry.” Usually, these shoppers are already familiar with company products. So, they are more likely to make a purchase.
Let’s inspect paid ads as one of the most straightforward ways to increase your Shopify website traffic. According to the research conducted by Sixads, Facebook ads, Google ads, Instagram ads, and Pinterest ads are among the top ten most effective traffic generation sources for e-commerce.
With over 2.9 billion monthly active users, Facebook remains the number one platform among the most powerful social media giants. It provides almost unlimited opportunities to reach new potential customers and drive them to your Shopify store. Its advertising platform lets you target users based on their interests, behavior, location, and many other criteria.
Apart from that, with Facebook Dynamic Ads, you’ll be able to re-engage customers who have already visited your website by showing them ads featuring the items they’ve already looked through or added to their carts on your website.
Whenever your store visitor expresses an interest in your products, Facebook will dynamically create an ad for this user and automatically deliver it on your smartphone, tablet and desktop.
Facebook ads are targeted to users based on their location, demographic, and other parameters specified in their profiles. After designing an ad, you need to set your budget and bid for a single click or thousand impressions.
But before creating an ad, you need to:
Tip: Make sure you have a Facebook pixel so you can properly track all users interacting with your business.
Like Facebook ads, Instagram ads show up throughout the app, including user feeds, Stories, Reels, and the Explore Tab. They look similar to noncommercial content, but always have a “sponsored” label indicating that they are an ad. They also may have more features than a normal post, such as links or CTA buttons.
According to Hootsuite, Instagram ad reach grew by over 6% from October 2021 to January 2022.
Also, the latest stats show that 81% of online shoppers use Instagram to look for brands, products, and services. This number is significant for businesses that want to benefit from Instagram’s ads and drive more customers to their websites.
*Tip: Ensure you are using an Instagram Business account. This type of account unlocks more options to interact with your audience through Instagram ads. *
Since Instagram and Facebook are connected, it’s much easier to reach your potential customers based on Facebook data.
With the platform, you’ll be able to create ads as static posts, carousels, collections, videos, reels, and stories. Such a variety of formats lets any brand produce ad content that perfectly resonates with their audiences, driving engagement and sales.
Pinterest is a premier visual discovery engine that helps users get inspiration and stock up with fresh ideas for any activities (tattoos, designing clothes, home gardening, etc.) It’s also a great place for online shoppers to find new brands and products.
Being extremely popular among niche groups like home decoration, renovating, or DIY crafts, the platform is ideal for small businesses playing on these markets.
But this doesn’t mean that other brands or businesses won’t benefit from Promoted Pin campaigns. However, getting noticed by the right people may require more precise targeting or a more creative approach.
Besides, as reported by Pinterest, 97% of the most popular searches on the platform are unbranded. What does it mean to Shopify merchants? Only that Pinners are ready to discover new products, which makes Pinterest a very fertile ground for advertising. For instance, between October 2021 and January 2022, Pinterest ads reached 225.7 million people.
Like many other PPC (pay-per-click) ad networks, Promoted Pins run on an auction system. You need to select a Promoted Pin, set a goal you want to reach, and enter targeting parameters. Then the betting system comes into play. Advertisers place bids to show their ads to the target audience, and the highest bid wins the placement.
Unlike social networks with their targeted ads, Google lets you advertise products and services directly to users actively searching for them. People from all over the world use Google to search 8.5 billion times per day. And, of course, each search query is a potential chance to show your brand to more users. Thus, when set up right, Google ads become an ideal tool to generate leads and boost sales.
You are not the only Shopify entrepreneur who wants to place your ads on top of Google searches. So how does Google determine which ads to show? The answer won’t be much of a surprise – it’s auctions. Google Ads decides which ads to display with a fast auction that takes place every time someone searches on Google or visits any website that shows ads.
There are three key factors that determine ads display:
Tip: A deep understanding of how Google ads work will help you build high-performing campaigns to drive massive traffic to your online store and get more conversions. So, getting certified is a great way to enrich and structure your knowledge.
If you are out of budget for pay-per-click advertising or just prefer getting your Shopify store in front of your potential customers without spending too much money, pay careful attention to your website’s search engine optimization as one of the most powerful sources of free Shopify traffic.
There are a lot of tactics and specific tools that can help you get to the first lines of SERP:
Of course, this is not a complete list of tactics you can do to improve your Google rankings. Learn more about Shopify SEO.
If you don’t know how to set up an affiliate program on Shopify, the following information will be of much help.
In 2022, the power of affiliate marketing for e-commerce businesses doesn’t require any proof. Statista predicts that the partner marketing industry in the US will grow to $8.2 billion this year. According to Backlinko, affiliate marketing has already become the top acquisition channel for 40% of US merchants.
Here’s how it works. You set up an affiliate program and invite affiliates to join. There are several different affiliate types out there.
For every sale that your affiliates refer, they will earn a commission. This helps to drive free traffic to your site, and you only pay when someone converts.
You get to decide the commission structure, and if you want to, you can set up special landing pages for affiliates.
Tip: You can also turn your customers into affiliates with a referral program. When they sign up to join your program, they will be given a referral link to share with their friends and family.
First, a properly run affiliate program minimizes the risk of budget waste. A classic affiliate marketing model assumes that you pay your affiliates for conversions, but not for leads. And this makes it a perfect model for any e-commerce business, even on a tight budget.
Second, since hiring sales and marketing staff can be expensive, having an army of high-quality affiliate partners will help you meet your business goals with minimum investment.
In addition, affiliate and referral marketing enables you to easily expand your reach across the internet. As soon as the partners you work with l promote your Shopify store via their websites, blogs, forums, and social media, your brand will now have many touchpoints and exposure online.
Want to launch the best affiliate programs for Shopify but don’t know where to start? Take a look at a detailed guide on e-commerce affiliate marketing.
Tip: If you are new to affiliate marketing, you may feel frustrated when launching your first affiliate or referral program. This is where the best affiliate software for Shopify comes into play. Instead of using dozens of micro tools, it’s better to concentrate on other marketing activities and let a specially developed turnkey solution do the affiliate tracking for you.
Never used Tapfiliate? Try all the features: ?get a 14-day free trial here
Need more tips on how to get traffic to your Shopify store? Keep on reading!
Influencer marketing provides Shopify brands with a great opportunity to reach new, highly engaged audiences with minimum effort. So, having partnered with relevant influencers, whose audience aligns with your brand philosophy, you get an army of new potential customers and increase your brand awareness.
Besides, relatable opinion leaders are more likely to answer comments and partnership requests. This way, they build customer loyalty on the one hand and always stay in touch with their advertisers on the other. Many narrow niche brands already appreciate the benefits of these collaborations, and the trend promises to gain even more traction.
Here are two basic questions to ask yourself before hiring an Instagram influencer:
Do you remember Pareto’s 20⁄80 principle? For merchants, it may sound like “20% of customers are responsible for 80% of a business’s revenue.” It’s easier to persuade a customer who already knows your brand to buy again and/or buy more from you. That’s what loyalty programs were invented for.
If your Shopify website provides exclusive discounts and bonuses, customers are more likely to keep that in mind and come back. So, marketers use loyalty programs to stimulate repeat purchasing and increase average order value (AOV) by driving direct and branded traffic to your store.
If you consider creating a customer loyalty program, follow these steps:
Learn more about Loyalty Program types and how your Shopify store can benefit from them.
Do you think that anyone even reads gift guides? The answer is yes! And you can add your brand or products to these guides to start driving additional traffic to your Shopify store.
Dozens of websites create various guides for many occasions, so they are always open to new product ideas. For example, if you search for “Gift ideas for dad,” you’ll get a bunch of pages with popular gift listicles.
To drive traffic to your Shopify store with gift guides:
Tip: Reach out to editors with ready-made product gift ideas wrapped in catchy texts and supported by detailed explanations of why you’ve chosen these items.
If you’ve ever listened to any podcasts, you may have heard some information about sponsors that give away coupon codes to listeners.
According to shared data, almost 60% of US consumers listen to podcasts. Insiderintelligence.com predicts that podcasting will become a $94.88 billion industry by 2028. Very impressive numbers! With thousands of podcast hosts with millions of subscribers, today, podcasting is a super powerful traffic channel for your Shopify store.
Why become a podcast sponsor? The benefits are quite clear:
Source: eCommerce MasterPlan
Tip: Look for popular podcasts that your audience may be interested in. If you find something worthy, reach out to the creators with a partnership email, even if there is no sponsorship information on their website or on their social media pages. Podcasters are always open to new sponsors.
Now, with all of these tactics at hand, you can create a really winning strategy to drive more traffic to your Shopify store. Try different tools and approaches and constantly measure your results to find the ideal combination of paid and free traffic sources for Shopify that work better for your specific case.
Alena
I’m the digital marketer here at Tapfiliate. I’m a keen researcher, passionate about wrapping difficult things in simple words so that any reader grasps them easily. In my free time, I read books on marketing, psychology and play the kalimba. You can reach out to me on LinkedIn, and here: alena@tapfiliate.com
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