Increasing Website Traffic
Whether you have just launched your e-commerce business or you have been trading for a while now, finding ways to drive traffic and increase sales can be a challenge. The problem with most marketing strategies for e-commerce sites is that although they increase website traffic, they often fail to convert this traffic into actual sales.
Fortunately, if your conversion rate needs a little boost, the below seven strategies will help you not only reach your target audience but also actively engage with them, resulting in more sales.
Ready to get started? (+ Don’t forget the 4 P’s of Marketing)
Focus on Facebook
Facebook is still the number one social media platform in terms of users, with over 2.7 billion people using it every month. Furthermore, 75% of consumers turn to Facebook before making a decision about a purchase. Therefore, it makes sense that you should focus a large part of your overall digital marketing strategy on this social media channel.
If you do not yet have a Facebook business page, then now is the time to create one. Make sure that all your contact information is up to date, regularly post relevant and useful blogs, and always provide links back to your website.
In terms of Facebook ad campaigns, these are a great way to reach your target audience and to get your products or services in front of as many eyes as possible.
Apply SEO
If you are selling a product that people want (let’s assume you are!), then people are already searching for it online. However, if you are not utilizing SEO to promote your site, then chances are, these people are not able to find your e-commerce business online.
SEO, search engine optimization, is the process involved in helping searchers find your brand online and in ensuring that Google looks favorably upon your content and ranks it as high as possible.
Specifically for e-commerce sites, SEO is crucial as it will ensure your business stands out from the competition.
One of the most popular SEO practices is the use of keywords. By carrying out thorough keyword research and then optimizing your content with these keywords, your target audience will be able to find your business when they are searching for your products or services, as Google will rank you higher on SERPs.
Make sure you optimize your headings, product, and category descriptions, and any blog posts that you create.
If you are not an SEO expert, you may want to enlist the services of an E-Commerce & Amazon Marketing Agency with a difference. Helping you to create strategies that will build your Amazon business, whilst at the same time keeping advertising costs down, you will experience great results and see your sales soar.
Prioritize Email Marketing
Although many e-commerce businesses are focusing all their efforts on social media marketing, email marketing is still one of the best digital marketing strategies in terms of ROI (return on investment). In fact, for every $1 you spend on email marketing, you can expect an average return of $42.
As an e-commerce business, there are several ways in which you can use email marketing to boost sales. These include:
- To showcase your best selling products of the week
- To update on back in stock products
- To launch a new product
- To recommend a product based on purchase history
- To promote a sale
- To give a glimpse into new products
Referral Programs
An extension on word of mouth, setting up a friend referral program is a low cost and highly effective way to not only gain more customers but to convert them into loyal ones. In fact, a customer gained through a referral has a lifetime value of 25% higher than other customers.
All you need to do is offer your customers an incentive for each family member or friend they refer to, such as money-off their next purchase. It can also be a good idea to ask them to review your products or services.
Always Upsell
Although this strategy is good for all businesses, for e-commerce sites, it is even more effective. Take Amazon, for example. In the very first year that they tried out upselling on their platform, they experienced an increase in sales by a massive 35%.
Furthermore, it will cost you, on average, 68% more money to attract a new customer rather than to upsell to an existing one, so this marketing tactic is incredibly cost-effective.
Ways in which you can upsell include:
- Offering a product or service that complements their purchase
- Providing a discount
- Personalizing your recommendations
- Providing free shipping
- Not being too pushy
- Using the right language
Site Speed
If you haven’t recently checked the speed of your site, then this could be the reason why you are not making as many sales as you think you should be. Research shows that if your site takes longer than 2 seconds to load, 35% of users will go elsewhere for their purchasing needs.
Even more worryingly, nearly 80% of visitors who become frustrated with a site’s loading speed will never visit the site again.
Fortunately, if the speed of your site is an issue, there are several simple ways that you can make it faster:
- Minimize HTTP requests
- Choose the right hosting option
- Run a compression audit
- Enable browser caching
- Reduce the size of any high-resolution images
- Boost server response time
Social Proof
92% of customers trust a recommendation from a friend, and 70% even trust the reviews of a stranger. That is why social proof is such a powerful tool when it comes to an increase in website traffic to your e-commerce site and increasing sales.
If you regularly use Amazon, you know that they use social proof on every single one of their product pages in the form of customer reviews.
Encouraging your customers to write reviews can be as simple as asking them. However, you may have more success by offering an incentive to do so.
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