How to Drive Traffic to Your Online Store

Are you wondering how to drive traffic to your online store? Welcome to the ecommerce website game — if you play it right, you’ll have customers in your virtual checkout line in no time. With the right website and online store builder (like one with a free trial!) and a few strategic tips, you can get straight to selling. 

Below, we’ll discuss some proven strategies to drive digital sales traffic as we cover the following topics:

  • Select the right website builder
  • Invest in Google AdWords
  • Regularly publish high-quality blog content
  • Utilize social media
  • Take advantage of email marketing 

Ready to learn how to drive more traffic to your online store? Let’s dive in! 

5 Proven strategies to drive traffic effectively

There are several sales avenues to drive and increase traffic to ecommerce sites. With Constant Contact, many of these are already built-in and just waiting for you to take advantage. 

But what’s the first step?  

To begin with, you need to have an online store to send people to. And for that, you’ll require a cutting-edge website builder. 

1. Use the right website builder

When building out your online ecommerce store, you have total control over customer experience — from how products are arranged, to what gets highlighted, to how the sales process goes. Your website can be an amazing tool, when used properly, that allows you to connect with customers and drive sales. So, as you go about tailoring your online store to your business, you need a website builder with the following qualities:

  • Chock-full of features – To excel, you need powerful features that let you sell your products, services, and even digital downloads. Ideally, your site will be capable of:
  • Accepting payments through Paypal and Stripe
  • Managing inventory and orders
  • Running sales and promotions
  • Tracking important metrics like traffic (from multiple traffic sources), revenue, and best sellers

(Constant Contact checks off all these boxes and more.)

  • Easy-to-use – If you’re an ecommerce newbie, creating a website and sales platform might seem like a major roadblock. But it doesn’t have to be. Constant Contact has an intuitive website builder that lets you build a beautiful, fully functional website in less than an hour. And it’s free to try out! All you have to do is tell the A.I.-driven website builder what type of business you run and it will get to work. Once it’s finished, you’ve got all of the customization tools you could possibly want. 
  • Useful marketing tools – Constant Contact’s websites are automatically optimized for SEO (search engine optimization), which gives your site the best chance to succeed on search engine results pages. Pages are secure, designed for mobile, and load quickly. On top of that, it’s easy to add SEO tools such as title tags, meta descriptions, keywords, and image alt tags right from the editor. To learn more about SEO tools, check out our beginner’s guide for some easy SEO tips and tricks.  
  • Beautifully designed – It’s vital that your ecommerce website design is aesthetically pleasing and engages potential customers from the moment they enter your site. If your store’s web design is ugly or hard to use, you’ll probably have a hard time selling anything. For many buyers, visual appearance is one of the most critical factors when they make a purchase.

2. Invest in Google Ads 

If you want to reach the largest potential sales audience, Google is your friend. More than 90%  of web traffic is channeled through Google, and every second, there are tens of thousands of search queries pouring through the search engine. 

These people are seeking answers. With some small upfront investments, Google can make your product or service the solution to their problem by directing them straight to your online store and improving your click-through rate.  

This is where Google Ads comes in. 

As discussed previously, even if your small business is on a limited budget, Google’s pay-per-click advertising (PPC) channel is one of the fastest ways to increase traffic to your store. And since it’s PPC, you only pay for the ad when someone clicks on it. This lets you:

  • Target local shoppers – Ads can appear within a specific geographic area so that you’re reaching the people who are close by and likely to be interested in your good or service.
  • Know your customers – For an effective PPC campaign, you must pick the right keywords — those that not only tie into your service offering but also answer the questions customers would be searching for. Over time, you will get a bearing on what speaks to your target audience and what doesn’t.
  • Work on a limited budget – Google lets you set your advertising budget and cap the figure after you’ve exceeded the allotted clicks. From there, you decide whether or not it’s advantageous to keep it running.  

With Constant Contact, you have an all-in-one Google Ads tool, making it easy for the right customers to find your business. In just a few minutes, you can create text ads that show up in desktop or on mobile searches. The automated tool optimizes the ads with industry keywords and is capable of managing bidding and spending in order to improve ad performance. In addition, you have a tool that lets you collect emails so that new customers remain engaged. 

3. Publish high-quality blog content

If you’re wondering how to drive traffic to your online store, creating a blog should be one of your first tasks. 

Your website’s blog is one of the most powerful ecommerce marketing and sales funnel tools at your disposal. Publishing regular, high-quality, SEO-focused content is one of the best ways to appear on top of Google and other search engine results pages. Additionally, you will establish your authority and drive sales. Publishing blog content can also help support your organic traffic initiatives. 

Your mission should not be to simply get people to buy your products or services; a sales-first mentality is a great way to get one-off customers, but not repeat customers. Instead, your goal and strategy must be focused on driving traffic and keeping customers coming back for more — more information, more thought leadership. By providing your customers with fantastic content marketing on a regular basis, you offer them a reason to return to your site. Over time, this is how you convert a one-time customer into a loyal patron and brand ambassador. 

Keep in mind the importance of making your content SEO-friendly as you take the following steps: 

  • Make it easy to read and even easier to scan by utilizing whitespace and memorable headers.
  • Use keywords throughout your post, especially in the following:
    • Title
    • Headings
    • Subheadings
    • Introductory paragraph
    • Final paragraph
    • Title tags and meta descriptions
    • Anchor texts
  • Link internally and externally throughout a blog post with quality links.
  • Optimize images using alt-text and keywords.

With Constant Contact, you can share your story, push SEO, and build your awareness and credibility. The blog tool allows you to create, manage, and organize posts. In addition, you can add tags, images, videos, and then optimize all of the content for success on search engines. 

Finally, your blog should always end with a call-to-action (CTA) that encourages the reader to subscribe to your blog or that sends them to your online store. 

4. Utilize social media and social media ads

If you’re not taking advantage of social media’s reach, you’re missing out on a fantastic marketing strategy opportunity. Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest are powerful mediums to spread awareness of your brand and send traffic to your website, and thus your online store. 

Every day, millions of people begin their trip down the sales funnel on social media without even realizing it. And this effect is magnified when using Facebook and Instagram ads. Constant Contact makes it simple to leverage social media in order to build brand awareness, drive website traffic, and grow your contact list. Through it, you can:

  • Connect your account – Your website can be integrated with your Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn business pages. 
  • Create ads – From your web portal, design engaging and effective social marketing ad campaigns. It only takes a few clicks to have an optimized ad set.
  • Look-a-like audience targeting – Target your ideal demographic and people with similar buyer profiles as your top customers, increasing your conversion rates and online store traffic. Or, if you prefer, create custom audience targeting based on location, age, interests, language, and much more. 
  • Track results – You get access to smart analytics and trends that visualize your success rate and track how well your social media ad campaigns are working. This provides you with actionable insights on how to best tailor your ads in the future. 
  • Top-notch support – If you ever need help, the Constant Contact support team is on call, ready, and willing to help. A dedicated marketing expert is just a phone call away. 

5. Email marketing still matters 

With the rise of social media, many small businesses make the mistake of thinking that email marketing has gone the way of the dinosaurs. They couldn’t be more wrong. In fact, to this day, email marketing still drives customer acquisition and increases retention more than any other form of digital marketing.  

But they’re only effective marketing tools when done correctly. This means they must be straight to the point, catch the audience’s attention, and provide value. Few actions will drive away customers faster than simply bombarding them with useless, impersonal emails. 

Constant Contact augments any email marketing campaign in the following ways: 

  • Drag-and-drop editor – The Constant Contact editor makes it simple and intuitive to create an email template and build out beautiful, engaging, mobile-responsive emails for any device. 
  • eCommerce email automation – The automatic email marketing feature gives you the tool you need to keep your audience engaged and build relationships. It is capable of the following:
    • Automated greeting emails sent to new subscribers and customers
    • Triggered email series based on where readers click
    • Segmented contacts to send targeted messages
    • Auto resend emails if the first message goes unopened
    • Powerful list-building tools that allow you to expand your reach 
  • Contact management – Staying atop of your contact list and keeping it updated and curated is a crucial aspect of creating successful email marketing campaigns. Constant Contact allows you to upload contact lists from Excel, Outlook, and Salesforce, and then does the rest. If a contact bounces or unsubscribes, the list is automatically updated. 

Drive traffic to your online store with Constant Contact 

Thanks to Constant Contact, it’s never been easier to drive traffic to ecommerce sites. Its powerful engine provides you with all the tools you need, and then some. So, as you build an online store, be sure to take advantage of all the traffic and sales generators at hand, including:

  • An easy-to-use, drag-and-drop, website builder
  • Google AdWords integration
  • An SEO-focused blog creator and manager
  • Social media tie-ins 
  • An automated email marketing engine

Are you interested in building your own website and online store? Doing so is fast and easy. Simply: 

  1. Register your domain name 
  2. Build your website
  3. Set up your online store
  4. Build out the content according to SEO best practices
  5. Purchase a website plan and publish!

Once finished, you’ll be ready to optimize your site, drive traffic, and start selling. So, what are you waiting for? Your customers are out there. It’s time for you to start funneling them to your store.

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