15 Clever Ways for You To Increase E-commerce Website Visitors
Your website is the backbone of your e-commerce business.
It’s where consumers will draw judgment of your value to them.
Moreover, it’s where they’ll sign up for your services or purchase your products.
According to Think with Google, 53% of shoppers always do research before buying anything.
So this is your chance to be discovered by new consumers.
People are always looking for new brands to try out.
And if you’re in B2B commerce, buyers are always looking for better solutions to their business problems.
But first, you have to master the art of increasing website visitors if you’re going to get discovered.
Now, that’s not the easiest task.
And it’s also not the most difficult either.
With this resource as a guide, it’ll give you a good starting point.
For this reading, you’ll learn about 15 different ways you can increase your e-commerce website visitors (not including publishing new blog posts) — so you can become top-of-mind for more consumers.
As you increase website visitors, you’ll notice the following benefits:
- More lead conversions for your newsletter, webinars and other calls to action
- An increase in e-commerce sales
- Identify what SEO practices generate the best results — and you can replicate for future content
Are you ready to completely revamp your website and rank higher in search results?
Let’s kick it off with the first way to increase website visitors.
How To Increase E-commerce Website Visitors #1: Pay-Per-Click Advertising
Pay-per-click (PPC) advertisements are paid for by a business on a search engine or social media site.
When someone searches for certain keywords, the PPC ad from the business will appear as one of the first sponsored listings on Google’s search engine results page (SERP).
And ads may also show up on the side bar at other places throughout Google’s network.
PPC ads attract website visitors who are more likely to be interested in your e-commerce brand.
See, you’ll attract consumers with higher intent compared to organic traffic.
As found by SEO company Moz, PPC ads convert 50% better than organic traffic.
How To Increase E-commerce Website Visitors #2: Cart Abandonment Emails
According to Barilliance, 77.13% of your website visitors will abandon their checkout cart.
But you can increase e-commerce website visitors by winning them back.
As reported by Campaign Monitor, you can expect a conversion rate of more than 10% for cart abandonment emails.
And if you get rejected with the first email follow up, don’t throw in the towel.
Although the first cart abandonment email has the highest open rate at 62.94%, as found by Kaviyo, it’s the second, third, fourth, and even fifth emails that generate the most e-commerce revenue.
That’s pretty eye-opening, huh?
It goes to show you need thick skin in order to thrive. You can’t accept rejection.
You may have heard these cliches before. But the next way to increase website visitors is a little lesser-known.
How To Increase E-commerce Website Visitors #3: Participate in Forums
There are many online forums that exist where people discuss topics relevant to your industry.
And your business should consider participating in these discussions to increase website visitors.
How?
By establishing yourself as a thought leader. Just like you do with your blogs.
As an example, if your business is a clothing store you might want to consider creating an account on Reddit’s "FashionReps" subreddit and start engaging in conversations.
From there, you can sparingly link back to your website with helpful blogs or customer success stories.
For B2B commerce, posting on forums or on LinkedIn Groups would be a highly impactful way to increase website visitors.
In a B2B study from Edelman, 60% of business decision-makers bought a new product or service they previously were not considering after reading a thought-leadership piece.
How To Increase E-commerce Website Visitors #4: Promote Your Content on Social Media
There’s 4.480 billion social media users out there, according to Backlinko.
And it’ll just keep growing every year.
So use social media’s massive audience to your advantage.
Promote an upcoming blog to your Facebook page.
Or get some of your employees to team up and post links to an upcoming live demo on their personal LinkedIn and Twitter accounts.
As an example, Litmus reached out to the #EmailGeeks Group on LinkedIn to share its upcoming webinar on how to add dark mode to an email.
For best practice, you should consider promoting your blog on all your applicable social media accounts. This way, no matter where your target audience frequents online, they’ll be able to find out about new blog posts from you.
How To Increase E-commerce Website Visitors #5: Add Social Shares to Your Content
If there’s one thing we absolutely know about e-commerce consumers, it’s that they take the easiest path possible 100% of the time.
You see, they aren’t interested in wasting time.
And this is especially true for when they might be interested in sharing your content.
I mean, they don’t really get anything in return for Tweeting a blog post.
So they’re not going to bother sharing your content if you don’t make it easy for them to do so.
With that, make sure you provide social share buttons for your blog articles, product pages, upcoming events or even customer success stories.
Additionally, you can add a share button for your emails too.
But don’t expect a monumental shift in traffic.
Social shares are more of a supplement for increasing website visitors.
How To Increase E-commerce Website Visitors #6: Use Specific Keywords
One of the most effective ways to increase website visitors is to target keywords that are low in search volume but high in user intent.
To be more precise, you want to target long-tail keywords. These are more like phrases of 4 or more words.
According to web development firm CWS, 70% of all search traffic comes from long-tail keywords.
And you might consider hiring a professional SEO service too if you don’t have time for this.
If you want, you can book a call with us to see how our SEO ads managers can help you get started.
When it comes to increasing website visitors, our seasoned ads managers continuously deliver for our clients time and again.
How To Increase E-commerce Website Visitors #7: Encourage Customer Reviews
Including customer reviews is particularly effective if you run an e-commerce business where customers can buy products directly from your website.
Set up an email automation that asks customers to review your product or service on Google, Yelp or other review platforms.
And you could also provide an incentive, such as an account credit in exchange for a review.
As reported by The Conversion Index, going from 0 to 100 reviews on a product page increases average order volume by 37%.
Moreover, search engines prefer fresh content like new reviews and testimonials.
To that end, you can expect a 15%-25% increase in website visitors.
How To Increase E-commerce Website Visitors #8: Reach Out to Infleuncers
Create outreach opportunities by partnering with others in your industry who have influence over potential customers.
For example, let’s say you sell healthy ready-to-go meals online and you want more people to visit your e-commerce website.
You could partner with popular food bloggers and have them include a link to your website in a blog post.
Or perhaps you could sponsor an event that people would be interested in, like a virtual cooking class featuring some popular cooks.
In a survey from Influencer Marketing Hub, businesses make $5.20 for every $1 spent on influencers.
How To Increase E-commerce Website Visitors #9: Revise Old Blogs
Over time, search engines will see your blog articles as less relevant.
But there’s a way to prevent your content from flying under the radar.
Two words: Historical Optimization.
To generalize, historical optimization is where you freshen up your old content.
Maybe you update your list of statistics to reflect new insights.
Or maybe you switch your call to action to something more relevant you now offer.
And you could also insert more links to newer posts that you’ve made.
According to HubSpot, their content team increased monthly organic search views by 106% for old posts they optimized.
How To Increase E-commerce Website Visitors #10: Create Video Content
Video content is an increasingly popular medium.
As found by Cisco, 82% of global web traffic will come from video in 2022.
And according to R&D firm Zenith, the average person spends 100 minutes a day watching online videos.
So it’s obvious that video is incredibly popular.
But how does it affect website traffic?
Well, Wyzowl found that 86% of marketers say video helps them increase website visitors.
Video is more powerful than text.
It can put a face to the brand.
And it can also just provide useful information for website visitors.
For example, IBM promotes its Developer Diaries via video on its website.
Even something as simple as a demo video will provide great value.
It educates website visitors on how your company can solve their problem.
At AutoGrow, we have a page dedicated to our on-demand video where prospects can learn more about our platform.
Moreover, our homepage features a short video that explains what our platform is all about. And it answers most of the questions that might get brought up in a consultation call.
How To Increase E-commerce Website Visitors #11: Keep Your Site Speed Fast
If it takes too long for consumers to connect to your website, they’ll leave.
As Think with Google says, someone is 32% more likely to bounce when your page load time goes from 1 second to 3 seconds.
And 90% more likely for a bounce if it takes 5 seconds.
It’s also worth noting that fast-loading websites rank better on search engines.
According to research from Backlinko, the average page load time on Google’s first page is 1.65 seconds.
How To Increase E-commerce Website Visitors #12: Nail Down Your Titles, Meta Descriptions and URLs
Your page titles, meta descriptions and, to a lesser degree, your URL, are what makes or breaks someone’s decision to click on your link.
So if you’re going to increase your website visitors, you must show clear value with these aspects of your search result.
If it’s a blog post, then clearly convey what readers will come away with.
And here’s some research from Backlinko to better inform your blog titles and meta descriptions:
- Page titles containing a question have a 14% higher click-through rate (CTR) than page titles that don’t.
- Page titles with 15 to 40 characters receive 8.6% more clicks than page tiles outside that range.
- Pages with a meta description get 5.8% more clicks than pages without them.
- URLs that include a keyword have a 45% higher CTR than URLs that omit them.
And if it’s a landing page or a PPC ad, provide a direct call to action. Don’t be afraid to show confidence with your headline.
To illustrate, look at the first result I received when I Googled “cell phone cases.”
Cellular Outfitter makes its call to action impactful. It gets me thinking that I’ve been overpaying for cell phone cases all these years.
Moreover, the headline is bold. Not as in a bold font. I mean with character.
It’s ordering me to not settle for retail prices ever again.
To me and other consumers, this headline shows promise.
How To Increase E-commerce Website Visitors #13: Re-Targeting Facebook Users
Who’s more likely to visit your website than someone who’s already done so?
Probably no one.
So it’s a good idea to re-target those visitors on Facebook.
Head over to your Custom Audience and target users who have visited certain pages on your website — then send them an ad that you think would resonate with them.
For example, when someone reads our article on YouTube KPIs, we’ll re-arget them on Facebook to promote our Instagram KPIs article.
You see? It’s all about segmentation.
And this can also be applied to things like your pricing page too. If someone was checking your prices, then they’re further down the sales funnel than someone casually reading your blog.
So you’d be a little more aggressive with your re-targeting strategy.
How To Increase E-commerce Website Visitors #14: Make More List Posts
List posts are much easier for readers to digest.
With these “listicles,” everything is neatly organized.
And your eyes can just scan through the page effortlessly.
In a world where everyone has limited time to read, articles with congested paragraphs are not very appealing. In fact, they can look more like you’re ready to grade a college research paper.
But listicles are also easier for the writer too — saving your e-commere business time and money. That’s because a listed article doesn’t necessarily need a set, chronological order (although something like a Top Ten list would).
As no surprise, listicles are more popular than other types of posts.
As reported by BuzzSumo, over 30% of the most shared B2B posts are listicles — making it the most successful format.
And in one study found by Backlinko, listed posts received 6 times more shares than how-to posts and 40 times more than infographics.
One more thing. A listed article post gets more attention on social media because a list lets people know that it’s not a huge commitment.
How To Increase E-commerce Website Visitors #15: Get Backlinks From Other Brands
A backlink is a link from one website to another.
One way to acquire backlinks is to make friends with other brands in your industry.
So don’t be afraid to reach out to them. Be sure to promise to reciprocate them by linking back to them too.
And you’ll increase visitors to your website since an entirely new audience is exposed to your brand.
It’s well known that backlinks are one of the most important Google ranking factors.
To Google’s algorithms, your website is deemed credible when high-domain websites link back to you. Yes, even Google cares about social proof.
Besides making friends with other brands, you could also consider buying links or spots for a guest post.
According to SociallyInfused Media, the average cost of buying a link is $291.55. Not too bad considering the number of increased website visitors you could generate.
But remember, it’s a numbers game. As much as 81% of your inquiries may go unresponded.
Conclusion
The internet is a crowded place.
And it’s hard to stand out.
But you’ll be in a good position to increase your e-commerce website visitors if you follow these 15 different ways spelled out in this article.
Some of these strategies you may have used before and some I know you’ve never tried yet.
So if your traffic has been dipping, it’s time to try something new.
Because there’s always a way to improve your marketing efforts.
It’s just that you haven’t discovered the right way yet.
At AutoGrow, we know how difficult increasing website visitors can be.
Because we see businesses struggle with the same thing every day. In fact, it’s one of the most common pain points brought up in our one-on-one calls with prospects.
But we’re always so delighted to see our clients happy when we help them out. Between our web design and SEO strategies, your website will start seeing an uptick in traffic, viewing time, search engine results, newsletter sign ups and, of course, more sales.
If you’re interested in any of that, you can learn more by watching our on-demand video.
If there was anything new in this article that you liked, let me know in the comments below. We love hearing that we can help our readers out.
Keep AutoGrowin’, stay focused.
Mark
