So you have just launched your online store but you are wondering why there are no sales.

Hellooooooo! No one is looking for you!

Unless you have a large audience and are well known no one knows who you are.

So what you have to do is tell people that you exist and you can do that by following simple strategies to get you noticed.

In this post I am going to share with you four proven ways to increase traffic to your online store. If you have any type of online business, you will see that these strategies can also work if you want to attract customers to your business.

The key to being successful with any business online, is to have a lot of traffic every day.

You always need to have those eyeballs on your offer.

If you do not then your business is dead. Try and not promote your business and you will see what I mean.

So once the hard work of setting up your online store is over, there is more hard work to do. Sorry to burst your bubble kiddo.

You’re not quite at the end just yet.

But stick with me, because by the end of this post you will learn some completely new ways of driving traffic to your online store. So pull up your chair and let’s get right to it.

How To Increase Traffic To Your Online Store

1. Social Media

Ahhh! The good ole social media.

It is the best place to start because these days that is where everyone hangs out.

There are many platforms on social media that you can use to increase traffic to your online store. You want to pay particular attention to the ones that are more visual.

Pinterest, Instagram and Facebook are ideal since they are all visual based social media outlets. They are incredible assets if you want to up your visual content marketing strategy.

To attract more customers be prepared to create some amazing, beautiful images that will literally cause your audience to have eyegasms!! *gasps* LOL!

Some great online design tools that I use for my images include:

• Canva
• PicMonkey
• beFunky
• Snappa

You can use these tools and go in a million directions as to what you can create. They’re really awesome.

Pictures – check!

Let’s talk social media.

Pinterest

Pinterest was never a thought when I launched my online store last year but the benefits of using it to drive traffic to your store is huge.

To put things in perspective, there are over 170 million active users on Pinterest which means that you can potentially target over 170 million customers.

According to Pinterest 87% of people bought something because of what they saw on Pinterest. 93% of people use Pinterest to plan purchases.

Therefore it makes sense to get your brand in front of this audience.

To get started with Pinterest:

• Make sure and start by creating a business account. This is where you will have access to analytics, so you know what is working and what is not.
  
• You then will create boards which are relevant to your niche. Ensure that your boards are SEO friendly by using keywords for those boards. You want to name your board a keyword or phrase that people will look for. Create several different boards with different combinations of names that you think people will look for so that your boards can be found. As Pinterest is all about aesthetic, the images on your board should be of a high quality and ones that grab the most attention. Therefore focus on bright colourful images. Vertical images also work best. I use PicMonkey to design my board images and found images from Shutterstock and Unsplash.
  
• Once you have created your own boards, join a few group boards related to your niche that you can pin your images to. Group boards comprise other Pinterest marketers and help to increase exposure to your business. To identify group boards look out for the group symbol.

To continue increasing traffic to your online store, pin on a regular basis to each group board that you use. You can even automate your pinning using the Tailwind pin scheduler which helps you to pin tons of pins everyday automatically.  

I never thought about Pinterest as a traffic source but because it is a visual search engine and people use it to find ideas for the things they want, it’s a great way to get more people to your eCommerce store.

There is a lot more to understand how to get traffic to your eCommerce store using Pinterest and I am grateful to it everyday as it helps drive traffic to this blog. Here is a look at my progress so far using Pinterest. What if all those daily viewers were going to your own store? 😉

If you are serious about using Pinterest to increase your online store sales then I would strongly recommend the Pinterest Traffic Avalanche course by Alex Nerney and Lauren MacManus.

It was through this course that I was able to grow my traffic steadily and I am certain it can do the same for your online store.

Instagram

Instagram is a slightly different kettle of fish.

There are no groups to join and you get found by using hashtags.

Check out the hashtags that your competitors are using. Do not use the exact hashtags but seek them as inspiration and come up with you own. Five to ten relevant hashtags should be sufficient as anything more will come across as spammy.

If you are selling wall art then some of the hashtags you might consider are:

#artoftheday

#homedecor

#streetart

#artwork

#artdesign

#paintingonthewall

Always use hashtags in every post you make.

To avoid coming across as salesy and attract more people to your brand you can create images that focus on story telling. Instead of posting merely product images, you can tell a story by sharing customer’s images that feature your products.

A great example of this is from a company called Natursutten. An image with only the bag would not be as engaging as an image with a cute baby in a bag. Do you see what I mean?

Check out as well Alice + Ames and how they captivated little girls dresses in another customer photo of a mother with her two beautiful girls.

By being a little bit more relatable, posting images in this way helps you to connect with your audience.

When you are connected with your audience people are more inspired to take action resulting in increased traffic to your online store.

Facebook

An online store and Facebook ads go perfectly.

This is exactly how I was able to generate over $7k in sales in one month with my Shopify store.

I used the power of Facebook to sell and once you know how to use this platform properly, it is a gold mine.

What I love about Facebook Ads is the specific targeting that you can include in your ad criteria.

If you are selling Athletic wear you can specifically target women who are in a certain age bracket and who follow a particular interest.

You can also target fans of your competitors.

Just like Instagram it is a good idea to tell a story, firstly to assist with brand awareness. Do not be too hasty to create a sales ad campaign.

Yes we all want sales, but if someone does not know your brand, you want to warm them up to who you are first.

A good way to warm them up is by telling a story using sequenced ads.

So in week one you may introduce your audience to your brand by talking about how you got started or how the product you are selling was made.

Video marketing would be best for this strategy at this point.

In week two, you can use any data that you captured from week one and retarget people who watched the video and then ask for the sale.

Fabletics UK does a good job at this.

Notice how in their first ad they use only video and there is no sales call to action.

However in the follow up post they have introduced a call to action “Shop the latest Fabletics collection”.

There are many strategies that you can use to drive traffic to your eCommerce store using Facebook Ads.

The strategies outlined here are only a handful but make sure and check out the Social Traffic Blueprint free webinar and course which gives you a low down on other ways that you can use Facebook to increase traffic to your online store.

2. Blogging

Most people want sales quickly and that’s all well and good.

But… hold on a minute. Think outside of the box! Don’t you want to dominate your niche and stand out?!

This is why you need to use methods that not everyone will think about. It might take some time to get going but the results can be worth it. So let’s talk about blogging shall we?!

Blogging is all about content marketing.

To ensure that your online store gets visibility in the marketplace, it is important that you write content that will help your audience solve a problem.

For example, if you are selling survival equipment I made a search of the Google Keywords Planner tool and searched “outdoor equipment”.

Google provided some keyword ideas and I noticed that one of them was “basic camping checklist”  with 1k to 10k average monthly searches and “camping essentials checklist” with 100 to 1k average monthly searches. Both were low competition keywords.

I would therefore write a blog post using these two keywords and my article may be titled like this “The Ultimate Camping Essentials Checklist “.

I would also include a review of some of the top products in my online store and provide a link to where the reader can purchase the product if they want to.

Keep in mind that when using blogging to increase traffic to your online store, it will take some time for Google to index your pages and SEO to kick in.

The best way to succeed with blogging and eCommerce is to ensure that you are consistent and write articles that help your audience solve their problems. How-To and List articles have great buyer intent.

Doing so will ensure that your efforts pay off in a big way after a few months. If you haven’t started a blog yet, well now is a good time.

3. Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

Following on from blogging, if you want to increase organic traffic to your online store then optimising your website for SEO is your best bet.

For many people, SEO might be a confusing topic but it is actually easier than you think.

If you are using Woocommerce for WordPress then the Yoast SEO WordPress plugin, makes optimising your store for SEO simple.

If not, here are a few guidelines that you can follow to help your site rank in Google:

• Use descriptive product titles. These are the titles that show up in Google search. So if you are selling cat socks you can describe the item as “Black Cat Socks”
• Use meta descriptions and include important keywords in them. The meta description appears below the product title in Google search and tells your audience what your website is about.
• When uploading your product images, ensure that they use the title of your product. So instead of saying 1.jpg, rename the image as black_cat_socks.jpg
• When using heading titles (H1) in your description use the keyword Black Cat Socks
• Any URL to the product should include the keyword in it.

These tips will help Google understand what your page is about and make it more likely to appear in the search results.

When it appears in the search results, especially if it ranks on page 1 of Google, be prepared for an insane amount of traffic to your online store.

4. Influencer Marketing

You can leverage the power of influence someone has over their audience by asking them to review your product.

I have always seen this in action on YouTube and Instagram where eCommerce owners, send samples to YouTubers or Instagrammers with a high following and engagement and ask them to mention or review their product.

So let’s say you have just launched a hair line product. You can reach out to popular Youtube and Instagram accounts and ask if they would mention or review the product you intend to sell.

This will create brand awareness for you and your product and potentially drive traffic to your online store.

How do you find these influencers?

You can start by using a niche keyword in the search field of Instagram or YouTube.

In this example we searched for “hair care” and YouTube suggested “hair care routine 2017”. There were over 7 million search results.

Although you will get many videos where people have a high following you want to pay attention to those YouTubers who have their contact details in their portfolio or description box.

This tells me that they are open to accepting sponsorships or requests for reviews.

Once you have their contact details it is time to send out an email to find out if they will consider mentioning your product.

You may use the following template as an example,

Hi [name of influencer],

My name is [your name]. You may be interested to know about the launch of my new online store which has products which I think you may like.

I am wondering whether you will accept a free sample of the product and if you like it, just as much as we do you might consider mentioning it to your audience.

I wait to hear from you.

Cheers!
[your name]

Final Thoughts

The launch of an online store is an exciting time but no one will know about it unless you take action and promote it as best as you can.

Whilst there are other ways that you can get the word out about your online store such as with Google Ads or Bing Ads, these are current and effective ways that will help you establish your brand in the marketplace quickly.

Before we part, if you are brand new to eCommerce or are looking for some additional help in getting started with eCommerce, getting your online store set up and getting your first online store sale then I would highly recommend The Four Percent Ecom Entrepreneur course by Vick Strizheus and Shubham Singh.

You will learn all of this and more in a free step by step video series to help you master eCommerce in any niche that you choose. Some of the students have been getting awesome results in one month or less and it was how I grew my Shopify store to $7k in sales in less than a month.

Check out the Ecom Entrepreneur course here and look out for my free bonus wholesaler’s checklist when you join the course :-). (check your junk mail just in case)