23 Ways How to Get More Visitors to your Online Store
Here is a guide on how to get more visitors into your online store.
Since 1999, online retail has been growing continuously, year after year. It will also continue to grow in the coming years, as more and more options are created for customers to order online.
Some industries are still at the very beginning with their online trading functions and other industries will optimize areas with the help of their experience.
Amazon will continue to grow and so will individual brand and niche stores that offer an exceptional user experience. You should easily have more visitors to your online store every month and see more orders with the right measures.
Good content, SEO, and backlinks are the basis for long-term success with your website!
PPC (Pay Per Click) delivers short-term results.
Roughly speaking, there are only four different channels through which visitors find their way to your online store for the first time:
1. Analyze your Current Data
Your store is already online and you have some visitors!
Now check where your current visitors come from.
In the vast majority of cases, you certainly have good web analytics software that helps you evaluate the details.
Google Analytics is widely used. If you prefer to keep your data to yourself, I recommend Matomo.
Next, take a look at which subpages of your store are already well visited and which ones you still need to put work into.
2. Mobile first is important to have more visitors in your online store
Depending on the industry, B2B vs B2C, and target group, mobile Internet usage is already well over 50%.
Just a few days ago I was talking to an acquaintance. In his store, the share of mobile visitors and orders is over 73%. Overall, Germany’s mobile Internet usage is slightly below 50%.
The trend shows very clear growth, towards mobile Internet use.
That’s why this is the second step: Optimize your Store for Smartphones!
If you have a B2C store and less than 50% of orders come from mobile devices, you should ask yourself what the reason is. In special cases, of course, it may be that your customer group mainly orders online when they are sitting at their PC.
However, it is very likely that your store simply does not work well and is not accepted on the smartphone.
Without a “mobile-first” optimized website or online store, further measures have to be questioned first.
You can often specify whether you want them to be displayed on desktop or smartphone with purchased ads. With all other, following ideas, you waste about 50% and more of your invested time.
Search Engines
3. Pay Attention to Correct On-Page SEO
| Difficulty | Simple |
| Cost Factor | Low |
| Done from | Internal / External |
| Effort | Medium – High |
The goal of on-page SEO (i.e. on or in one’s own website) is to optimize individual pages so that they appear high up in search engine results for defined keywords.
On-page refers to two things about your website. First, to the content, such as the headlines, texts, and words that are important to you. And secondly to the HTML, i.e. the structure of the source code, which can be optimized.
Measures and procedures in on-page SEO have changed over the years. This is due to the changes that search engines like Google make. Factors that contribute to the improvement of your rank in search results can be found at MOZ.
4. Set Internal Links
| Difficulty | Simple |
| Cost Factor | Low |
| Done from | Internal / External |
| Effort | Medium |
On every page and in every section of your content, you should ask yourself how best to place an internal link.
A very simple example: You run a web store for children’s toys.
In the blog on your store you write an article with a headline:
The Best Toys for Every Month of the Year.
In the article itself, link twelve products, one per month. For visitors to your website, such an overview is helpful to get an overview.
The situation is similar for search engine crawlers! They also need to know which links to follow. Furthermore, it is possible for search engines to create a weighted graph of your website. Thus, Google can find out about your link structure, for example, which subpage is how important.
5. Use a referral program / customers recruit customers
| Difficulty | Medium |
| Cost Factor | Low – Medium |
| Done From | Internal / External |
| Effort | Medium – High |
Depending on what store system you are running, this can be quite simple.
Especially for WordPress + WooCommerce, there are very many affiliate plug-ins. These can be installed within a few minutes.
The configuration is a bit more complex – depending on the program structure. This is also the part that requires the most effort.
Before you start a referral program, you need to calculate which structures make economic sense for you. Here, online retailers for dietary supplements and cosmetics will have very different margins than those for food and electronics.
The effort on the technical side is relatively low. However, the administrative and organizational effort that such a program entails can be significant. Profits have to be paid out to customers, accounting has to be adjusted, new, acquired customers have to be picked up appropriately, and so on.
6. Optimize your Loading Times
| Difficulty | Medium – High |
| Cost Factor | Medium – High |
| Done From | Internal / External |
| Effort | Medium – High |
Loading times are an important factor for search engines.
The faster your page loads, compared to similar websites, the higher your page will appear in search results.
The simplest measure here, for example, is to compress the images on your website.
Technically, this topic can become almost endlessly complex. For WordPress, there are good cache plug-ins that bring good results with little effort.
For more complex websites, reverse proxies, CDNs (content delivery networks), and load balancers are conceivable. Here, a good balance must be found between effort and benefit.
Check your website regularly for speed at:
7. Write a Blog – Well and Regularly to attract more visitors to your online store
| Difficulty | Simple – Medium |
| Cost Factor | Low – High |
| Done From | Internal / External |
| Effort | High |
Start a Blog About your Store!
The blog is meant for you to inform your visitors and customers about relevant topics. Content and articles should bring value.
A very rough guideline for successful blogs is best to publish an article once to several times a week with about 1000 words.
A blog where a new article appears twice a year, one regarding summer vacation and another wishing a Happy New Year is not worth the technical effort.
You are an expert on the products you sell and can therefore report many valuable details about them. Yes, a blog is a lot of effort. At the same time, it is certainly one of the best ways to continuously increase your sales in the long run.
8. Allow Guest Posts on your Blog
| Difficulty | Simple |
| Cost Factor | Low |
| Done From | Internal |
| Effort | Medium |
Often there can be synergies with other store owners who address a similar target group and sell other products. If these store owners also maintain a good and active blog, then you can simply ask them if they are interested in writing guest articles.
Since this is your blog, you can set the defaults. Be open to ideas here. Your customers will appreciate a change and a different perspective as well.
9. Start a Podcast
| Difficulty | Medium |
| Cost Factor | Medium |
| Done From | Internal |
| Effort | High |
If you’re already writing a blog and seeing results, you might consider a podcast. You don’t need more than time and a microphone to get started.
Depending on the products you sell through your e-commerce site, for example, interviews with customers and users can be great.
For more complex products, you can also record consultations as podcasts.
Content ideas can come from your inbox. Look at the questions your customers ask you and address them in your podcast.
10. Record Videos
| Difficulty | Medium |
| Cost Factor | Medium |
| Done From | Internal |
| Effort | High |
Many products can be presented perfectly convincingly in videos.
Product videos are one idea. Unboxing videos (i.e. videos of unboxing products) and comparisons between products are very popular on Youtube.
Show and explain your products directly in use. Especially for outdoor and sporting goods and also food videos are very good.
The technical effort is manageable nowadays (depending on the type of video you want). With your cell phone, you can record frequent, simple, and usable videos.
Ideas can be more important than quality here. How does an iPod behave in the mixer? This easy-to-implement video has been viewed 6.4 million times.
11. Focus on Long-Tail Keywords
| Difficulty | Simply – Medium |
| Cost Factor | Medium |
| Done From | Internal / External |
| Effort | Medium |
Focus on Long-tail Keywords for your search engine optimization!
What does that mean in concrete terms?
If you’re selling cutlery, don’t try to optimize your content for the term “cutlery” but something like “extremely sharp kitchen knife“.
You can easily generate ideas there by typing in one of your keywords on Google and looking at the suggestions.
In order to proceed in a targeted manner, there are various online tools such as:
12. Collect Reviews
| Difficulty | Simple |
| Cost Factor | Low |
| Done From | Internal |
| Effort | Medium |
Depending on the store system, it requires a simple click, and your customers can leave reviews.
It is more elaborate to get your customers to write reviews.
Here, use ideas and channels that fit your offer. Marketing automation is just one option here on how to get more reviews from customers.
13. Keyword and SEO Strategy for Product Pages and more visitors in your online store
| Difficulty | Medium |
| Cost Factor | Low |
| Done From | Internal / External |
| Effort | Medium |
The product pages are the most important in your “sales funnel“. Pay special attention to the correct and careful implementation of all details here.
Here, your long-tail keywords should appear in titles and headings. In addition, the structure of the page and the content is of great importance.
A good list of Dos & Don’ts can be found at SearchEngineJournal.
14. Put your Bestsellers in the Right Light
| Difficulty | Simple |
| Cost Factor | Low |
| Done From | Internal |
| Effort | Low |
Depending on how many products you offer in your store, it can become confusing for your visitors.
You can compile under different aspects, lists of your best sellers. You can find an example at Amazon: Here are the most popular products compiled by category.
But there are even more ways to combine products in lists. Here are some examples:
- The most popular bikes in March 2020
- Top 5 ingredients for hot soups on cold days
- 3 outdoor toys for summer vacation
- These 7 decoration ideas should not be missing from your wedding
As you can see, there is a lot of potential here to put together lists for very different occasions.
Social Media
15. Use Pinterest Buyable Pins
| Difficulty | Simple – Medium |
| Cost Factor | Low |
| Done From | Internal / External |
| Effort | Medium – High |
Pinterest was quite fast from launch to significant growth and new features. In Germany, too, there are now shopping pins for Pinterest. You can even create your own store on it.
Certainly, Pinterest as a platform is not suitable for all target groups. You certainly know your target group best and where they like to hang out. If your customers are active on Pinterest, then it is possible to triple your orders.
16. Become Active on Social Media
| Difficulty | Simple – Medium |
| Cost Factor | Low |
| Done From | Internal / External |
| Effort | Medium – High |
As with Pinterest, there are also opportunities to promote products on other channels.
However, if you want to be active on social channels in general, you should do a little more than just post your products online every now and then.
Social Media Marketing can be very complex. Some small retailers already intuitively do everything right here. This is often because their own business has developed from and with social media.
Decide on a case-by-case basis what your approach should be on Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, Instagram, etc.
Backlinks
Backlinks are links that point from other websites to yours. Backlinks are the supreme discipline in online marketing. They ultimately help you to get more visitors to your online store.
Yes, you can buy 20 backlinks for 5€ and so far I even heard from an acquaintance that he got some more traffic from it.
More often, however, I have heard of Google penalties where these backlinks had to be removed at great expense.
Good backlinks require creativity and work. And they can be extremely profitable!
How do you get backlinks? Below are just a few examples:
17. Offer Bloggers Free Products to Test
| Difficulty | Simple – Medium |
| Cost Factor | Medium |
| Done From | Internal |
| Effort | Medium |
The concept is very simple:
You find bloggers to write on the topic that interests your target audience. The bloggers should be active and have a good reach.
On many blogs where the owners are actively working, you will find a media kit or outreach details. Many also already have details and guidelines on how they handle products.
Simply contact the person behind the blog and offer your product.
18. Write Guest Posts on other Blogs to get more visitors into your online store
| Difficulty | Simple – Medium |
| Cost Factor | Low |
| Done From | Internal |
| Effort | Medium |
Just as you can open up your blog to guest authors, other bloggers do the same to some extent.
Here you now have the opportunity to shine with your expert knowledge. Most bloggers who pay attention to quality here are exactly the ones you should seek out.
You should avoid pure product descriptions and advertising texts here! Offer the readers real added value here.
19. Work with Influencers
| Difficulty | Medium |
| Cost Factor | Medium – High |
| Done From | Internal / External |
| Effort | Medium |
You can find influencers on blogs, in magazines as well as newspapers, and also on social channels.
A collaboration can look very individual. From one-time product promotion to a multi-year sponsorship with specially designed campaigns and activities.
The good thing is, there is an influencer for every size budget. You can either research and contact your Influencer Marketing directly or, if you have a larger budget, go through agencies.
PPC / Weaving
Good content, SEO, and text links are the basis for long-term success with your website!
PPC is the exact opposite: you can get results and sell products within about an hour on most platforms. However, it is also possible to burn a lot of money within a very short time. You should proceed with caution here and set limits.
20. Google Adwords
| Difficulty | Medium – High |
| Cost Factor | Medium – High |
| Done From | Internal / External |
| Effort | Medium |
Google Adwords is probably the “standard way” for the vast majority of people starting out with search engine marketing. Google has invested a lot of time to develop this tool and make it as easy as possible for you to place ads online.
You can definitely just start on your own and test. Set small limits, create small simple campaigns, and always test what works well.
An example: You introduce a new product. Create two landing pages with slight differences (A/B testing) and buy traffic from Google, 100 visitors per page. Test which page generates more sales and documents. Proceed in exactly the same way with further tests.
21. Facebook Ads
| Difficulty | Medium – High |
| Cost Factor | Medium – High |
| Done From | Internal / External |
| Effort | Medium |
Facebook Ads work according to the same principle as Google Ads. With Facebook, you have more options to limit your personas.
You should first ask if your potential target audience usually spends time on Facebook. If that’s the case, then it may be just the right channel for you.
Again, it is possible to run A/B tests. While you are testing and documenting, you should also compare the conversion rates of Google Ads and Facebook Ads.
22. Instagram Ads
| Difficulty | Medium |
| Cost Factor | Medium – High |
| Done From | Internal / External |
| Effort | Medium |
At Instagram, there are several advertising formats, as with the other platforms and search engines.
For an acquaintance, almost all orders come through Instagram. If your target audience is so easy to define and find, then this is where it makes the most sense to invest in advertising.
23. Get Prospects back with Re-targeting
| Difficulty | Medium |
| Cost Factor | Medium – High |
| Done From | Internal / External |
| Effort | Low – Medium |
Re-targeting describes a method in marketing that achieves relatively high conversion rates.
Surely you have already experienced this yourself.
The starting point was that you looked at a product on the website. The website then “marked” you or your browser with a cookie. You did not order the product but browsed other websites.
A short time to a few days later, the same product appears as an advertisement on another website in a different context. You are thus reminded again of the product you were recently interested in.
The likelihood that you will order now can be relatively high compared to static banner ads that used to be more prevalent on the Internet.