6 Effective Ways to Drive Traffic to Your Shopify Store
Glory-Anna Oshafi
There are over 26 million e-commerce websites worldwide. If you’re thinking like me, one word should be flashing red in your mind: “Competition.”
The only way to stand out of the competition, and direct a larger portion of the market share to your website is by increasing your brand awareness.
If you’re not getting enough incoming traffic to your e-commerce store, you should create a working strategy to get more people to know about your brand. We’ve got 6 effective ways for you to help you do this.
Let’s explore each of them.
Optimize for Search Engines
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is important to help you rank higher in search engines and increase your visibility. Check out how you can optimize your Shopify store for search engines below:
Improve SEO for Your Shopify Store
Potential customers use search engines like Google to find items they need using specific keywords. If your online store doesn’t have those keywords, it’ll be pushed down search engine results pages (SERP).
To get to the top, research keywords using tools like Google Keyword Planner, and then infuse relevant keywords naturally in your Shopify store. Ranking high on search engine results pages (SERP) increases your click-through rate.
You must also ensure your website has a fast loading speed because a slow loading speed can negatively affect customers’ buying behaviors.
A few more things to do for SEO include:
- Use an attention-grabbing title tag
- Write a persuasive meta description but keep it within the 155-character limit
- Add a readable and relevant keyword in your page URL
- Include descriptive alt text for images on your website
Create Valuable Blog Content
Adding a blog section to your Shopify store is another way to optimize for search engines. Firstly, it allows you to add more keywords to your page while providing value to potential customers.
Additionally, blogging is a way to keep adding fresh content to your page. It’s important because search engines will suggest pages with more updated content than those with older content.
Leverage Social Media Platforms
As of 2024, over 5 billion people use social media. If you want to drive a fraction of that traffic to your Shopify store, these tactics can help:
Utilize Instagram Stories and Reels
If you use Instagram, you’re familiar with its Stories feature which allows you to make a vanishing post that lasts 24 hours. It’s often easy to create and has interactive stickers that make the Story posts engaging. For example, you can easily post polls, quizzes, or even feature a product from your website and use the link sticker to add a link to the product page.
Instagram Reels, however, require more effort because you need them to hold people’s attention. By creating compelling reel content and including a powerful call to action (CTA), you can invite people to shop on your website.
Launch a YouTube Channel
YouTube is another way to get people familiar with your business. It’s the second-largest search engine, which means you get more eyes on your offerings and can direct them to visit your website.
As with other search engines, you must optimize your YouTube channel for SEO. Include keywords in your video description and titles to tell the search engine what your video is about. Then add your link to the video description and a compelling CTA in the video content, inviting viewers to click the link to visit your store.
Explore TikTok Ads
TikTok ranks as the fifth biggest social media platform in the world, with over 1.5 billion active users monthly. It allows its users to add relevant links in their bios. So if you want viewers to visit your website, you must include a CTA in your TikTok videos telling viewers to click the link in your bio.
This changes with TikTok ads. Running ads on TikTok lets you add a link directly to the promoted video. So in the heat of the moment, viewers can just click the link and get what they want from you.
Collaborate with Influencers
Influencers have dedicated followers whom they can influence. Check out two ways to collaborate with them to drive traffic to your Shopify store.
Partner with Micro-Influencers
Micro-influencers are influencers with 10 – 100k followers on social media. Compared to influencers with a higher following, micro-influencers boast higher engagement rates. So you can expect better results when working with micro-influencers than with bigger influencers.
Another perk of working specifically with micro-influencers to drive traffic to your website is that they’re cheaper than bigger influencers.
However, carefully selecting the influencer is vital for success. Their audience demographics must match your target audience. Partnering with micro-influencers like this helps their followers learn about your brand, and you can strategically direct the new eyes on your account to your website using targeted posts.
Host Influencer Takeovers
An influencer takeover, as the name implies, means giving a relevant influencer control over your brand’s social media platforms for an agreed period. During this time, the influencer shares their content on your page and engages with your audience. Then you can highlight it on your profile for new followers to see.
They bring their creativity into your brand and give your audience fresh content with a new perspective. If you share your goal of driving traffic to your website with the influencer, they’ll create content around it, build excitement, and encourage your audience to participate.
Engage in Email Marketing
Campaign Monitor reports that for every $1 you spend on email marketing, you can expect up to $38 in ROI, making it an effective form of marketing. Now let’s see how you can use email marketing to drive traffic to your Shopify store.
Personalize Your Email Campaigns
Personalization goes beyond addressing your subscriber by their first name. It starts from the subject of the email, which is the first thing they see before opening the email.
Also, the content of the email should address the unique challenges or desires of your target audience. It’ll show that you care about them. Finish off with a compelling CTA that leads customers to your website.
Send Exclusive Offers
Incentivize your subscribers to visit your website. Tell them about ongoing sales or any special discounts you’re offering.
Shipping fees are often a hindrance to purchase. Offer free shipping when your business can afford it. Include these offers in your emails and don’t forget to add a CTA button that links to your website.
Utilize Paid Advertising
Running paid ads can help you reach your target audience on different social media and ad platforms. See some of them below:
Google Ads
Do you notice the tags “Sponsored” or “Ad” in the first few pages of search results on Google?
Those are Google ads, specifically search ads. Advertisers bid for specific keywords related to what they are offering. When users search on Google using those specific keywords, like ‘social media marketing,’ in the image, Google checks for ads placed on those keywords and displays them at the top of search results.
As an e-commerce store, you can also use Google shopping ads. These ads show high-quality images of your product on both the regular search result page and the Shopping tab on Google.
While you try out Google search ads, don’t overlook shopping ads. There are opportunities to drive traffic to your online store there.
Facebook and Instagram Ads
You need a good understanding of your target audience to run an effective ad on Facebook and Instagram. This is because you get to create a custom audience for your ads based on what you know about your target audience.
Details like their age range, sex, interests, occupation, and location are important for creating a custom audience. This will ensure your ad only gets to people likely to take your desired action, thus saving your ad costs.
You can specifically run website visitor ads on Facebook to promote your Shopify store’s URL. You just have to give your audience a good reason to visit your website. With the right audience, a good copy, and high-quality visuals, you’re good to go.
TikTok Ads
TikTok gives you a variety of ad formats to choose from. But in-feed ads are the most common. To set TikTok ads, get the TikTok ads manager app, and then set your goal for the campaign.
In this case, select the goal to increase traffic. You also get the option to create a custom audience based on your target audience. Make sure your content is engaging and add a CTA.
Collaborate with Other Brands
Look out for other brands that complement your brand and collaborate with them to reach new audiences and drive traffic to your Shopify store. They don’t have to be direct competitors; collaborate with thought leaders in the industry or non-governmental agencies.
Here’s how to collaborate with other brands to get more website visitors:
Co-Hosted Giveaways
Your brand can collaborate with a complementary brand to host a giveaway. Your brand goals (boosting website traffic) will determine the giveaway instructions.
You can collect more email addresses, get more followers, increase engagement., and more. All of these tasks set the stage to drive traffic to your website. For example, if you host a giveaway to collect email addresses, you can utilize email marketing techniques to drive traffic.
Having another brand post the giveaway instructions helps you reach more people. But it’ll only benefit your business if the other brand has an audience similar to yours. This way, subsequent marketing campaigns will fall in the right place rather than people who may be uninterested in your products.
Guest Blogging and Cross-Promotions
Suppose you sell affordable clothes, you can collaborate with low-income relief bloggers to feature your brand in their blogs. This opens you up to a new audience likely to visit your website.
Also, if you sell shoes, a brand that sells clothes might offer good collaboration opportunities, and you can cross-promote each other’s business on your respective social media pages.
How Can Juphy Help You Drive Traffic?
After implementing the 6 strategies discussed above, you can take things a notch higher by implementing Juphy AI. Juphy will help you drive traffic to your Shopify store by responding quickly to customer queries, sending personalized product recommendations, and integrating Instagram for seamless operations. With its ‘Built for Shopify’ badge, Juphy AI is easy to access and manage directly from the Shopify dashboard. Let’s see how that works:
- Responding to Customer Queries Promptly
Juphy AI helps you boost customer retention and loyalty by providing timely responses to customers’ queries. When you integrate Juphy into your website, it works round the clock to provide an excellent shopping experience for shoppers. A good shopping experience breeds return customers and brand advocates.
- Personalizing Product Recommendations
As part of providing an excellent shopping experience for shoppers, Juphy studies your customer behaviors and browsing patterns and uses this information to deliver tailored experiences to your customers.
Customers appreciate recommendations that feel tailored to their needs. Consequently, you get higher customer satisfaction and repeat business.
- Utilizing Instagram Integration
Instagram-Shopify integration helps you leverage omnichannel solutions for your e-commerce business. But Juphy makes it even better by providing prompt and personalized responses to customer queries on Instagram. It also directs potential customers to your Shopify store to increase traffic and boost sales.
Conclusion
When you optimize your Shopify store for SEO, you position your brand to be discovered by potential customers. Running ads, and collaborating with influencers and other brands will help increase your reach to other audiences. Email marketing is another strategy to direct leads to your Shopify store.
While all of these are effective, adding Juphy to the mix will keep your store booming all year round. As you direct traffic to your store, Juphy ensures you keep these customers and encourage them to bring you new business.
See how Juphy can help you today, start with the free trial now!
Key Takeaways
- To drive traffic to your Shopify store, you must optimize for SEO and advertise on social media platforms to reach more people who are likely unaware of your business.
- You can also consider working with influencers or collaborating with other brands to promote your store to their audience.
- Email marketing generates a generous ROI and is considered effective in driving website traffic.
- Juphy contributes to your goal of increasing traffic by providing prompt and personalized responses to customer queries.
- Juphy AI also facilitates Instagram-Shopify integration through its fast responses. It efficiently directs leads on Instagram to your Shopify store.