It can be extremely disheartening when you’ve created a beautiful online store and have amazing products, but ultimately struggle when it comes to getting website visitors.
No matter how good your product and website are, it doesn’t really matter unless people are coming to shop at your store.
Finding a consistent source of interested customers is what’s going to drive your revenue.
Quality is even more important than quantity when it comes to website traffic because you want visitors that have a high potential of purchasing an item.
In this guide, I’m going to show you how to drive high-quality traffic to your ecommerce website.
I’ll discuss:
- The 15 best ways to drive traffic to your ecommerce store today
- How to properly utilize each traffic source
- How to target the most optimal audience for your niche
- Everything you need to know to get started today
- and much more.
Let’s jump right in.
How To Drive More Traffic to Your Ecommerce Store Today
There are dozens of different ways you can start boosting your ecommerce store with high-quality visitors.
These include both paid and free ways. Paid methods include sources such as Facebook ads, Google ads, and influencer marketing. Free ways include forum posting, blog posting, and content marketing.
Most ecommerce stores opt for paid advertisements as they are able to utilize sophisticated advertising platforms with pinpoint interest targeting. This allows them to instantly begin generating website traffic with high potential website visitors.
Interest targeting is when you specifically advertise to users who have shown a previous interest in your store’s niche.
Other ecommerce stores focus on search engine optimization (SEO) and making sure their website is highly visible on the Google search engine.
Regardless of which method you choose, it’s all about finding the most profitable and consistent source of traffic for your own ecommerce store.
For this reason, I recommend choosing only a few of the traffic sources you think have the best potential of increasing traffic for your specific website.
Then, you have the ability to thoroughly test and learn how to use each one. By taking the time to slowly learn and work at a few traffic sources, you increase the odds of actually getting it to work and being able to scale your ecommerce store in the future.
So, let’s get into the 15 best ecommerce traffic sources to scale your brand today.
1) Facebook Advertising
Facebook advertising and ecommerce stores go hand-in-hand like peanut butter and jelly. With 1.79 billion daily users, Facebook is the third most visited website in the world. It is only behind Google and YouTube.
Furthermore, Facebook has 2.91 billion monthly active users as of 2021. This means that you can actively target around 37% of the global population right from your computer.
On top of such a wide audience, Facebook allows you to target specific interests, demographics, locations, and user behaviors. For this reason, you can easily find high-potential website visitors that are already interested in the products your ecommerce store offers.
Why Are Facebook Ads Important
The power of Facebook ads lies in the customizability and ability to optimize data. With Facebook ads, you can set your daily budget and easily monitor specific metrics on the Facebook ads dashboard.
These metrics include cost per click (CPC), cost per add-to-cart (CPATC), cost per purchase (CPP), and return on ad spend (ROAs).
Furthermore, the Facebook ads machine learning algorithm automatically optimizes your ads based on user interaction with your ads and website.
Facebook ads are also highly scalable. Once you find a winning audience and ad set, you can easily ramp up the budget to increase the revenue on your store.
How To Best Use Facebook Ads
To best use Facebook ads, you’ll need to gain a full understanding of how the platform works and how to use it. This requires a dedicated amount of time getting used to the Facebook ads dashboard. Furthermore, I recommend making beautiful and engaging image or video ads, as well as testing a variety of different interests and demographics.
Moreover, you should dedicate around 10% of your daily ad budget to retargeting ad campaigns. This is when you create a completely separate ad campaign that focuses on advertising to website visitors that visited your website before but didn’t purchase anything.
The last important thing you need to learn is how to determine if your advertising campaigns are profitable. This involves monitoring the cost per purchase (CPP) and return on investment (ROI).
Facebook ads have the potential to quickly and exponentially increase the amount of website traffic and revenue your store receives.
2) Instagram Advertising
Instagram advertising is extremely similar to Facebook advertising in terms of setup and targeting. The only difference is that your ads will be displayed on Instagram instead of Facebook.
Since Facebook owns Instagram, you can directly set up Instagram ads on the Facebook ads platform. In fact, you’ll be able to choose to advertise on Instagram on any Facebook ad campaigns you create.
All you need to do is connect your ecommerce store’s Instagram account.
In terms of targeting and the advertisement itself, it’s the exact same as Facebook.
3) Google Shopping Advertisements
Google Shopping ads is another paid method that involves promoting your products at the top of a Google search results page.
If you’ve ever searched for a product on Google and seen an array of ‘Sponsored’ products with images and prices at the top of the results, these are Google ads. These companies are paying to show their products for specific keywords.
With an average of 63,000 Google search queries per second, there is unlimited potential when it comes to increasing your ecommerce store’s traffic.
For example, let’s say you search for “Nike shoes”. You’ll see an arrangement of products on the search results page from companies like Nike, Dior, Shoe Carnival, and so forth.
These companies are specifically targeting and paying for the keyword “Nike shoes”.
Since these Google ads appear at the top of the page, it’s where searchers are most likely to look at first. This allows you to jump to the front of the line on a Google search results page and increase the odds of gaining website traffic.
How To Best Use Google Ads
To best use Google ads, you’ll need to test and determine your most profitable keywords. This involves thorough research on keywords and buyer intent.
Furthermore, I recommend only using high-quality pictures and adding the overall review score to increase the overall click-through rate (CTR).
4) Pinterest Advertising
Pinterest is a platform that combines a search engine with social media capabilities. With over 400 million monthly users, Pinterest offers a highly-valuable platform if you’re trying to drive visitors to your ecommerce website.
In terms of how the Pinterest ad platform works, you’ll be able to create Promoted Pins. Similar to Google shopping ads, Promoted Pins will show up at the top of Pinterest search results for specific keywords that you choose.
For example, let’s say you had an online store selling vintage handbags. You can create a Promoted Pin in the same way you’d create a Facebook ad. This involves choosing the target demographic, interests, and location.
Then, you can add your image/video/carousel, and choose the specific keyword you want to target.
How To Best Use Pinterest Ads
To make the most out of your Pinterest ad campaigns, I recommend focusing on creating beautiful and engaging Pins. Your goal is to make your Pin stand out as much as possible and gain the attention of any viewer. Since Promoted Pins are already at the top of search and browse feeds, you want to take advantage of the real estate you own.
Then, focus on optimizing your ad campaign by monitoring key metrics and profitability.
5) Tik Tok Advertising
Tik Tok is a social media platform that completely took over the online world at the start of the pandemic in 2020. With over 1 billion monthly active users as of 2021, Tik Tok offers another source of growing your online store’s web traffic.
Just like Facebook, Tik Tok also offers an ads manager where you can promote your products on their platform.
If you haven’t used Tik Tok before, it’s a social media platform that exclusively uses videos. Users can endlessly scroll and watch short video clips that users have created. Furthermore, as users are scrolling, they will be shown ‘Sponsored’ videos that other companies paid to promote.
How To Best Use Tik Tok Ads
Since Tik Tok revolves exclusively around videos, you need to put a lot of effort into creating an engaging and informative video advertisement.
Keep in mind, Tik Tok users can easily skip past your video advertisement with a simple flick of their finger.
For this reason, I recommend making your advertisement as organic and homemade as possible. You want the advertisement to seem like just another random Tik Tok video instead of a full-production commercial.
You should creatively showcase how your product is used and the benefits it offers. Furthermore, you can also create organic style reviews where you talk about an “Unbelievable Product That Changed My Life”.
6) Bing Advertising
Bing is Microsoft’s version of Google. It’s another search engine that answers user queries.
Similar to Google Shopping ads, Bing or Microsoft Ads work in the same way. You can pay to display your products at the top of Bing search results.
To compare Bing and Google, Bing accounts for around 7% of the global search market while Google accounts for nearly 87%. Although Bing has significantly fewer users than Google, there are still millions of people you can target to your online ecommerce store.
How To Best Use Bing Advertising
Just like Google Shopping ads, you’ll want to spend some time researching the best keywords to target. Furthermore, you need to ensure the product images that are displayed are high-quality and eye-catching.
If you choose to use Bing ads, I recommend testing both Google and Bing to see which platform offers you the best profitability.
7) Reddit Advertising
Reddit is a social network that revolves around specific user interests. There are thousands of different communities on Reddit called subreddits where users engage and discuss different topics on their specific niche.
For example, r/soccer is a subreddit with 3,000,000 subscribers that exclusively talks about professional soccer.
There are over 52 million daily active users and 1.2 billion monthly active visitors on Reddit that passionately engage and discuss topics they’re interested in. This offers you the capability of targeting extremely interested users to your online store.
How To Best Use Reddit Ads
Since Reddit works similarly to a forum, users will create different threads and other users will leave comments to further the discussion.
Reddit ads are when you pay to promote a post to the top of a particular subreddit. You can then target subreddits that are related to your niche.
Since users will see that the post is ‘Promoted’, I recommend using a highly-engaging photo and headline.
8) Promotional Email Campaigns
If your ecommerce store isn’t using any form of email marketing, I highly recommend you get started. Promotional email campaigns allow you to instantly shoot out an email blast to all the emails you’ve collected so far. By doing this, you can alert users about special holiday sales and promotions.
How To Best Use Promotional Email Campaigns
I highly recommend using Klaviyo if you’ve never run email campaigns before. Klaviyo allows you to set up a pop-up on your ecommerce store that offers a discount code if a user enters their email.
Then, Klaviyo automatically sends an email to the user with a discount code. With the user’s email now collected, you can then shoot out promotional campaigns in the future to your entire email catalog if you have any special sales going on.
This is a fantastic way of attaining more website visitors. Furthermore, users that have previously visited your store have a higher chance of making a purchase.
9) Abandoned Cart Emails
Along with promotional email campaigns, I also recommend setting up abandoned cart emails. This method involves sending out emails to website visitors that added an item to their cart but ultimately left without purchasing anything.
These emails are simple to set up using Klaviyo’s email flow function. These are automatic email sequences that get sent based on certain triggers such as cart abandonment.
How To Best Use Abandoned Cart Emails
The best way to use abandoned cart emails is to set up 3 total emails in the Klaviyo email flow. You can choose what time the emails are sent out such as 12 hours after cart abandonment, 2 days after cart abandonment, and 5 days after cart abandonment.
Then, the first email can remind them about the product they forgot. The second email can offer a discount code along with the product. The last email can offer an even bigger discount code.
Using abandoned cart emails is an excellent way of driving the highest potential website visitors back to your ecommerce store.
10) Instagram Influencers
Getting help from social media influencers is another great way to drive traffic into your online store. This method involves partnering up with an influencer in your niche and paying them to promote your products and store on their feed.
For Instagram specifically, the influencer can make a post about your product, create a swipe-up link in their Instagram story, and put your store’s URL in their profile bio.
How To Best Use Instagram Influencers
The most effective way to use Instagram influencer marketing is to find influencers that are highly related to your store’s niche. This means that their audience has a high potential of being interested in your products as well.
Furthermore, you should make sure that the Instagram influencer has good engagement in the form of likes and comments. It’s much more effective to find a smaller influencer with a highly engaged fanbase than a bigger influencer with a disengaged fanbase. Many Instagram influencers are known to buy followers and you want to avoid them as much as possible.
Once you’ve found a few potential influencers, I recommend messaging them that you’re interested in promoting your products on their page. For smaller influencers (less than 20,000 followers), you can offer to send your product for free in exchange for promotion on their Instagram account. For bigger influencers, they will most likely require payment in the form of cash.
11) YouTube Influencers
Collaborating with YouTubers is another great way of driving traffic to your online store. In fact, YouTube audiences are much more likely to listen to the influencer’s recommendations than influencers on other platforms.
This is because YouTube content requires a much larger time investment than Instagram or Tik Tok and this allows the influencer to build a more personable relationship with their fans.
How To Best Use YouTube Influencers
The best way to use YouTube influencers is by asking them to create unboxing and review videos. These videos allow them to share an in-depth look at how a product works and all the benefits it offers.
You should look for YouTube channels that are highly related to your niche and have an engaging comments section.
12) Tik Tok Influencers
As I discussed before, Tik Tok is growing to become the most actively used social media platform in the world. By exclusively focusing on video content, they are able to keep users much more engaged in the application.
For this reason, working with Tik Tok influencers is another great way to drive traffic to your ecommerce store.
How To Best Use Tik Tok Influencers
Just like Instagram influencer marketing, you will need to reach out to Tik Tokers that make content relevant to your niche.
Then, you will ask them to create and post a creative video with your product. You want to make sure the content isn’t too salesy. This can deter viewers because they can tell it’s obviously a sponsored post. Instead, you want the content to be organic and focus on the specific uniqueness your product offers.
13) Search Engine Optimization
Search engine optimization (SEO) is a way you can drive organic traffic into your online ecommerce store. This method is different from Google or Bing Shopping ads because you aren’t paying to have sponsored posts at the top of the search engine results page.
Instead, the goal of search engine optimization is to naturally rank on the first page of Google for specific keywords and results.
For example, let’s say your ecommerce store is selling wooden jewelry. The objective of search engine optimization would be to have your store listed on the first page of Google when people search for “wooden jewelry”.
SEO is an amazing source of traffic because once your keywords are all ranking organically, you don’t have to rely on paid advertisements to drive traffic into your online store.
However, SEO is a long-term task that requires a variety of different duties to be completed.
How To Best Use Search Engine Optimization
The most important part of SEO is finding and using the correct keywords. Ahrefs is an online tool that allows you to search up different keywords and find out how many people are searching for that specific keyword every month.
You should look for the best keywords related to your store and implement them in your product titles, category pages, and product descriptions.
Furthermore, I recommend creating a blog and writing articles about your niche and how your products can solve specific problems.
Lastly, I also recommend attaining backlinks. Backlinks are when other websites link to your website. Once other websites link to your website, Google realizes that your website is more and more legitimate, authorizing Google to naturally move your website further up the search engine results page.
14) Pinterest
As we discussed earlier, Pinterest is a platform that combines social media with a search engine. Along with Promoted Pins, you can also try organically growing your brand’s Pinterest account. This involves creating high-value Pins about your products and niche.
15) Native Advertising
Native advertising is when your products are displayed on different websites related to your niche. The goal of native ads is to appear as it belongs on the page they’re attached to.
I recommend using Outbrain if native ads are something you want to test.
Conclusion
I hope you enjoyed my ultimate guide on the 15 best ecommerce traffic sources to scale your brand.
Now I’d like to hear from you: which traffic sources from today’s guide are you going to try first?
Are there any methods that we forgot?
Either way, let me know by leaving a quick comment below.