Tips from an ecommerce website developer

As an ecommerce website developer, one of the most common questions I get from ecommerce businesses is how to increase traffic to their website and generate more sales. While there are many different strategies and tactics you can use to drive more traffic to your ecommerce site, it’s important to remember that what works for one business may not work for another. That’s why it’s crucial to have a diverse set of tactics in your digital marketing toolkit, set quarterly reviews on your strategies and have an ecommerce website that delivers on performance. 

In this article, we’ll discuss 12 proven ways to increase traffic to your ecommerce website. These marketing strategies are designed to help you attract more visitors, engage them with your brand, and ultimately drive more sales.

2. Use social media to drive traffic to your ecommerce store.

Social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Tiktok, to name a few, can be powerful drivers of traffic to your ecommerce website. By regularly posting engaging, relevant content and promoting your brand lifestyle on these platforms, you can attract a steady stream of visitors to your site that have already bought into your brand's value. From there, the rest depends on your web design and the trust you build with the user in their experience from browsing your site. By having a great web design in place that is easy to navigate, uses trust signals and is over-all a user-friendly design, you increase the chance of converting your online traffic. 

There are companies out there that cleverly engage their audience by tapping into their target market lifestyle. Take Boohoo for example, they deliver relatable, fun and pop-cultured content in line with current trends and their brand message. Think about what your brand lifestyle is and curate content that will engage your customers, add personality to your brand and encourage users to engage with each other on your social media platform. 

If you’re looking for help with your social media strategy, reach out to a digital marketing consultant from Brainiac Media . They can help you create an effective plan to engage with your customers online and promote your ecommerce business on social media, driving more traffic and improving your sales.

3. Improve your User Design Experience

Web design is the process of creating visually appealing and user-friendly websites for online businesses. As an ecommerce web developer, the goal is to create a website that not only looks great, but also provides a seamless and enjoyable shopping experience for your users that drives the user to make a purchase. There’s no point in driving lots of traffic to your site if it’s unable to convert them into customers!

A clear and easy-to-use navigation is crucial for ecommerce websites. Make sure that users can easily find the products they are looking for and that the checkout process is simple and straightforward. This will also help with web crawlers. If you’re wondering what this is, it is an online bot that explores your webpages to learn about your content, pick up information and add it to their index. If a web crawler cannot effectively navigate through your site, neither will your users and this can heavily impact your SEO ranking as well as potentially drive away customers due to bad user experience.

So you’re probably starting to get the gist of how important it is to have a great web design alongside your marketing strategy. Let’s delve into a few more points that can help improve your users' experience on your webpages.

Optimise your images before you put them up on your site. This ensures that you can upload high-quality images without it affecting your site speed and still have a crystal clear picture for users to engage with. If you are not optimising your images before uploading them onto your site, this can cause a huge impact on your site speed and as you may have already guessed it, on your user experience. Take a look at Kinsta to see how you can optimise your images for the web. 

Incorporate diverse web design. This means including web design elements and features that are inclusive and accessible to all, such as alt-text for images and good colour contrast. By doing this, you can ensure that your website is accessible to a wider audience. You can view your website accessibility through using this website accessibility checker.

You may have heard the term “mobile-first” being thrown around a lot when developing a site, this is because it’s key to converting your mobile-user traffic. Did you know 60% of users will view a website from their mobile device? And it’s highly likely this number will keep soaring with the increasing use of mobile devices for online shopping. So make sure your website is responsive across different screen sizes ensuring you are designing ‘mobile-first’. Mobile devices have the most restrictions, so designing your site this way first will make it easier to expand its features to create a desktop or tablet version.

By following these tips, you can create a visually appealing and user-friendly ecommerce website that drives sales and provides seamless shopping experiences for your users. Keep in mind that ecommerce web design is an ever-evolving process and it’s important to stay up to date with the latest trends and best practices to ensure your website stays ahead of the competition.

5. Add Trust Signals to the Process

Trust is an important part of the ecommerce experience. A lack of business legitimacy causes 50% of cart abandonments according to TrustedSite. So how do you ensure customers can trust your business? Trust signals.  

Trust signals can come in many forms. Badges, third-party verifications, customer reviews and testimonials are all helpful trust signals that customers can see during their purchase journey. Additionally, using an HTTPS protocol and making sure your website is secured with an SSL certificate is essential for data security and trust.

Using trust signals helps your customers feel confident in knowing their purchase is secure and reduces concerns about fraud or scams, and it also helps with your SEO. Having trust signals on your website can improve your website’s SEO as it indicates that the website is trustworthy and credible to search engines. 

6. Make Sure Your Customer Knows Their Data is Safe

Keeping customer data safe is an essential part of doing business online. Ecommerce sites collect a lot of information from their customers and we need to ensure that the data is secure and not at risk of theft or misuse.

Firstly, obtain an SSL/TLS certificate as this ensures that all communication between the site and the customers is encrypted. Another way to keep data secure is to request strong passwords from customers and make sure that any data storage is encrypted.

Let your customers know exactly what steps you are taking to protect their information and privacy. When asking customers to input sensitive information, be sure to include a list of the steps you are taking to keep their data safe. By being transparent about the processes you take to protect customer data, you can help build trust with your customers.

I could write a whole separate blog on information security because it is so crucial, especially with the advancement in technologies, but I will keep it short and sweet. If you’d like to know more about taking extra security measures on your website, have a read through Customer Think.  

7. Offer Free Shipping

Why is it important to offer free shipping? Because customers expect it.
According to a 2021 Consumer Trends Report, 80% of consumers expect free shipping and 90% of consumers said they would shop online more often if they were given the option of free shipping, with 73% of people stating that they’re more likely to decide to buy an item if it includes free shipping and companies that offer it are reported to have 20% higher conversion rate than those without.
There are ways to make free shipping work for you without eating into your profits: increase your prices slightly to cover the cost of shipping, create a loyalty program that rewards customers with free shipping, or you can set a minimum order value where orders over a certain amount will qualify for free shipping.

8. Build an Email List & Retarget Email Subscribers

Email lists can be a powerful way to boost customer retention and increase online traffic to your ecommerce website. With an email list, you are able to target repeat customers and those who have already established trust with your business. Email also allows for personalised communication with customers, so you can tailor content and offers to their interests, increasing the chances of them engaging with your business. One of the best ways to get people to join your email list is by offering them something in return, such as discounts and exclusive offers to them. This will make your list feel exclusive and encourage followers to sign up. 

Once you’ve built out an email list, you’ll want to retarget users based on their onsite behaviour. Retargeting is when you send an email to someone who has shown interest in your business but didn’t take the action you were hoping for. Abandoned cart emails are an especially effective form of retargeting and can recover nearly 30 percent of abandoned carts. You can also send current customers suggested products related to a previous purchase as a way to encourage more sales and boost traffic.

Deliver emails that are concise, clear and easy to understand, including a call-to-action so that users are able to easily click through to your website or landing page. 

9) Paid Social Media Ad Campaigns

Social media ads are becoming an essential tool in marketing strategies. Paid social media ads are a great option for ecommerce stores as they provide speed to market, increased reach and improved targeting. 

One of the key benefits of paid social media ad campaigns is their targeted advertising capabilities. These campaigns allow businesses to target specific groups of people based on demographics, interests, behaviours and other factors, ensuring that their ads are seen by the people most likely to be interested in their products or services. This targeted approach allows businesses to effectively reach their desired audience, resulting in a higher return on investment and increased conversions.

Another advantage of paid social media ads is the increased reach they offer. By placing ads on social media platforms, businesses are able to put their products or services in front of a larger audience, expanding their customer base and increasing brand awareness. This increased reach can be especially beneficial for small businesses, who may have a more limited customer base.

These campaigns are also cost-effective, providing businesses with an excellent return on investment. The ability to track and measure the results of your advertising efforts such as clicks, conversions and sales allows for optimisation and improvement of campaigns, leading to better results. In addition, they also offer remarketing options, which allows businesses to retarget users that have engaged with their site or business before. This can be a powerful tool to bring back customers that have already shown an interest in your products and increase the chances of conversion. 

10) Influencer Marketing

One of the benefits of influencer marketing is the ability to reach a targeted audience through an established, trusted figure. Influencers have built a loyal following of people who trust their recommendations, by partnering with them you can tap into that audience and reach potential customers who are more likely to be interested in your products or services.

Influencers have a unique voice and style that can be leveraged to create content that resonates with their followers and effectively promotes your product or service, making them an effective choice for organic product promotion. Before approaching any influencer, it’s important to ask yourself a few questions first. Are they a good brand fit for your business? Does the influencer seem like someone you would want to be a customer and would they actually use or wear your products? Do they have good engagement rates? Engagement rates are more important than the number of followers, so aim for an influencer who has an engagement rate of at least 2-3% with multiple comments on each of their posts.  

11) Drive a sense of urgency

If you want to convert more visitors on your ecommerce website into paying customers, one of the best strategies is to create a sense of urgency. By setting a time limit on a particular offer or by limiting the number of available items, customers will be driven to complete the purchase now instead of later. For example, if you have a limited number of products left in stock, you can make sure your customer knows that the item may not be available if they don’t purchase it right away. Additionally, offering discounts or deals that only last for a certain amount of time will encourage customers to take advantage of them while they still can.

The key here is to create an environment where customers feel like they may miss out on something great if they don’t act now. 

12) Research, Implement and Reassess

It's important to note that not all strategies will work for every brand or audience. You need to do the research before implementing any marketing strategy and the only way to know if something works is to research, implement and then reassess. You may need to adjust or tweak the strategy you're using in order to get the desired results. If a particular strategy isn't producing results for your brand, try something new! This is the only way to keep growing and expanding. This also goes for your product or service too. Use the platforms and tools at your disposal to seek feedback from your target market to find out what is working and what isn’t.

In conclusion, driving more traffic to your ecommerce website is essential if you want to scale your business. Remember to always track your progress and analyse your data to see what is working and what’s not in terms of your marketing strategy. Keep in mind that online marketing is an ever-evolving landscape, so don’t be afraid to try new things and have fun with it!

If you’re finding it difficult to come up with effective digital marketing strategies, it may be beneficial to work with a digital marketing consultant. They have years of experience and knowledge in the digital marketing industry and can provide insight as to where you will make the most return on investment in your digital marketing strategy. Working with a digital marketing agency can help you stay on track, keep up to date with the latest trends and help you refine your existing campaigns. Get in touch with Brainiac Media to see how we can help with your marketing strategy and ecommerce web development.