The big question every online retailer faces while starting out is how to get people to their online store. Although we regularly see the most bizarre things go viral on the internet (case in point, the kickstarter campaign for Exploding Cats), we never really imagine the same happening to our online enterprises.
What we don’t realise most of the time is that diversion of traffic and creation of an online presence are generally pre-meditated activities. While doing so is not an exact science (if it were, everyone would be doing it), there are measures you can take to ensure greater traffic on your webstore. Here we list out a few things you can do to make that possible.
Ways to Drive Traffic to Your Online Webstore
- Optimise Your Content for Search Engines
By now you must have noticed that search engines like Google employ a certain algorithm to sort out through the internet and answer your search results. You may also have noticed that the results are ranked – the ones that appear on top of the first page are generally more relevant.
The way Google achieves this is by sending crawlers across all registered webpages that check whether the content on the page matches the keywords in the query. Sites with the most matches would obviously seem more relevant. Moulding the content and the look of your website to make sure that it would appear on top in the search results is known as search engine optimisation. It is best if you seek professional help in rewriting your web content to make it optimised for search engines.
- Consider Having an Active Blog
Another common trick many websites use to stay relevant is having an active blog tab in the website. Most of the content on your website is static, and has more chances to be outdated. Google looks for fresh content while providing results, so a great way to do so is adding new content on your website through a relevant blog. For example, if you run a business of selling electronic gadgets, you could have a blog consisting of product reviews and tech news.
- Offer Referral Bonuses
This is a good idea, at least in the beginning stages of your brand creation. Offer discounts to your existing customers if they refer your store to their friends. This kind of word-of-mouth marketing is the heart and soul of online retail. The only precaution you need to take is not to sound too needy for referrals, but just the right amount!
- Using Social Media
Using social media is not limited to having a Facebook page or a Twitter handle for your enterprise. As a business, there are many tools that you can employ that help you steadily rise in terms of popularity on social media sites. Here are some examples:
This often ignored social media site is actually immensely powerful. In fact, research suggests that Instagram offers brand names 25 times more visibility than other social media sites. The way you can actively use Instagram to help your business is by using tools like Websta. Websta is essentially a keyword search tool for Instagram. Here you can search keywords that interest you, find popular users who regularly use these keywords, contact them and ask for their help to promote your brand by giving them free samples.
- Blogs and Youtube
You can employ the same tactics to create buzz on various product review blogs and vlogs. All you need is a keyword search tool for each platform. Use Google Analytics and Youtube search.
- Facebook and Twitter
Make sure that you repromote content from one social media platform to the others. Facebook Insights and Twitter Analytics are tools that you can use for measuring and analysing the impact of your posts. To be updated on keywords on Twitter, you can use Twitter Advanced Search. Apart from these in-house tools, there are many 3rd party applications in the market for this purpose.
For any more information, don’t hesitate to get in touch with Browntape. We are India’s leading e-commerce solutions providers and we are always happy to help.
