E-Commerce Video

5 Ways to Increase Traffic to Your Online Store

5 Ways to Increase Traffic to Your Online Store

What are the top five ways that you can increase your traffic to your online e-commerce store? Everyone wants to get more business, and getting traffic online is very important. So I’m going to talk about paid and organic strategies for your fashion marketing plan, to increase your traffic.

1. Use Search Engine Marketing (SEM).

Search engine marketing (SEM) is an amazing tool, especially if your brand is already picked up by existing online retailers. Why? The online retailers are probably already putting much money and time into getting the brand more searchable online. Why implement your own search engine marketing? You want the sales to be coming to you, and not other retailers. Start by looking at search engine marketing as a great way to boost visibility. When you think about different keywords for search engine marketing, you’re also in a great position if your brand already has great search keywords that aren’t expensive. In clothing and fashion, if you start to bid against words that are very generalized and not too specific, you’ll spend a lot of money for a potential buyer, that isn’t necessarily going to convert. For search engine marketing, be specific and look at long tail keywords, especially if you already have online retailers that are selling your product.

2. Leverage Your Digital Press.

Obviously, everyone wants to get put into Vogue, and the latest editorial features. However, digital versus print can make a huge difference for boosting your online searches and how people get to your site. Search engine optimization is both an on-page and an off-page strategy. For on-page, be sure that your meta tags are there, and all of your product descriptions have great short descriptions on the backend; this helps Google to rank your website over time. In six to nine months you start to become more competitive for many of the keywords that are on your site (that’s on-page optimization).

Off-page optimization is geared towards all of the different places that link back to your site. With Google, having something that is being featured on another website, or links on other places is how Google determines if your brand is credible, and if your website is one people are referencing, and should visit. Focusing on getting digital media and digital press can be extremely valuable. One, for getting in front of new audiences (like a great feature from Coveteur or Vogue digital, or any of the other online magazines); it’s also great because it’s a double whammy when it comes to the off-page SEO, making your brand a bit more credible.

3. Paid Social Media Advertising

Paid social advertising should be a part of your fashion marketing plan. Placing ads on Instagram, Facebook, and Pinterest are important and valuable tools. In fact, those of you who are doing it are probably not doing it correctly, but you already know it’s a big deal, and that it’s a fantastic way to get new customers. There are two primary ways in which you can start to get new audiences to come to your site. The first is considering lookalike audiences. It’s simply Facebook saying to you, let’s see all of the people that fit this particular description of who your fans are and let’s market to them. You can simply upload a list from your newsletter, or just a list of people who’ve been purchasers from you. You can even track people who come to your website, and you can decide to have a lookalike audience of 1% of the U.S. population, that actually has the same tastes and preferences as all these different lists.

When doing lookalike audiences, make sure you’re building up your newsletter databases, make sure you’re building up your sales, and keeping and capturing all that email information. Finally, make sure that you have those great Facebook pixels that are installed. If you make sure you have all the right functionalities and tracking for Facebook, that will certainly translate into retargeting, and doing lookalike audiences for Instagram as well.

The other thing to take a look at when you’re looking at digital paid social is being able to take a look at audience insights. It’s an amazing tool that allows you to manipulate a variety of different factors, insights, interest groups and exclusions. You will be able to make up brand new audiences that are able to help segment a new profile.

4. Use Shopping Links Strategically in Your Instagram Bio.

There are many different links and APIs that you can plug in to make sure you have a seamless Instagram bio shopping link. Companies like Linktree have made it very easy to have multiple links within one link. Imagine you have a link with the prompt, click here. You click on it, and suddenly you have another link noting, shop my bestsellers, shop what’s new from the editor, shop our recent press features. These are amazing ways to get your customers to go to the landing pages they want to see most.

Your Instagram bio is one of those things that we usually don’t give too much attention to. However, your customers are actually taking a look at your Instagram profile before they even buy. Your Instagram platform is the number one way in which you can showcase your brand, your product, your lifestyle, who your other customers are, and what your recent press is. It’s very important that you spend some time crafting that important Instagram bio.

There are some amazing technologies and tools out there to help you actually optimize your links. Some use companies like Linktree, to have multiple and different links that they can feature in their bio. Other people are using different kinds of platforms to integrate so the only link they have can actually feed to multiple products and the right product pages. As you start to integrate and look at different ways of optimizing your Instagram bio, try things like Linktree, and change up that URL on a regular basis.

Most people search for brands on Instagram before they check out, and before they even take a look at your e-commerce platform. Brands like Sophie Buhai did a great job of republishing their Vogue feature, and companies like Alice + Olivia do an amazing job of linking out to their stockists. What you’ll see is their product descriptions and bio descriptions are really light, fun, on-point, and on-brand. Make sure your Instagram bio is something that is really inviting, that it’s clear and to the point, and that it’s not something that’s going to turn people off. I’ve seen some Instagram bios actually state, don’t DM me, or, please don’t write personal requests. That really turns people off from the whole engagement aspect of Instagram. A lot of brands are actually using their Instagram profiles and links to be able to capture sales through DM. Consider it a different channel.

5. Focus on Your Shoppable Instagram Profile.

If you have a Shopify account and the ability to integrate, a shoppable Instagram account is one of the best ways to close the conversion gap. That’s between posting something on your profile, getting the customer to click on it, and then getting them to purchase. In fact, if you do not have a shoppable Instagram today, you are missing out on a very high-converting platform.

Many brands are not accustomed to capturing customers through integrations. If you don’t use a Shopify platform, but you are using different kinds of APIs or other web platforms, you are going to find it to a bit more clunky, and a bit more difficult. Take a look at your online platform, and make sure it’s integrated into the latest APIs, to be able to do shoppable Instagram.

If you are doing shoppable Instagram posts, you’ll definitely want to make sure that you don’t necessarily tag those posts first. Instead, post the image, tag it with the people, the places, and all the things that are going to help make it very easy to index. Then within 24-48 hours, make that post a little bit more shoppable, by changing the tags, and making them into shopping product tags. Unfortunately, if you just have the product tagged first, your products may not be in customers’ feeds as frequently as they would be without the shoppable tag. That’s one caveat, in terms of being able to make sure that people see your posts, so they’re able to convert.

Check your business.facebook.com account and go to that top corner, click on it just over to the right, and you should see something called audience insights. Make a list of all your key competitors, make a list of all the different social profiles you think your customers like and the brands they like, and then test them.

Get more on this topic by checking out how to triple your sales using Instagram, and be sure to sign up for your free download on how to use audience insights to get better paid social advertising.