Every new online store needs a traffic boost. Every new visitor may become a potential customer. The possibilities of sales growth is directly related to the increase in your Shopiko store visits. How can you increase the traffic to your website? We offer several ideas to achieve better results.
1. Create your own blog
It’s important to have a blog along with the store you have created. If you are planning that step, or you already have a blog, it is now important to generate quality content, that would be helpful to your clients. The articles you are writing may relate to products and services, to the features and advantages of what you offer; they may be about new trends, new items, etc. For example, if you are selling cosmetics, write an article with a title “5 tips for choosing the right facial cream”. If you are selling male accessories, create articles about the current trends and useful tips on how to wear and combine them, such as “Which are the accessories every man loves?”, etc.
It is important for the publications to have some added value and to provide information that is important to your customers. Don’t forget that the success in e-commerce doesn’t mean just more sales, but also being in help to your clients. That may be achieved by helping your target audience find solutions to everyday problems.
We started with creating the blog and that is no accident. Content is one of the key factors in promotion and indexing a website. It helps develop your store, improves your positions in search engines like Google, makes your store recognizable and increases traffic.
2. Improve your store’s SEO
In order to improve the SEO of your Shopiko store, you may, for example, enable the SEO module from the Add-ons menu. In addition to the benefits provided by this add-on, all Shopiko stores give structured content data, they have an XML sitemap, as well as the ability to add canonical tags (an attribute that helps with duplicate content), a standalone mobile version, and responsive designs.
But what do you need to do?
- Research keywords
Make a list of the most popular keywords in your niche. Check each keyword in Google, to see what additional suggestions you will get. Expand the list with long tail phrases that are also less competitive. Include these words and phrases in the articles you are writing.
- Product descriptions, internal pages content, URL addresses
Don’t underestimate the product descriptions. Include everything that might be important to your customers. Include also a detailed description for each category page. Add meta titles and descriptions for each product, page and category. Check the URL addresses of the store. They need to be detailed and related to the name of the product.
- Verify your store in Google Search Console and add an XML sitemap
This will help you make the store accessible for Google and Google will return the favor. 🙂 Here’s briefly how to add your store to Google Search Console:
- Log into Google Search Console.
- Click on the red button “Add a property” and type the URL address of your store.
- One of the ways to verify the store is to click on the Alternative methods tab -> HTML marker.
- The code generated when selecting HTML marker in Google Search Console needs to be added to the section under
Developer menu (in Shopiko).
Afterwards, click Save.
- After placing the code, confirm the verification.
- After successful verification, return to the home page of Google Search Console. Click the name of the store. On the right you will see a field named Sitemap.
Click on it, and on the web page that will open, click the red button Add/Test Sitemap.
On that page, indicate the path to your store’s sitemap and click “Send”. The address of your Shopiko store sitemap is http://yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml
- Build up partnerships and relevant inbound links to your store
For example: you are selling ladies’ backpacks and handbags and have written an article about the trends for spring/summer 2017. After that you discover popular fashion blogs and negotiate mutual partnership with them. You include a link to their website in your article and they include a link to an article in your blog. That way you get backlinks in websites with relevant content.
- Include internal links in the articles from your blog.
They can be targeted at products from the store that are related to the article topic, or at other suitable publications from the blog.
3. Be active in social media
- Which are the most suitable social networks for an online store?
That depends on your audience. What is your audience? Which social networks does it use? How can you reach it? Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, Snapchat … the list goes on. Your choice depends on your business and the target group you want to reach. Be consistent in the maintenance and development of your profiles and pages. Write when you have something to share.
The frequency of publications in social media depends on the nature of your business and the products. But above all, don’t forget your one and only goal – to be helpful to customers. Experiment with the time of the day when you post in social media. That way you will find out in which days and hours your audience is most active and your publications would reach a greater portion of it.
Here are some tips to help you choose the right time to post on Facebook:
- Go to your business Facebook page. Click on the “Insights” button > and select Posts from the left menu.
- You’ll see two tabs – “When your fans are online” и “Post Types”. The first one, “When your fans are online”, will give you information on a daily basis – when is the biggest portion of your fans online. In the second tab, “Post Types”, you will see the types of posts in your website that reach the largest portion of your fans, as well as what posts do your fans interact the most with.
- Take a look at the “All Posts Published” section. There you will see all the posts you publish on your page and their statistics. Explore them and analyze what type of content is most suitable for your audience and causes the most interaction.
- Conduct an experiment based on the analysis of when your fans are online. Determine the rush and non-rush hours for each day of the week. For a period of two weeks, post content in each day of the week, divided between the rush and non-rush hours. After that make another analysis and see when you get a higher “Reach”. Chances are you might be surprised to find out you score better in non-rush hours.
- Promote the blog content in those hours
Upload photos with caption or posts, in which you share interesting information, related to your business or products.
Tip: When publishing links to articles, products, etc. on Facebook, it is possible that sometimes your image might not be visualized properly. In this case use Facebook Debugger :
- Paste the link and click “Debug”.
- If the content hasn’t been shared previously on Facebook, you will see this message: “This URL hasn’t been shared on Facebook before.” and the button “Fetch new information“. Click on it.
- In the page that will load, you’ll see a “Scrape Again” button. Click on it and if all works properly, in the “Link Preview” section you will see how your new post will look, with the photo, the title and the description. That’s it. Now you can post the link on Facebook.
… One more thing: Our advice is to post .PNG format images to your Facebook page.
- Don’t underestimate the photos you are publishing
You have the possibility to both attract and lose many visitors and potential customers, if you underestimate the images. We advice you not to focus on images of pets, hot beverages, foods and others like that, if they are not related directly to your business. Yes, they can generate a few more likes and shares, but they don’t create trust, don’t build image and don’t make your product more recognizable.
That is why our advice for you is to adopt a serious and responsible attitude towards the content you publish on social media. Give your fans and followers valuable information. Also, think about the idea of including GIF animations in the plan about your social media content.
4. Email marketing
Use the opportunities of email marketing. We offer you the following two ideas:
- Add a subscription option to your blog posts.
You may have a direct subscription form or you may offer a BONUS material, promo code or another gift, if a visitor to your blog subscribes to the newsletter.
- Have a pre-launch campaign for a new product.
Reveal partial information about the product and give everyone interested the opportunity to subscribe and be the first to learn more about it.
Let’s say you will be selling gifts for men. In that case the text in the email subscription form might be: Coming soon, one of the most impressive gifts for men, that will certainly spike your interest! Subscribe now to be the first to know and get a special PROMO offer!
After you have collected the lists of potential clients, all that is left is to use them effectively. You may send a newsletter once a week, once or twice a month or as often as you’d think is proper. Include information, related to new articles, the most popular posts for the last month, current promo offers, information about new products, etc.
3 more quick tips:
5. Submit the products you are selling to the most popular price comparison websites.
6. Test the capabilities of the affiliate marketing platforms in your country.
7. Join Facebook groups that are relevant to your business. Take part in the active discussions, help the other members there with information. If an article from your blog might be useful to the others as well, publish it in the group.
We guarantee that applying each of these 7 tips will positively affect the traffic to your online store. However, don’t expect miracles over night. Each of those tips is time consuming and requires perseverance on your behalf. The development of every new online store requires consistent actions and hard work. We wish you good luck, new clients and more and more sales!
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