“If you build it, they will come”. Remember that iconic line from Field of Dreams. No disrespect to W. P. Kinsella but he was clearly not talking about a web store. When you’re speaking about a new web store, or any web site for that matter, a better phrase would be, “If you market it, they will come.”
Don’t get me wrong. Having a great web store that’s easy to navigate, displays your products compellingly, adapts properly to mobile devices, and has a clean checkout process with no surprises (read “hidden costs”) is critically important. In fact, those are table stakes. If you don’t have at least that, you’re not even in the game. But just building it does not mean customers will find it. You need to drive traffic to your fabulous new site.
So how do you drive traffic to a new web store?
Like any marketing activity it’s a combination of art and science. Thankfully, measuring marketing activity effectiveness on the web is far more science than traditional marketing mediums. With tools like Google Analytics and other services you can get some very good data about what works and what doesn’t, and much quicker than traditional marketing.
Let’s take a look at some of the tools at your disposal.
Drive Traffic
Tell Your Current Customers
If you’ve been in business a while you likely have a list of repeat customers. Tell them about your new web store. Encourage them to use it. Provide an incentive for them to use it. Have your staff give them a guided tour to encourage adoption. Seems obvious but it’s surprising how many people miss this simple step.
Presumably one reason you built the web store was to reduce your administrative overhead to process orders. If you can drive much of your current business to the site you will accomplish that. Get the easy stuff right and the rest will follow, with some effort.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
SEO can be a bit tricky. There are consultants and firms out there that do nothing but SEO for their customers. If you have the inclination, you can learn the basics and do your own successfully. One challenge is that the rules seem to change on a fairly frequent basis. If you’re going to do it yourself you’ll want to focus on what Google looks for on a web site to allow it to rank organically (not a paid listing).
A while ago I stumbled on this guide written by Rand Fishkin and the Moz staff. It’s a very comprehensive guide for newcomers to the SEO game. If you do nothing else, read this guide.
There are a lot of resources out there that can help. Here are a few blogs and web sites that are a wealth of information, not necessarily just SEO.
- https://bootstrappingecommerce.com/
- https://www.ecommerce-nation.com/
- https://www.practicalecommerce.com/
- https://searchengineland.com/
- https://moz.com/blog
Blog
Speaking of blogs, one thing that Google likes a lot is fresh, relevant content. One of the best ways to get that on your site is to have a blog. Writing a blog may seem a daunting task if you’ve never done it. Don’t stress about it. Start small and grow it as you become more comfortable with it.
Once again you can find lots of resources on the web to help. Check out this video from Neil Patel about how to develop a blogging process to make it easier for you. Neil is an accomplished online marketing guy. He knows a thing or two about SEO.
Keywords
Words typed into a search box. That’s where it starts. What are those words is the big question. Think of your own online shopping experience or just searching for something on the Internet. What words do you use to find what you’re looking for? What words can you imagine that your future customers would use to find your products or services?
While it’s great to have a lot of traffic on your site, it’s far preferable to have the right traffic. Visitors who are most likely to buy what you have to offer. Create a list of search words and phrases. Test them on the major search engines to see what results you get. Are there ads displayed using those search terms? That will give you some indication of how effective they are and how difficult it may be to get ranked with those key words. Chapter 5 in the above mentioned guide discusses this in detail.
There’s a lot more to SEO than what I’ve covered here. Do a bit of research with the resources I mention above, or on your own. The effort will pay off.
Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
There’s a lot that can be classified as SEM. Pay-per-click (PPC), search engine advertising, sponsored listing to name a few. You can incorporate some or all of these tools to get your site to the top of the list when folks search for what you have to offer.
Like SEO, if you’re new to the game a bit of education will help you determine which tactics are right for you. And guess what. The Internet has lots of resources to help. Take for example this article by Econsultancy. The article discusses the different options and is written specifically for beginners. As such, it may be a good starting point for you.
Social Media
Is it a curse or is it a blessing? Facebook has 1.47 billion active daily users. Instagram, YouTube, Snapchat, Twitter and many other social media channels have scores of people, your customers and potential customers, using them every day. Whether you believe this is a good thing or a bad thing, clearly it is a medium that you can’t ignore to get your message out there and drive traffic to your web site and business.
It used to be enough to simply be present on social media. Not anymore. You need a thoughtful strategy and to be selective about the channels you engage with. Here’s a great article by sproutsocial that talks about who’s using which channels so you can better target your customers where they’re most likely to be. It also discusses how to measure the effectiveness of your efforts.
So as those billions of people while away the hours watching cute kitten videos or seeing if they’re smarter than 90% of the people who can’t answer this ridiculously easy quiz, they may as well be doing something useful, like buying your stuff.
Is it Working?
The one true measure of whether you efforts are working is (drumroll) increased sales. Big surprise. I’m not just talking about increased online sales. I’m talking about overall sales. It’s quite common for customers to do their research online but to buy in store. Some folks just need to touch it to be completely confident in their purchase. And that’s OK. As long as they buy. The job of your web site and your marketing to drive traffic to your web site is to end up with a paying customer. As long as you have a physical location, it is of little importance if you had to ship the goods or deliver them in store.
So that’s the ultimate measure. But how do you ensure that your marketing efforts are effective? One word. Google Analytics. OK that’s two words.
Google Analytics will provide a wealth of information about your web site’s traffic and what marketing activities are driving traffic to it. Like SEO, analytics can be a bit of a black art so understanding the basics will go a long way to helping you get the most from it. Again, there are consultants and firms out there that do nothing but analytics for their customers, so if you’re not inclined to learn it, there’s help out there.
If you are one of those do-it-yourself types, ask and the Internet will provide. The good folks at Website Planet published this beginner’s guide that will be a great starting point.
Conclusion
So what have we learned today?
- An awesome web store is no guarantee of increased sales.
- You must drive traffic to your site.
- The web is full of resources to help you learn how to drive traffic.
- People spend way too much time on social media.
If you’ve got the time, you may be able do much of this on your own and learn as you go. You don’t have to spend a lot of money to get results, but it will take time.
If you don’t have the time nor the inclination to get up to speed on all of this, that’s when you call in the pros. All of the blog posts and articles referenced above come from people and companies that do this for a living. Engaging with experts will get you results faster, at a cost.
So either you spend the time or you spend the money. Either way can work for you.