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INSIGHTS - May 2019

4 Ways to drive traffic to your Shopify store

So, you’ve started your own Shopify store, and you’re proud of it. You spent hours getting all of your products listed and making it look just the way you want. You’re finally done, but there’s only one problem – no one is visiting your store.

Getting people to visit your store – or any website – is one of the hardest things to do on the Internet. You have a lot of competition, so you’ll need to put in some more work to get your shop off the ground. Luckily, there are a few proven methods that can start driving traffic to your Shopify store, and they don’t take long to implement.

Social Media

The first method you’ll want to explore is social media. There are a few reasons you’ll want to start here. First, it’s free. Creating an account on social media doesn’t cost anything, and you can continue to use these sites free of charge. While there are options to spend money on these sites (which we’ll get to), it’s not required, making it an ideal first option for people who just opened up a store.

The second reason is that you likely already have some connections on social media. If you have a personal Facebook, Twitter or Instagram account, for instance, you can use these to promote your new store. Your friends and family are the perfect first customers, and social media makes it easy to reach out to all of them.

Every time you post a new product in your store, share it on social media. Engage with your past customers and answer any questions they may have. Social media is a place where you can interact with previous customers and potential customers, and if you do it right, it can become one of your best marketing strategies.

Paid Social Media

As we said, it’s entirely free to promote your business on social media, not counting the time you spend. However, if you have room in your budget, you can significantly increase the impact social media has on your traffic by spending some money on these sites. For example, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram all allow you to place ads. They come with some excellent niche targeting tools so you can specifically target who you want to promote your store to. You can even set a budget so that you don’t spend more than you can afford. If you have a few extra dollars each month, it’s not a bad idea to try out one of the paid options on these sites and see what kind of results you get.

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Search Engine Optimization

Moving away from social media, the next area you’ll want to focus on is Search Engine Optimization (SEO). These days most people turn to search engines whenever they need information. As a business, you want your website to appear as high in the search results as possible when someone searches for something related to your niche or product. To do this, you need to optimize your website for search engines.

There are a few simple things you can do. First, check out the speed of your site. If your website runs slowly, search engines like Google will give you a penalty and drop you further down the search results. You can check out the speed of your website, and get some suggestions on how to improve it, by using this free tool from Google.

Next, you’ll want to focus on your keywords. Your goal is to find keywords that not only describe your site but are actively being used within search engines. For example, if your business is a bakery in New Farm, your keywords would be something like “Bakery New Farm”. It’s important that you conduct keyword research to find the best set of keywords for your business, and once you’ve found them, make sure you’re including them in the right spots. Some of the places you’ll want to add your keywords include the title of the page, subheadings, image alt tags, and hyperlinks. To learn more about keyword research and usage, you can check out this guide.

Focus on Producing Content

The last major thing you’ll want to focus on is producing new content. While your goal might be to get people to buy something from your shop, sometimes you need to get them there through other means. One of the best methods for doing this is producing regular content on your site.

For example, let’s say your shop sells custom wood engravings. With a shop like this, you could also have a blog with helpful DIY articles. So, if someone searches for “How to create a wood burning”, they are directed towards your blog article. This article then provides them with useful information, but also promotes your store. And while not everyone who visits your blog will turn into a customer, getting more people to your site is often the hardest part, so if you can win this battle, you’ll be better off in the long run.

By producing quality content you are doing a few things. First, you’re generating more avenues for people to find your site. Second, you are providing value to potential customers, which improves their opinion of you. Finally, you are giving yourself something to share on social media. If your social media posts are only about your newest products, it’s likely you won’t gain a large following. But by providing additional information, you appeal to more people, who could then turn into customers down the line.

Driving Traffic to Your Shopify Store is a Long-Term Goal

When trying to increase the traffic to your store, keep in mind that this is a long-term goal. If you work at the above strategies, over time you will start to see your efforts pay off, but don’t expect it to happen overnight. It takes time to build up a reputation and to start seeing your website near the top of the search results. But if you stick with it, you should find that your traffic numbers go up, and as a result, you start to get more sales.

To learn more, or to get some additional tips, please feel free to contact us at any time.