{"id":1341,"date":"2017-12-05T15:23:37","date_gmt":"2017-12-05T15:23:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.siteuptime.com\/blog\/?p=1341"},"modified":"2017-12-05T15:23:37","modified_gmt":"2017-12-05T15:23:37","slug":"5-steps-to-drive-traffic-to-your-ecommerce-site","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.siteuptime.com\/blog\/2017\/12\/05\/5-steps-to-drive-traffic-to-your-ecommerce-site\/","title":{"rendered":"5 Steps to Drive Traffic to Your Ecommerce Site"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>An online store lives and dies with by its volume of traffic.<\/p>\n<p>Stores with amazing products will still fail if no one visits the site. Those products will go to waste if no one knows about the store.<\/p>\n<p>This makes learning how to drive traffic to your online store a top priority.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s not complicated.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s all about links.<\/p>\n<h2>How to Drive Traffic to Your Online Store: Build a Network of Links<\/h2>\n<p>The key to driving traffic to a site is link-building. Inbound and outbound links are both valuable.<\/p>\n<p>Companies can use a number of platforms. YouTube, Facebook, WordPress blogs and more are avenues to build links.<\/p>\n<p>Guest-blogging is a good idea too but companies need to establish a relationship with other bloggers first.<\/p>\n<p>Not sure where to start?<\/p>\n<p>Here are five simple steps to learn how to drive traffic to an online store.<\/p>\n<h2>1. Use Blogs<\/h2>\n<p>eCommerce sites with blogs see a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.techclient.com\/blogging-statistics\/\">434% rate increase<\/a> in indexed pages.<\/p>\n<p>Those blogs also generate 67% more leads. 61% of US consumers bought a product after reading a post.<\/p>\n<p>If a customer is looking for <a href=\"http:\/\/www.grangermotors.com\/searchused.aspx\">used cars for sale in Des Moines<\/a>, their first step is likely reading blog posts for advice. Only after educating themselves will they consider visiting an eCommerce site to look for deals.<\/p>\n<p>If a customer is looking to buy movies for the holiday season, they&#8217;ll likely read blogs that review some of the newly released titles. They&#8217;ll then visit an online store after forming an opinion on what&#8217;s good, based on what they&#8217;ve read.<\/p>\n<p>See how effective blogs help in driving traffic and conversions for a site?<\/p>\n<p>While there are free blogging tools, it is better to invest more to get the most out of blogging. Here are several expenses a blog may incur:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Hosting services<\/li>\n<li>Uptime management<\/li>\n<li>Plug-ins<\/li>\n<li>Themes<\/li>\n<li>Domain costs<\/li>\n<li>Salary for designers and blog writers<\/li>\n<li>Additional coding<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Depending on a company&#8217;s needs, blogging costs can range from $250 to $20,000.<\/p>\n<h2>2. Email Marketing<\/h2>\n<p>Email marketing is one of the oldest but still most effective ways of driving traffic to a site.<\/p>\n<p>Companies that collect visitor information, such as their email, can send newsletters to their advantage.<\/p>\n<p>Newsletter recipients are targeted consumers. They&#8217;ve already shown interest by visiting and registering to the site.<\/p>\n<p>Now a company only has to promote specific products or deals to those targets to gain conversions.<\/p>\n<p>A visitor might not purchase anything until they learn about limited discount deals and other promos. With efficient email marketing, a company can inform that consumer about those deals.<\/p>\n<p>If you avail of <a href=\"https:\/\/siteuptime.com\/services.php\">downtime managing services<\/a>, you can also notify loyal customers when your site won&#8217;t be available. This will reduce customer disappointment.<\/p>\n<p>There are other benefits to email marketing, such as:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>It&#8217;s easy to share<\/li>\n<li>It increases brand awareness<\/li>\n<li>The metrics are easy to measure<\/li>\n<li>It&#8217;s cost-effective<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>If a site is running on a CMS like WordPress, there are plug-ins that help establish an email marketing campaign.<\/p>\n<h2>3. Social Media<\/h2>\n<p>There are over 2.789 billion <a href=\"https:\/\/www.smartinsights.com\/social-media-marketing\/social-media-strategy\/new-global-social-media-research\/\">social media users<\/a>. Facebook remains the largest social media to date but Twitter and Instagram quickly follow.<\/p>\n<p>There are also video platforms with social media elements like YouTube and Twitch.<\/p>\n<p>In short, there are a lot of people on social media.<\/p>\n<p>Companies do take advantage of these numbers. By the end of 2017, 70.7% of US companies will <a href=\"https:\/\/www.emarketer.com\/Article\/Number-of-Companies-Using-Instagram-Nearly-Double-Next-Year\/1013122\">use Instagram<\/a> as a marketing platform.<\/p>\n<p>People spend more on brands they trust. Social media sites allow a company to build a repertoire with consumers.<\/p>\n<p>It is also advisable to use social media platforms for SEO purposes. Occasional posts linking to new pages or products will help index a site&#8217;s pages. It will also promote those products to followers.<\/p>\n<h2>4. Reach Out to Social Media Celebrities<\/h2>\n<p>Some of them are popular celebrities with a lot of followers.<\/p>\n<p>A company can send products to these celebrities and ask them to endorse their shop. This is a recommended way on how to drive traffic to your online store.<\/p>\n<p>Their followers already trust those celebrities and that trust carries over to endorsed products or services.<\/p>\n<p>This style of building relationships and followers is mostly popular on Instagram and YouTube.<\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s a real example to show how this works:<\/p>\n<p>Gaming companies like Nintendo send free copies of their new games to YouTube personalities. These copies are sent days or weeks before the game&#8217;s official launch.<\/p>\n<p>The YouTube personality will make a video reviewing the product.<\/p>\n<p>Video reviews will showcase all the good and bad aspects of the product. The viewers will then base their decisions to purchase that product on what they saw.<\/p>\n<h2>5. Don&#8217;t Forget Basic SEO<\/h2>\n<p>Search Engine Optimization is one of the more important steps but it is also one of the most forgotten ones.<\/p>\n<p>Even if a company is running their site on CMS tools like WordPress, they have to invest in SEO tools to keep their pages indexed.<\/p>\n<p>A company has to work on fixing their title and meta descriptions. It&#8217;s important to not forget doing keyword research and sprinkle them as needed through each page.<\/p>\n<p>This step includes managing inbound and outbound links too. Make sure none of the links are dead or they don&#8217;t lead to inactive pages.<\/p>\n<p>Outsourcing to an SEO company can be expensive but it pays off in the long run. Experts can analyze a website&#8217;s SEO metrics and determine where the company needs to improve.<\/p>\n<p>While costly, the traffic improvement will make up for it.<\/p>\n<h2>One Last Thing: Site Downtime Management<\/h2>\n<p>Learning how to drive traffic to your online store is only half of the equation.<\/p>\n<p>The other half is about turning those visits into conversions.<\/p>\n<p>You don&#8217;t want visitors to window-shop. You want them to buy something.<\/p>\n<p>Those visits are meaningless if the site is down. Even the most active sites have weekly downtime periods.<\/p>\n<p>Customers won&#8217;t return to an online store if they always find it offline for downtime management.<\/p>\n<p>Now it&#8217;s possible to know when a site is down and to know this before customers do. It&#8217;s now possible to plan ahead and adjust accordingly.<\/p>\n<p>Don&#8217;t wait. Valuable traffic could diminish due to mismanaging downtime.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/siteuptime.com\/contact.php\">Contact us<\/a> to start managing downtime.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Looking for more ways to get customers on your website? Here are 5 simple steps to learn how to drive traffic to your online store.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":1342,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[106],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v15.3 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>5 Steps to Drive Traffic to Your Ecommerce Site | SiteUptime Blog<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Looking for more ways to get customers on your website? Here are 5 simple steps to learn how to drive traffic to your online store.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, nofollow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.siteuptime.com\/blog\/2017\/12\/05\/5-steps-to-drive-traffic-to-your-ecommerce-site\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"5 Steps to Drive Traffic to Your Ecommerce Site | SiteUptime Blog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Looking for more ways to get customers on your website? Here are 5 simple steps to learn how to drive traffic to your online store.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.siteuptime.com\/blog\/2017\/12\/05\/5-steps-to-drive-traffic-to-your-ecommerce-site\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"SiteUptime Blog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2017-12-05T15:23:37+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.siteuptime.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/AdobeStock_77990058-1.jpeg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"2000\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"1333\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\">\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Site Uptime Tips, Tricks, and Hacks\">\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\">\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"4 minutes\">\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Organization\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.siteuptime.com\/blog\/#organization\",\"name\":\"Site Uptime\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.siteuptime.com\/blog\/\",\"sameAs\":[],\"logo\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.siteuptime.com\/blog\/#logo\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.siteuptime.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/logo.png\",\"width\":268,\"height\":67,\"caption\":\"Site Uptime\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.siteuptime.com\/blog\/#logo\"}},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.siteuptime.com\/blog\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.siteuptime.com\/blog\/\",\"name\":\"SiteUptime Blog\",\"description\":\"Website Monitoring\",\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.siteuptime.com\/blog\/#organization\"},\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":\"https:\/\/www.siteuptime.com\/blog\/?s={search_term_string}\",\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.siteuptime.com\/blog\/2017\/12\/05\/5-steps-to-drive-traffic-to-your-ecommerce-site\/#primaryimage\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.siteuptime.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/AdobeStock_77990058-1.jpeg\",\"width\":2000,\"height\":1333,\"caption\":\"adobestock 77990058\"},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.siteuptime.com\/blog\/2017\/12\/05\/5-steps-to-drive-traffic-to-your-ecommerce-site\/#webpage\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.siteuptime.com\/blog\/2017\/12\/05\/5-steps-to-drive-traffic-to-your-ecommerce-site\/\",\"name\":\"5 Steps to Drive Traffic to Your Ecommerce Site | SiteUptime Blog\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.siteuptime.com\/blog\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.siteuptime.com\/blog\/2017\/12\/05\/5-steps-to-drive-traffic-to-your-ecommerce-site\/#primaryimage\"},\"datePublished\":\"2017-12-05T15:23:37+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2017-12-05T15:23:37+00:00\",\"description\":\"Looking for more ways to get customers on your website? Here are 5 simple steps to learn how to drive traffic to your online store.\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.siteuptime.com\/blog\/2017\/12\/05\/5-steps-to-drive-traffic-to-your-ecommerce-site\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.siteuptime.com\/blog\/2017\/12\/05\/5-steps-to-drive-traffic-to-your-ecommerce-site\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.siteuptime.com\/blog\/2017\/12\/05\/5-steps-to-drive-traffic-to-your-ecommerce-site\/#webpage\"},\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.siteuptime.com\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/0c5da25d1e73b52a001cde949f064a84\"},\"headline\":\"5 Steps to Drive Traffic to Your Ecommerce Site\",\"datePublished\":\"2017-12-05T15:23:37+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2017-12-05T15:23:37+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.siteuptime.com\/blog\/2017\/12\/05\/5-steps-to-drive-traffic-to-your-ecommerce-site\/#webpage\"},\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.siteuptime.com\/blog\/#organization\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.siteuptime.com\/blog\/2017\/12\/05\/5-steps-to-drive-traffic-to-your-ecommerce-site\/#primaryimage\"},\"articleSection\":\"Website Tips and Tricks\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.siteuptime.com\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/0c5da25d1e73b52a001cde949f064a84\",\"name\":\"Site Uptime Tips, Tricks, and Hacks\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.siteuptime.com\/blog\/#personlogo\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/a9225861cfb200610ac9071a40b5dc27?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"caption\":\"Site Uptime Tips, Tricks, and Hacks\"}}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.siteuptime.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1341"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.siteuptime.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.siteuptime.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.siteuptime.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.siteuptime.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1341"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.siteuptime.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1341\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1343,"href":"https:\/\/www.siteuptime.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1341\/revisions\/1343"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.siteuptime.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1342"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.siteuptime.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1341"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.siteuptime.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1341"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.siteuptime.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1341"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}