How to drive sales traffic to your online store | 5 ways you can boost eCommerce revenue

The world of eCommerce has been on a snowball effect since the 90s. From its early days as a dismissable “fad,” rife with public scepticism and confusion, to being a genuine disruptor to the retail landscape, and to today, where it’s essentially the norm – fine-tuned, and well established.

But while eCommerce is far more cost efficient, for both retailers and customers, and offers a greater level of convenience and choice, it’s not without its challenges. Whatever your industry, you’re likely going to be competing in shark-infested waters. You can’t rely on your geography to give you customers on the eCommerce side because from a user-perspective, where a business is based, within the same country, bears almost no impact on their ability to buy from them.

With that said, there are ways to take control and positively impact your eCommerce performance, whether your business is a big fish looking to innovate, or a minnow looking to be competitive.

Here are 5 practical ways you can boost your eCommerce revenue and drive traffic to your online store.

1. Improve your approach to SEO

To drive sales traffic to your online store, it’s essential to enhance your approach to search engine optimization (SEO). Start by conducting keyword research on whatever SEO tool you’re using to identify the terms and phrases your target audience is using. You can also use SEO tools to identify what terms and phrases your competitors are ranking for, and potentially reverse engineer some of their tactics.

You should also look to optimise your website’s meta tags, titles, and descriptions with relevant keywords to further improve its visibility in search engine results. Additionally, creating high-quality, user-focused content that incorporates these keywords can attract further traffic to your site, and allow you to link to your product pages and strategic pages.

Pro tip: Most SEO tools offer writing assistants to help ensure your writing is appropriate for your audience, and using specific keywords enough to register with search engines, giving you a quantifiable value for how SEO optimised your content is.

2. Audit your social media marketing strategy

An effective social media marketing strategy can significantly impact your eCommerce revenue. Everyone is on some form of social media, and it’s probably the second most valid space in which to focus your efforts after SEO when it comes to driving website traffic.

Thoroughly audit your current social media efforts, including both organic and paid advertising, and look at how you’re doing for interactions and engagements. Compare that with the profiles or accounts of your competitors and see what they’re doing differently that works – there could well be lessons to apply to your own approach for better results. If you’re not utilising paid social media advertising, it’s highly worth considering, as it works faster than organic social media efforts, and hits customers with far more frequency, making them more effective.

You should also evaluate the platforms you’re using and ensure they align with your target audience’s preferences. Social media is, after all, probably the most mercurial part of the internet. Whole platforms can fall in and out of vogue, so make sure you’re focusing your efforts where they can have the most impact.

Pro tip: Influencer marketing could be a great way to piggyback on someone else’s audience and have them drive visitors to your eCommerce site. Consider aligning with appropriate influencers who share your values and aesthetic, and give them trackable personal promotional codes to make their impact easy to monitor.

3. Gamify throughout the pirate metrics framework

You heard me.

Gamify throughout the pirate metrics framework.

The framework covers 5 user-behaviour metrics that help businesses focus on what’ll make the biggest gains, and gamification is the art of incorporating gaming components into real life tasks to improve user engagement.

Let’s go through each metric with an example:

• Acquisition: Online contests, such as Slot Machines or Scratch Cards, which offer a chance to win something, can incentivise users to discover your products and your relevant content. Play for the prize, discover the brand.
• Activation: Creating engaging branded games and puzzles and embedding them on your website is a great way to harness a user’s concentration, sprinkle in some pop-up content to educate and sell them on certain products, and to distribute promotional codes as an extra incentive to buy.
• Retention: You could send gamification experiences to email subscribers when they opt-in as part of a welcome email, such as a Personality Test, that will also help you learn more about their preferences, or even include a direct link to one in their email receipt.
• Referral: You could also customise intermediate screens on gamified experiences to invite customers to leave online reviews on your preferred platforms, or even create a Video Contest and invite customers to submit creative video testimonials to be entered into a prize draw.
• Revenue: If your gamification approach is on point, and everything else in your business model is working as it should, it’ll make a tangible impact on your eCommerce revenue because simply put, there’s no greater tool for increasing user engagement than gamification.

The Drimify gamification platform is filled to the brim with pre-made game engines you can customise to integrate across the pirate metrics framework. Check out our demos to see what’s possible.

4. Marketing Calendar activations

Creating a marketing calendar can help you plan and execute targeted promotional activities to drive sales traffic. Identify key dates, holidays, and events that are relevant to your industry or target audience, and create special offers, discounts, or limited-time promotions to capitalise on the excitement and boost traffic to your online store. It might also be relevant to create user-focused, highly shareable resources that put the spotlight on specific product offerings to coincide, such as gift giving guides for Christmas.

There’s potential to go above and beyond here. Does your industry have events that attract thousands of people? Does it make sense to become a brand sponsor, or a partner, and as such get a mention and a spotlight in the event’s official communications?

5. Constantly improve your site’s user experience

Driving traffic to your eCommerce store is fantastic, but never forget the key to success is in converting those visitors to customers. Window shoppers don’t move the needle when it comes to generating revenue.

A seamless and enjoyable user experience on your website is crucial for converting traffic into sales. Analyse your site’s navigation, load times, and overall functionality, and ask yourself, are we providing a smooth browsing experience? Are there any blockers to conversion? Check out your bounce rates too. If the numbers are bad, is it due to website functionality, or is the problem elsewhere? It’s an investigation.

Additionally, if it’s not already, think about crafting a mobile-first website since more and more people are shopping on their smartphones or tablets, and this habit is likely to increase as mobile devices become even more advanced and offer even more functionality.

Key takeaway

Trading in the eCommerce space offers a lot of advantages to retailers, but it also means you’re up against the best of the best – you don’t get to be a big player in your local league because by going online you’re playing on the national, perhaps even the global stage.

However, the 5 strategies listed above are actionable for a business of any size, and are easily put in place. Work through them methodically and thoroughly, and give your eCommerce site every competitive advantage you can.