E-commerce is experiencing steady, sustained growth. It went from pulling in over $468 billion in 2017 to over $547 billion in 2019.
And by 2023, total e-commerce sales are expected to reach more than $740 billion.
Shoppers are spending a considerable amount of money on their orders.
As of 2019, it was $118.66 per order on desktops, $90.13 on tablets, and $77.71 on smartphones.
My point here is that e-commerce is growing, and shoppers are willing to shell out big money for the products they love.
But to get your piece of the action, you need powerful marketing strategies to drive quality traffic to your store.
Often this means thinking outside of the box and implementing techniques your competitors overlook.
And that’s what I’m going to focus on here—creative ways to quickly increase e-commerce traffic. Ones customers can’t resist.
With that said, here’s a list of my favorite tactics at the moment that can deliver big results.
1. Add an Instagram Gallery
As of March 2019, Instagram had one billion users, with more than half of them using the platform every day.
People love it for a lot of different reasons.
But one of the biggest is the crisp, clean, professional images you find on Instagram.
Most of the pictures look great, and by featuring the products you sell on Instagram, you can pique the interest of many shoppers and compel them to browse your selection.
Of course, you can simply feature products on your Instagram account.
But you can take it one step further and use an even more potent strategy, which involves integrating an Instagram gallery into your e-commerce store.
Here’s an example.
Glow Fashion Boutique is a women’s clothing and accessories brand that sells dresses, jumpsuits, rompers, and more.
A big part of how they generate leads and attract customers is through their Instagram account, which currently has 12.2k followers.
Check out what their Instagram page looks like right now.
It looks great, and they feature many of the products they sell.
Now check out this section on their e-commerce store.
It displays the content from their Instagram page in a neatly organized layout.
And for some products, like this set of a skirt, sweater, boots, and hat, shoppers can click through and conveniently make a purchase.
If they wanted the mini skirt, they could buy it.
Or if they were interested in the sweater, they can purchase that as well.
Integrating a gallery like this is an excellent way to increase e-commerce traffic from Instagram and simplifies the purchasing process for shoppers.
So if Instagram is your bread and butter, this is a technique to experiment with.
If you run your store on Shopify, Shop Instagram & UGC is the perfect plugin to use.
It offers a bunch of cool features like tagging products on Instagram photos and allowing shoppers to add items to their cart and buying them from Instagram images on your site without additional searching.
I also like that it’s so user-friendly and doesn’t take a lot of technical know-how to figure out.
Or, if you use Magento, they have something similar with the Instagram Feed Widget.
2. Optimize Product Pictures for Google Images
I probably don’t need to tell you how important it is to have a strong presence on search.
“Ninety-three percent of online experiences begin with a search engine,” and you can bet that this is one of the best ways to reach e-commerce customers.
While most brands invest a ton of time and money into optimizing their store for Google Search, many fail to optimize for Google Images fully.
And that’s a huge mistake considering 34 percent of all Google results come from Google Images.
That’s over a third!
Not only does appearing in Google Image results offer a strong visual element that can motivate users to click, but the top also ranked images usually appear above-the-fold in prominent positions.
For example, here’s the first thing shoppers see when searching for “red high heeled shoes.”
These are sponsored ads, and the first thing users see.
But look at what appears after scrolling just beneath the ads.
The top results are all from Google Images and come before any other content.
When someone clicks on a product like this one from women’s shoe company Lulu’s, they’re taken to the Google Image results and can then click directly over to the e-commerce product page.
It’s all very seamless.
So it’s easy to see how big of an impact optimizing your product pages for Google Images can have.
Considering there are 3.8 million searches performed on Google every minute, this is a highly effective way to get your e-commerce products in front of a massive audience.
And because shoppers see a high-quality image, it increases their odds of clicking, which can result in a steady stream of e-commerce traffic coming your way.
Now there’s quite a bit that goes into the image optimization process, and you can find the full details on this post from Neil Patel.
But here are some of the key strategies:
- Use unique, high-quality images
- Compress images to reduce storage size
- Use highly relevant keywords for the image file name
- Include keywords in the alt-text
By following these techniques and properly optimizing the images you use, you should be able to pull in a good chunk of traffic from Google Images and outrank many of your competitors.
And in the long run, this can have a huge impact on your e-commerce sales.
3. Collaborate with Influencers
Influencer marketing is a technique that’s really caught on in recent years.
If you’re not completely familiar with the concept, “Influencer marketing is when companies partner with influencers to increase brand awareness or conversions among a specific target audience,” according to BigCommerce.
And the vast majority of brands that use it are quite happy with their results.
In fact, “89 percent say ROI from influencer marketing is comparable to or better than other marketing channels.”
So it’s certainly a strategy worth considering, and here’s an example of one particular e-commerce brand who’s pulled it off brilliantly.
ShopStyle is a digital shopping platform that offers fashion items like apparel, shoes, bags, and so on.
One way they’ve leveraged influencer marketing is by partnering with style and beauty blogger Ellen V Lora who has a legitimate Instagram following with 455k followers currently.
She posts frequently, and her content receives quite a bit of engagement.
Lora is also the founder of PURE EVL, where she blogs about fashion and models the clothing she loves.
ShopStyle struck up a key partnership with Lora by featuring her on their site in one of their recent gift guides.
More specifically, they include a video of Lora modeling multiple products from Finish Line like the Women’s Nike Air Crop Top Crew Sweatshirt.
All of the items featured in the video are listed directly below the video, so customers can conveniently find them and check them out in further detail.
I can’t think of a much better way to show off products and leverage social proof.
It’s a great move by ShopStyle and fully capitalizes on the star power of a major fashion influencer like Ellen V Lora.
And when visitors browse her site, she gives multiple shoutouts to ShopStyle.
Not only does this help ShopStyle bring in way more e-commerce traffic, Lora gives them her stamp of approval, which helps boost their brand equity and likely has a positive impact on their overall conversion rate.
So this is a good example of how you can collaborate with influencers to increase e-commerce traffic, while at the same time elevating your reputation.
4. Hold a Giveaway
Who doesn’t like something for free?
I know I do.
Holding a giveaway where you pass out free products to a certain number of participants is another effective way to quickly increase e-commerce traffic and can also be instrumental in building deeper relationships with your audience.
Here’s an example of this tactic in action.
Beardbrand is a company that sells men’s beard oils and grooming accessories.
And they’ve developed quite a reputation for hosting awesome giveaways where they pass out their products for free in exchange for participating.
Back in the summer of 2015, they had the Father’s Day Giveaway of their exclusive beard oil at the time called Black Marble.
Ten readers were selected at random to win a bottle.
To ensure people spread the word, they asked participants to upload a photo of themselves with their beards and kids to Instagram using the hashtag #beardbrandDADs.
And it created quite a buzz with more than 2,700 people participating.
The giveaway was a huge hit, and I could only imagine that it helped them generate a ton of leads as well as greatly increase their brand exposure.
That’s why I think this example from Beardbrand is such a great formula and one that any e-commerce store can implement.
Simply choose a product to give away, and ask people to use a certain hashtag on social media to enter.
I recommend starting with Instagram and Facebook, but other networks could work as well. Then hand out a free product to random winners.
It’s a fun way to get the word out and can potentially result in a massive surge in traffic overnight.
On top of that, it can do wonders for your social media following.
5. Ask Your Most Loyal Customers for Reviews
Customer reviews can make or break you.
“Ninety percent of respondents who recalled reading online reviews claimed that positive reviews influenced buying decisions, while 86 percent said buying decisions were influenced by negative online reviews.”
Needless to say, it’s beneficial to have as many positive reviews about your e-commerce store as possible.
And while you don’t want to resort to schemey techniques where you try attempt to control everything that’s said about you, it certainly doesn’t hurt to make an effort to generate positive reviews.
So that’s what I want to talk about for my final point—asking your most loyal customers to review your products.
Here’s the thing.
Only a small percentage of customers take the time to leave a review, even if they’re highly satisfied.
However, the vast majority of consumers (70 percent) are willing to do so if asked.
So often, it just takes a little nudging.
That’s why I recommend making it a point to reach out to your most loyal customers and ask them to leave a review.
For instance, you might email repeat customers because buying multiple times usually indicates a certain level of satisfaction.
Or you might offer a discount on your website for customers who take the time to leave you a review.
That’s what hair extension brand Adore Her Virgin Hair does where they offer 20 percent off the next order.
Or you could always research notable YouTubers and ask them to review your product.
Just look at the YouTube results that pop up for customizable deodorant brand Myro.
They have multiple reviews for their products, which allows them to bring in a good amount of traffic from both YouTube and Google.
So as you can see, there are several different ways to go about this.
The bottom line is that positive customer reviews are as good as gold and can help you increase e-commerce traffic and strengthen your reputation at the same time.
Conclusion
One of the main things I love about digital marketing is that it levels the playing field between major brands and smaller ones.
Often you don’t need a massive budget to bring in a lot of traffic.
I’ve seen many small brands go from being completely obscure to well known by thinking outside the box.
Dollar Shave Club’s viral success from its YouTube ad back in 2012 is a prime example.
If you’re creative enough and tap into the right resources, you can quickly increase e-commerce traffic and consistently generate quality leads.
The strategies mentioned here are some of my favorites and will hopefully inspire you to get started.
