Best eCommerce Traffic Sources to Boost Sales In 2023
Updated on December 1, 2022 in Ecommerce by Alifiya Mustafa
Traffic is essential to generate better sales as each visitor on your website is an opportunity for your eCommerce business. The more traffic you have, the higher the chances you have for the conversion rate.
But, there is a fact that every eCommerce business needs to understand – Not all your visitors are your potential customers. Your website will experience a lot of irrelevant traffic that counts as zero for the benefit of your business.
It is very important that you engage with a relevant audience who is interested in what you are selling and willing to make a purchase.
A lot of beginners classify the eCommerce traffic sources into two basic terms – Free traffic and paid traffic. This is kind of true and necessary to understand. But, there are a lot of eCommerce traffic sources through which you can unveil the details of these kinds and understand how to utilize both ways.
Best eCommerce traffic sources for your eCommerce business
1. Facebook Advertising
Facebook is that student of your class with whom everyone is friends, everybody likes Facebook. There are 2.45 billion users currently in the world.
The reason why Facebook ads are recommended in the first place in eCommerce traffic sources is that it is easy and budget-friendly. You can start advertising on Facebook with a budget as low as $5.
You must be thinking that you were looking for something that is free in the beginning but trust me, Facebook can earn you a good fortune against what you invest.
When you go over your Ads account on Facebook, it allows you to choose and customize what you want your ads to do. If you choose your ads to be used for brand awareness, then Facebook is going to display them to as many people as possible.
If you only want your ads to improve engagement, then Facebook is going to show your ads to the people who are likely to visit the websites that belong to your niche. And, if your aim is to increase conversion, then Facebook will catch the relevant audience who is actively looking for the kind of products you deal with and who will be likely to make a purchase.
Here, you are not required to put any extra effort into researching and finding who could be interested in your products as Facebook does the job for you – EVERYDAY.
2. Search Engine Optimization (Google & Bing)
SEO is a geek in the world of eCommerce traffic sources. It works on the principles, you need to be more attentive and careful while working with it, and put a little more effort of your own. But it is all bearable as it is FREE. Now, everybody likes free, and appearing at the top of the organic search could be the biggest achievement for your eCommerce business.
The link of the website that appears at the top of the organic results is intended to earn its 70% sales through it.
You must be thinking by now, how does one get to appear at the top while others don’t? And which eCommerce traffic sources can help you become the ONE?
Keywords are an obvious answer. Keywords are the most used words that the users use in order to search for something over the search engine. Google wants you to add the keywords everywhere. In your title, in your description, in your content, in your meta descriptions – everywhere.
You can take the help of Google trends and Keywordtool to learn about what is trending and what are the most searched keywords among people related to your niche.
This could be a tedious task but is achievable with practice. However, it is not that easy to manipulate Google easily as adding a lot of keywords can become handy.
Keywords are not the only criteria that Google uses to pick the most relevant website. The actual secret lies in the BACKLINKS.
Backlinks are the direct links to your websites that are mentioned by other website owners and bloggers. When your link appears in someone else’s content, then Google identifies your website as being genuine and reliable as other valid sources refer to your name. This simply earns the goodwill of your website in the eyes of Google.
Getting such recognition can be very hard, and the only thing you can do about it is to write quality content, have an easy-loading website, add facts, data, and genuine phrases so that others can use your content as a reliable and useful source.
Getting backlinks by others can take a lot of time, but is worth it when you start getting your traffic for free.
By the time, I recommend working on the keywords and taking help from other budget-friendly eCommerce traffic sources to promote your business.
3. Internal Search Engines and their SEO
Some websites follow their own search engine to find and display products. They rank the products according to their criteria and can be easy for your products to appear in their organic search if you sell through their platforms.
Amazon and Etsy are the best examples of it. These websites allow you to sell your products and show the results to the customers based on what is searched in their own search bars
When you add your products to these websites, you can easily add the keywords in the title, meta description, and descriptions to increase your chances of appearing at the top.
It is a lot easier to run SEO on these websites as compared to Google.
4. Instagram Ads
Instagram easily fits into the category of ‘the most popular. With a record of 1Billion users every month, it is among the best eCommerce traffic sources.
Instagram ads can highly boost your traffic with a much relevant audience. I recommend you add your website link to your bio so that your followers can have an easy reach to it, add relevant links along with your video posts, add a call to action button to your product images. You will see a load of traffic in no time.
As per omnicoreagency – Every month, 130 million Instagram accounts click opens a shopping post to know more about products.
Though Facebook is an older and experienced member of the social media family, the zeal of Instagram affects people a lot. I say it would be better if you use high-quality images of your products while advertising them.
If your product images are dull and unattractive, there is no chance that people would be compelled to explore your website any further. Hiring a product image editing service provider can be another useful investment when it comes to attracting more traffic.
The images you get edited would not just be effective for your Instagram account, but also for all your other social media accounts as well as your own website.
Your high-quality images compliment how beautifully Instagram ads present them.
5. YouTube videos
YouTub videos are a smarter, more fun, and creative way of generating traffic making them one of the best eCommerce traffic sources. You can create videos related to your product description in detail, how to use videos, benefits, and videos of the product benefits and reviews.
This is one of those eCommerce traffic sources which are not just free but can also earn you some profits if done consistently with a minimum number of views, likes, and subscribers.
However, it could be a difficult task to generate traffic over YouTube of its own. I recommend posting videos consistently and that too of very good QUALITY. Once you have a great quality video on your channel, start working on the optimization of those, keep a check on keywords you use for your title and description, utilize annotations, and create awareness through your social media channels.
You might find it not worthy and use social media in the first place instead – but once you earn more than 10K subscribers of your own, it would lead to a brighter future of your business in terms of sales, conversion, market value, credibility, and overall growth.
The key is to be consistent and determined while working with eCommerce traffic sources.
6. Google Ads
The king of all is Google Ads. Being an option to appear in the paid results, Google Ads is a great investment option in eCommerce traffic sources.
It allows you to bid on the most used and powerful keywords that are guaranteed to be searched over Google. Whoever bids the highest gets the chance to appear in the paid search results.
Google Ads can be considered as one of the best eCommerce traffic sources as your money is worth the results. It is by far the easiest and effective way to drive targeted, high-quality traffic to your website.
You and I can clearly agree that Google ads are much more effective than Facebook ads as the users are coming to Google with the sole purpose of searching for something online so that they can learn or simply buy the product, which is not the case with Facebook.
Facebook prompts your ad, while Google directly shows you the paid result when your keywords are searched.
Google ads are basically a bidding war that requires winning with more amount of investment.
If your product is something less than what you have to bid to promote it, then it would not be a smart move to invest in that keyword. Hence, it is important that you calculate your profit ratio with what you invest in the long run.
You may want to start with free and organic eCommerce traffic sources, but the real and consistent results demand investment for higher ROI.
What to analyze after choosing the best eCommerce traffic sources?
There are a few things that you need to keep in mind once you pick any eCommerce traffic sources. I’ve found out 5 such points to think through:
1. The Stage of your Business
This is basically something to determine at the time of choosing any of the eCommerce traffic sources. If you have just begun and not taking much risk, then it is suggested to start with organic ways or invest a little amount into something that provides reasonable results with less risk, i.e Facebook ads.
But if you are at the stage where your eCommerce business is ready to jump into the competition to grow, then bidding over Google ads seems like a better idea.
Whichever way you choose, just choose it not by looking at what is working for others as every business situation is different. Understanding your business stage, your audience’s response, and the risk factor in the eCommerce traffic sources is required to be evaluated.
2. Determine your Target audience
Once you choose your eCommerce traffic sources, make sure that you have defined the class of audience whom you want to target and get the traffic.
If you deal with baby products then teenagers can’t fall under your target, where parents and grandparents of small children and babies can become your prospective customers. Same as vegetarians can not be your target audience if you deal with non-vegetarian products.
Making sure that your keywords, your ad campaigns are your target-audience-oriented is very important so that your complete online traffic-generating campaign doesn’t take the wrong direction that fails your eCommerce business.
3. Only consider the quantity that Contains Quality Traffic
It doesn’t matter how much traffic you get on your website, it all comes down to the quality of it. By quality, I mean that your traffic should consist of those visitors which are likely to convert into potential leads and sales for eCommerce.
If they came to your website without the intent of even exploring it, then those numbers do not count.
You can use Google Analytics to keep a check on your traffic. It clearly tells you how many visitors you got and for how much time. Their time can determine whether they were interested or not. It will also let you know from which source they got your link.
4. The quality of the Content you put out to Generate Traffic
A bad quality content shoos away the customers. If you have put your product images on any of the eCommerce traffic sources or your website which are dull, blurry, unattractive, then your target audience won’t consider you as an option to purchase from.
If your content that contains keywords is not relevant then there are very low chances that the search engines would recommend you.
If your YouTube videos are dark, distorted, have a poor quality of voice recording then I can guarantee that they will not stay to see even a minute of it!
Sorry, but it’s all true. The content of your quality is too important, no matter which eCommerce traffic sources you choose. The ultimate aim of any such source is to engage people, and people are very choosy when it comes to quality.
There are so many eCommerce businesses out there who are hungrier than you, consistent than you, who are putting better efforts and investing more and more into their business. So, it is better that you put a lot of time and effort into improving the quality of your content.
5. Do the math for ROI
If you choose the eCommerce traffic sources that are paid then it is a brainer to calculate the ROI. As explained above, if you are bidding on the product keyword that is costing you more than the sale of it, then there is no point in putting your money in it.
Invest only when you think that the ROI would rise up with time. You might face neutral benefits or losses on some investments, but I recommend keeping at least a one-year vision on every investment and its ROI.
Conclusion
Traffic is the most important factor in generating sales and conversion rates. With growing competition in the eCommerce industry, it has become essential to choose these best eCommerce traffic sources.
While watching out for the best eCommerce traffic sources, few have proven to be the best ways of fulfilling the purpose. You can choose between organic, paid, or the mix of both eCommerce traffic sources that suits the best for your business.
The sources listed above are the most effective for every online business in terms of engaging more customers. If your eCommerce business plan on choosing the best eCommerce traffic sources, then determining the benefits and risk factors are equally important.
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