The number of eCommerce stores is growing exponentially.

With increased dependence on smartphones and the internet, a good chunk of the population prefers to shop online. Hence, online retailers have to curate robust strategies to get noticed, attract people to their online stores, and convert them into customers.

Ecommerce giants can easily spend a fortune to run paid ads and generate traffic in their stores. But, what about the stores like yours that don’t have a hefty budget for ads?

Does that mean they will collapse or remain unnoticed by the customers in the sea of the eCommerce world?

No! we don’t think so.

With the online shopping arena increasing remarkably, it is the perfect time for entrepreneurs to shift to online selling from a conventional selling model, i.e. physical selling.

However, with millions of eCommerce stores present in the market, customers have many choices for purchasing products and services. It means sellers have their work cut out for them to get the attention of their prospects.

Don’t worry; you can capture the attention of your targeted audience and welcome them to your eCommerce website without draining all your budget on advertising and marketing your brand.

In today’s article, we will show you 11 strategies to increase sales and boost your website traffic without spending a penny on ads.

Sounds undoable?

Trust us, it isn’t…

1. Start Blogging

Yes, you read it right! Start blogging.

Creating and publishing content for your targeted audience is a perfect way to drive massive traffic and grow your eCommerce store.

Relax! You don’t have to conduct scientific studies or research to collect facts and figures to create a blog post. All you have to do is share your expert knowledge on hot topics of your niche with the audience. For instance, a website that sells baby items can create articles centred on parenting and taking care of a baby.

You can also create and publish a blog post on the hot-selling products of your store; for example, a store’s hot selling item is a vacuum cleaner. It can create blog posts on its features, benefits, and how to use it, etc.

Creating and publishing content on your website is a perfect way to integrate the keywords to your website and increase your website’s visibility and ranking on the search engine result pages.

Hence, come up with unique and exciting ideas to create blog posts for your targeted audience. Moreover, don’t forget to make attention-grabbing titles that compel a quick response from online visitors. Powerful titles increase the click-through rate of a website’s link.

2. Watch Your Speed

How fast is your website?

Is it speedy enough to keep up with your impatient visitors?

In the fast-paced era, websites that take longer to load are soon forgotten by users. You don’t want your website to fade away in the crowd of other websites, right? Therefore, ensure that your website’s speed is top-notch and loads within 2 seconds.

Did you know that a website can lose 50% of its visitors if it takes more than 3 seconds to load?

It means a slow-loading website can directly affect your conversions and consequently your sales and revenue.

But that’s not it. Users remember websites that take forever to load, and more than 80% will never revisit those websites. In addition, if users exit the website right after landing on it, it increases the bounce rate of a website. Google, the search engine giant, does not rank a website with a high bounce rate higher on the result pages. Thus, a slow-loading website will not only make you lose visitors but also affect your ranking.

Hence, make sure that your website loads quickly to welcome the visitors and let them explore your website. The best way to make your website load faster is by installing a Shopify theme that optimises the site’s speeds and provides an impeccable experience to your visitors

3. Optimise For Mobile Users

How many times do you check your laptops and computers during office hours?

And how many times do you check your mobile phones? Probably after every few minutes.

People have become increasingly dependent on their mobile phones. An average person checks their mobile around 150 times during the day.

Thus, it has become crucial for the eCommerce stores to have a mobile-friendly website to give the mobile users a fantastic experience on your website. If a website fails to load and function correctly on the mobile device, users will exit the website without thinking for a split second.

Websites that are not optimised for mobile devices provide a negative user experience and affect the ranking on the result pages. Google indexes the mobile-friendly sites higher on the search engine result pages as compared to the desktop sites.

Hence, make your website mobile-friendly to boost website traffic, increase your conversions, and maximise your profit.

4. Try Email Marketing

Let’s face a bitter reality! Your eCommerce store might be on your mind around the clock. However, your customers do not always think about your website and products.

To remind your existing customers about your store and make them visit the website, befriend email marketing and integrate it into your marketing campaign.

In the era of social media, email marketing sounds preposterous to many people. However, email marketing has tons of advantages over social media marketing. The lowest of all is the ability to send the promotional message directly into the customer’s inbox. Customers’ inboxes are a little less distracting than a social media feed that pulls the customer’s attention in different directions.

Moreover, email marketing allows you to segment your customers based on their interests, age, gender, buying patterns, etc. This benefit is not available in other marketing channels. Thus, encourage your current customers to subscribe to your newsletter to receive the latest updates, announcements, and exclusive discount offers.

Design highly targeted content to make your subscribers visit your website and add their favourite goods to the cart.

5. Offer Reward Program To Your Current Customers

Are you aware that 20% of your current customers generate 80% of the business’s total revenue in the future?

Okay, let’s rephrase it: 20 customers out of your 100 current customers will pay for eight out of ten products in the future.

It means that a business shouldn’t only focus on attracting new audiences but also think of strategies to keep the current customer base happy and tempt them to revisit the store frequently.

Offering reward and loyalty programs to your customers is a sure-fire way to win their loyalty and make more sales to them. Many businesses have started loyalty programs where they reward their customers with points on each transaction. Customers can redeem the points in the future or avail themselves of exclusive offers and discounts.

The customers would be happy to splurge more on their shopping sprees to earn more loyalty points which they could use in the future.

6. Simplify Your Checkout Process

Before we proceed, please answer the following question:

Which store would you prefer to shop from?

• Shop A, which has a long and tiring checkout procedure?
  Shop B, which provides a seamless checkout process?

Your answer would be Shop B because it quickly lets you checkout. Your customers would prefer the same when it comes to shopping. Online users despise websites that have long and complicated checkout procedures. People prefer online shopping because it saves their time and provides convenience. If your website’s checkout stage is lengthy, the essence of online shopping is lost. People abandon their loaded carts if the website has a lengthy checkout process.

Therefore, provide a seamless checkout procedure to your customers to provide them with a good reason to revisit your website and indulge in retail therapy.

Keep your checkout forms concise and to the point. Do not ask unnecessary or personal questions. Provide multiple payment channels for your customers to select from. In addition, display a progress bar to let the customer know how close he is to check out from the website.

7. Create Urgency

Why would customers come to your website and purchase something now when they can do it two days, weeks, months, or even years later?

A customer will delay their purchase when they are not given any limited time. However, if the brands fix a time for availing of offering or enjoying the sale, customers would come running in. Thus, another successful tactic to boost website traffic and increase your eCommerce sales is to create urgency at your eCommerce store.

You can easily do this by holding a sale, offering limited-time discounts and deals, or providing free shipping for a few days. By restricting the time and days, a customer will think and act faster to visit your website and add goods to their cart.

Use the following ways to create a sense of urgency on your website:

Always mention the number of items left in stock. When people see that their desired article is in limited quantity, they try to get their hands on it without wasting extra minutes.

Offer your customers free shipping for limited hours to tempt them to order something from your store.

Offer a limited time discount, such as for 12 hours, 24 hours, 48 hours, etc. Let your customers know that the deals and discounts will expire after the allotted time is over. To make it more effective, display a countdown timer or clock to show the visitors and customers that the time is running out.

Display the number of people viewing the article. When a prospect sees that he is not the only one interested in the product and many other people are eager to buy it, he will hurry up and click the buy now button quickly.

8. Make Relevant Videos

What would you prefer: a long page of reading textual information or watching a 5 min long video containing the same information?

The majority of people will prefer video content over textual one. 43 customers out of 100 are interested in video content.

To further narrow it down, 67% of YouTube subscribers are interested in detailed product reviews that will influence their purchasing decision.

Thus, consistently make relevant videos about your products, such as unboxing, assembling, setting up, and using them. Then, the audience interested in the product can come to your website to buy it.

You can create your own videos, post them on your YouTube channel, and embed it on your website. Or you can collaborate with popular YouTubers of your niche and ask them to review your products on their channel. The most common examples are skincare and makeup brands that collaborate with famous makeup artists on YouTube. The YouTubers create a makeup look using the brand’s products and attach a link to its website so that the viewers can visit the website to buy the products.

9. Submit Guests Posts

Creating an exciting and unique blog post is necessary to attract a new audience and generate traffic on your website. But did you know you can welcome more audiences to your website by writing a blog post for other websites?

That’s right! You can write content and submit it to the host website to publish it on their website and give you exposure to its audience and customers.

When the customers and audiences of that website read the blog post submitted by you, they can click the link to reach your website and learn more about you.

Submitting guest posts is also an excellent way to build backlinks, which contributes to the improvement of your SEO.

Look for websites that receive good traffic and accept guest posts. Then, reach out to them, share your idea and submit a fantastic article that arouses the audience’s interest to learn more about you.

10. Spy On Your Competitors

Are your competitors receiving good traffic on their website and are enjoying more profits than you? If yes, then it’s time to keep an eye on what strategies they have adopted to boost their traffic and sales.

Log on to their websites and check the layout, appearance, and functionality. If they added some extra features to their website to improve user experience, try to integrate them into your website. Moreover, head to their social networking handles to read the reviews shared by people. Understand what their unique selling proposition is: the products, good customer service, quick delivery, reasonable price, discount offers, etc.

Recognise the factors contributing to increased traffic on their store and try to replicate the same on your website to improve traffic and sales.

11. Harness The Power Of Social Proof

A new audience is skeptical about a business on their first visit and finds it difficult to trust the brand that it has never heard of. Hence, show the visitors that your brand is trustworthy and has a vast customer base.

Display the number of customers you are serving, the number of people who follow your social profiles, and most importantly, the reviews shared by your customers.

When visitors see the social proof, they do not hesitate to explore the website and learn more about the business.

Summing Up

There you have it, readers! Easy, effective, and 100% free strategies to increase traffic to your store.

Implement the strategies mentioned above and check which ones work the best for your business. Remember, you will not see the results overnight. The key to surviving in the cutthroat arena of eCommerce is consistency. Hence, stay consistent and keep providing an impeccable shopping experience to your prospects and customers.

Author Bio:

Ricky Hayes is the Co-Founder and Head of Marketing at Debutify – a free Shopify theme, helping dropshippers build high-converting stores in minutes. He is a passionate entrepreneur running multiple businesses, marketing agencies, and mentoring programs.