Canadian eCommerce businesses have doubled since March 2020 due to the uncertainties of COVID-19. Social distancing and advice from health experts have fundamentally altered the shopping landscape. Customers are now increasingly turning to websites online to do their latest rounds of shopping—no longer having to browse the isles for products like they used to. Clearly, the importance of eCommerce cannot be overstated. As a small business owner, it’s vital to investigate going digital if you haven’t already or identify ways to increase traffic to your small business website. After all, more traffic means more leads and revenue. But what if you’re starting from scratch or your business has no online presence, to begin with? And if you already have a website, is your retail business ready to leverage this trend to its full extent? Scenario #1: I have a business idea and need a website: how do I start? Brainstorming the right product fit and target market isn’t as easy as making a simple list or traveling to spark creativity. There is a systematic approach to starting an eCommerce business—although it can be flexible and tailored. Read more on a 5-step approach to starting one: https://kashoo.com/blog/start-ecommerce-business-today-actionable-steps Scenario #2: I already have a small business website: what should I do to increase traffic to my site? If you already run a retail store, we’ve outlined several strategies below to help you increase traffic to your small business website. 1. Craft Consistent and High-Quality Content Creating high-quality content is one thing, but doing it consistently over a prolonged period is a whole other ballpark—especially when you want to increase traffic to your website. The higher your website ranks on search engines like Google and Bing, the higher chance that visitors will reach your site. When it comes to ranking factors, high-quality content ranks in the top 5 factors that Google considers. It’s that important! Of course, these content can come in a variety of forms like: Web pages Blogs Case studies White papers eBooks Webinars Newsletters Emails Videos and more High-quality content refers to well-researched, engaging content—not something pulled together last minute. Researching and adding backlinks to your blog content for example is a great way to do so. Google also favours the length of content with more words. More content can not only cover a wider breadth of content, but is also more preferable in the algorithm compared to shorter, superficial articles. 2. Familiarize with Search Engine Optimization Do you remember life before Google? Because we sure don’t. Google receives over 63,000 searches per second on any given day. Translating to about 2 trillion searches per year, it’s no secret that understanding and leveraging Google’s ability to increase traffic to your eCommerce business is crucial. The world of search engine optimization can be a tricky one—but it’s not impossible. Google’s algorithm uses over 200 factors when ranking a website. SEO best practices to consider to increase traffic include: Title tags: Title tags are essential for telling search engines what the page is about. They should be unique to each page of your website. Meta descriptions: Meta descriptions show up below the title on the search engine result pages (SERP). Normally about 50 to 160 characters is sufficient. Targeted keywords and keyphrases: Throughout your body content (i.e. web pages or blog articles) should have words and phrases that are specific and unique to your site or blog topic. If these words or phrases aren’t unique enough, search engines can penalize you for creating unoriginal content. Internal page linking: Linking to other web pages on your site is great for SEO. Do this by linking using relevant keywords as anchor text. Image ALT tags: ALT tags for images are like targeted keywords for a web page. It’s there to tell search engines what the picture is about. By first understanding what these best practices are for, can you then apply it on your own site to increase traffic! 3. Try Targeted Advertising Another quick and easy way to give your website a quick traffic boost is to allocate marketing budget to targeted advertising. For example, a Google Adwords campaign will swiftly land your website on Google as an advertiser. This will help target users who are already searching using keywords that match those you have specified in advance. Facebook and Instagram (owned by Facebook) also offer advertising options for users to allocate money toward a specific goal (i.e. increase traffic to your website, increase conversions, or likes). The great thing about both Google, Facebook, and Instagram ads is that they allow you to focus only on your small business’s target demographic, as well as set the limit for how much you want to spend. 4. Lean on Social Media to Increase Traffic Top-performing social media sites like Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest are available for small businesses to leverage to increase traffic to their site. But not only is it there to increase traffic, it’s also great for communicating your brand’s story and engaging with its target audience. One way to do so is to simply offer a link to your website directly from your profile page. Increase Traffic to Your Site Today Now that you know the actionable strategies to increase traffic to your website, let’s see these tips in action. Make a plan, and start leveraging consistent content, targeted advertising, SEO, and social media today to bring those visitors to your sites!
