You’ve probably noted recent trends among budding entrepreneurs who’re setting up online stores with Shopify but have a lot of questions about the platform.
Getting Traffic to your Shopify store now an Ultimate Guide by AdNabu
How does Shopify work and why is it popular as an e-commerce platform? Is it the right place for you to set up an online store? Do you need to understand the technical nitty-gritty that goes into setting up a functional store online?
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How to get traffic to your Shopify store?
Shopify’s easy usability function adds another feather to its already popular cap and is a win-win regardless of whether you are a complete newbie or have limited experience in design. Not only can you build a functional online store but also ensure that it looks appealing and convincing to customers. You can also plug in a varied range of apps that are entirely free of cost, to your online store. This guide is to explain end-to-end selling on Shopify to take your business to the next level.
1. Shopify SEO Ideas
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for eCommerce businesses to flourish is essential, and as a store owner, you need to have knowledge of how it works, goes without saying. Primarily, SEO works to allow your shop to climb up the ranking for Search Engine Result Pages (SERP), which is important while growing your business in this digital era.
Unlike blogs, there are unique forms of SEO examples for Shopify stores. You aren’t basically focused on content marketing like it’s the case for a traditional blog. You’re instead splitting bases between three types of optimization which include technical aspects like URL and metadata structure, and on-page factors such as content optimization.
SEO – Free Traffic Strategy
There are various ways in which you can drive traffic to your website and use it for sales conversion- from including calls to action, providing your visitors with the information they are looking for, making navigation seamless, and more.
Step 1: Using Shopify Collections to set up a Perfect Site Structure
Site architecture is a very critical element of Shopify SEO. It involves internal linking integrated into your website and offers a friendly user experience that makes people always come back for more. Shopify Collections consist of navigation elements that help customers locate your products by grouping products into categories or collections.
The categories can be anything like sale items, clothing for women, men’s jeans, and so on. Other similar items can be categorized to make it easy for consumers to get what they’re searching for. For instance, products can be grouped into a few collections to funnel traffic to the right spot without exploring the whole catalog.
Shopify Collections enhance SEO since they work like hub pages, which are collection pages on a particular topic that link internally to multiple pages relating to the original topic. It acts as a store with a table of contents. Depending on the spectrum of markets and your amount of product offerings, collections should begin with simple categorizations and then dive deeper once the first is selected.
Step 2: Write Collection Descriptions that are SEO-Optimized
Rather than completely letting your products speak for themselves, you should write useful and long descriptions for your page. For each collection, for instance, if you’re selling “Face Make-up,” write a description explaining the particular product category and what to expect from it. The description makes the page relevantly appear for keywords being ranked for and customers looking at it.
Internal links are also a significant component for on-page SEOs for your Shopify store, as they link out to a related blog post on the collections page, which keeps people learning and getting interested even more.
Internal linking is a great way for increasing SEO relevance, and strength, which helps to keep users on the site longer. The platform Shopify offers spaces for optimizing several components of on-page SEO. It is, therefore, important to edit the title, meta description, as well as URL in your collections.
Step 3: Adding a Blog on Shopify
In regards to SEO, optimizing your website, and tagging pages and products on your website is the first step. But you can’t rely only on products to drive your entire traffic from multiple funnel stages. Specific searches that are product based indicate that users in the buyer’s journey are very deep. The image below demonstrates the basic stages of a buyer’s journey:
What works best to a seller’s advantage is that, during the awareness stage of realizing the problem, users are not yet searching for products, but they are most likely looking to get more information, in which case they are more likely to dig up all relevant information on the topic.
Add relevant blogs that adhere to what you are selling; initiate internal and external linking to drive traffic to your website.
Step 4: Link Building on Shopify
After having optimized product pages, blogs, and structures on your website, it’s now time to build links. This is just as important as content. It helps to drive signals from high authority sites, ultimately building your domain authority by driving relevant traffic.
Link building for Shopify revolves around products and blogs. The more content for the blog you create, the sites will refer to you more for content, making it easier to get links for your own space.
Doing Shopify SEO Right Way!
How to use Shopify to optimize your product pages after having put up new products and added collections on your online store? Having added relevant descriptions, titles, images, and videos for each product, it’s time to know how to drive your sales to the next level.
Don’t leave your shoppers with unanswered questions that can derail a sale or make them abandon the site. Product descriptions significantly keep people’s attention and are among the greatest ways of communicating everything about a particular product.
Consider the following on the description pages for your products:
- Address pain problems and points
- Answer all questions
- Then provide the solution to be your product!
Always strive to write descriptions for products that are filled with end-user benefits, rather than describing the features. Use this eCommerce marketing to reach out to a wide customer base and make the most of your visibility.
Tips and Tricks to get backlinks to your store
Getting links to your store is essential for driving more traffic. The following tricks can assist you to achieve your goals:
1. Cold Pitching Using Emails
With just a few tricks, you can find emails, and make cold outreach breezes. For instance, you can use tools like ContactOut in direct LinkedIn plugins.
Use emails to start new cold outreach campaigns, offer to send them your products for free, and don’t ask for reviews. When you target blogs in your space, you will develop great backlinks that are product-specific, which ultimately boosts SEO on Shopify.
2. Starting an Affiliate Program
Establishing a Shopify affiliate program helps to link others to your services and products, which leads to building links even more. With a Shopify integration tool like Refersion, keeping track of all Shopify store affiliates is absolutely easy.
Focus on selecting users with popular websites, as this can help in building direct backlinks for your products.
3. Focus on getting reviews from bloggers in your niche
Start with a popular site like CNET; it’s likely for your site to get tons of traffic. Offering a product sample to the reviewer and getting an honest review could improve your chances of being successful.
APPS to use for Shopify SEO
Mobile apps are perfectly designed to help in improving your Shopify store visibility for you to seamlessly sell your product and grow revenue. The following are just a few mobile apps among others for SEO:
1. Omnistar Affiliate Software
This makes it easy to create and manage referral marketing campaigns. The app assists in getting more website visitors, and also makes hiring and managing marketing agents easy to publicize your store.
2. SEO Image Optimizer
This app assists in leveraging SEO and driving traffic to the app page of your Shopify store. It’s free, easy to install, and requires no management from your end. You just need to make premium Alt tags to make your store easier to use, especially for visually impaired people.
3. SEO All in One Automated
This app helps you get a higher page ranking for your Shopify store on popular search engines, and also makes images SEO-friendly. This enhances the visibility and traffic of your eCommerce store. It uses the simple easy-to-processes template that helps in creating and applying Meta Tags for products.
Optimizing your store for SEO helps in driving tons of traffic which you can convert into sales. By focusing on on-site user flow and structure, you can create a wonderful and seamless experience for new users who land on your website.
A great site experience and great products for sale will help in converting visitors to your store on Shopify. You’ll soon be swimming in a sea of sales. When you provide great service and products, you definitely deserve great sales traffic.
2. Shopify stores PPC Advertising
If you want to get many customers to check out your online store, you need to ensure that your eCommerce advertising strategies are in place. Why? Because, when you decide to start your digital business, success comes slower than you would expect.
You might have great designs and incredible products, but without the right marketing, you won’t be able to take your business far. Advertising is the only way to grow your business at a faster pace.
Paid advertising platforms
With so many people not being aware of marketing online or offline, paid advertising is a relatively new in-thing in the market. Of course, it does come with its pros and cons. But, if you do not try your hand at it, you will not know!
So what is paid advertising? Paid advertising is paying for an advertisement of any kind. Marketers pay the owner an ad space in return for the usage of that space. There are several categories that you can choose for advertising:
- Pay-per-click
- Pay-per-impression
- Display ads
The most common type of advertising and the fastest way to attract visitors to your digital store is Pay-Per-Click (PPC). This is also known as Cost-Per-Click (CPC). It is an internet advertising model that is used to direct traffic to websites. This means that the advertiser pays the publisher when the ad is clicked.
However, it is essential to pick the most effective platforms for paid advertising to ensure the effectiveness of your strategy. Some of the platforms that you can entirely rely on are:
1. Google Ads
Google Ad word is the fastest way to start generating traffic and sales for your business. This helps in creating campaigns for your niche so that the right product reaches the customer who is searching for it. Search ads on Google Ads are very competitive.
There are two steps in getting the best out of your paid service – finding profitable keywords that are relevant to your products and creating great campaign ads. This means that the more specific your ads are, the number of people will click on them.
Google Ads lets you reach your target in three distinct ways:
- Search ads –Consumers use Google to search for answers, to get solutions, to find reviews and details about specific products. This makes it a very powerful marketing channel.
- Google Display Network –This option helps you reach out to people who are outside of Google’s search engine results. Google Display Network uses texts, images, and video banner displays that appear on a user’s browser, apps or videos.
- YouTube Ads –Overall, users watch around one billion videos a day. This is an excellent opportunity to keep your potential customers engaged.
2. Facebook Ads
Facebook Ads are a great way to show your customers the product before they have actually started searching for it. This lands you the right leads without missing on any potential customers. You can attract your ideal customer based on their likes, interests, and behavior.
Facebook Ads are the best and cheapest way to promote your store and start selling on Shopify. Go to Facebook advertising, create the product catalog campaign, upload the information sheet and create the ad. This is the best tool to deliver your message to your potential customers.
Once you have your online store on Shopify, you can start promoting right away. Follow groups that target your niche and post to the relevant group. Facebook is an incredible way to use social media for paid advertising. You can use the database of information to deliver targeted ads to your potential clients. If you amplify your content that can produce engagement (shares, likes, comments), then you will be able to lower the cost of advertising.
3. Instagram Ads
Instagram is a platform that is cheaper when compared to advertising on Google. When you are checking your Instagram feed, you will be able to notice updates that are tagged as ‘Sponsored’. These Instagram Ads are paid by the business owner to pop up their products every now and then.
You can opt for Instagram’s very own feature called ‘Stories’. These are time-bound updates that are deleted automatically after a span of 24 hours. You can use this to showcase promos and to feature specific products.
Which PPC Platform would help yield results?
The aim of using a PPC platform is to increase your reach, create a brand identity, and land potential customers on your online store. When you have surpassed the complexity of creating a successful campaign, you can be assured that your business is heading in the right direction.
Not every product works the same on every channel. Some products will have an already waiting bunch of customers searching for the same product online. Also, some products need awareness since they are unknown in the niche before purchasing the product.
Your decision majorly lies between capturing the already existing audience and generating demand for your product. It also depends on the audience you want to cater – where do your prospects go more; Google, Facebook, or Instagram?
Google AdWords is your best bet if you want to capture an already existing audience’s attention and generate demand for your product. If you have a product that people are more likely to invest in it impulsively, then Facebook is your visual medium. If your product is age-targeted, then Instagram is the place for you to advertise, because most of the youth check for products sponsored on Instagram.
Apps to use for PPC Ads management
If you are a marketer, you might know the magnanimity of the role of campaigns on the success of a business –small and large alike. If you do not invest enough time and resources and money in devising a strong strategy or monitoring your campaigns, you could land up burning large holes in your pocket for no joy.
According to AdNabu, small businesses lose 25% of their PPC budget.
Even though launching successful marketing campaigns can be exhausting, they are essential. To help ease the process, there are apps that help you keep a tab on your campaigns. You can use them to build, manage, monitor, or adjust your bids, campaigns, and budget.
Here are the top 5 rated apps to manage your ads:
- AdWords and AdWords Express – This app helps you stay track of your ad campaigns no matter which part of the world you’re in, using your smartphone. You can also view your ads performance with your desktop account. AdWords Express helps you reach out to new customers on Google. Available on – Play Store and iTunes.
- Bing Ads–With BingAds, you can keep track of your campaign while you are traveling. You can monitor campaigns and get performance data on the go. If you want to target existing customers, BingAds helps you run automatic rules when customer credit cards are about to expire. Available on – Play Store and iTunes.
- Facebook Ads Manager–You can stay connected with your ad performance constantly with this app. You can create or reuse ads, edit and preview campaigns and view the campaign performance. Available on – Play Store and iTunes.
- Google Analytics–This app helps you monitor the progress of your business campaign on the go. You can monitor real-time data, check key metrics in built-in reports, and build your own reports using combinations of various dimensions, metrics, and segments. Available on – Play Store and iTunes.
- MailChimp – With MailChimp you can stay on top of your business campaigns. You can create and send campaigns that reveal your brand in itself. You can keep track of your client’s account activity and get personalized tips. You can also track your ROI and other e-commerce activity from your campaigns. Available on – Play Store and iTunes.
3. Influencer Marketing
Influencer Marketing is your new kid on the block. The idea involves making use of both old and new marketing tools, merging the same with various modes of celebrity endorsement that help drive an entire content marketing campaign. Most campaigns are driven to yield results based on collaborations between celebrity influencers and the brands they endorse.
How does Influencer Marketing work on Shopify?
With the way the internet has grown over the past five years, it has become one of the greatest places to conduct e-commerce businesses. Add to this, the development of social media and content-sharing websites in the past decade, and influencer marketing turns out to be the best and most effective way to ensure your products reach their most significant audience. Just how effective is influencer marketing? Statistics estimate that presently, in 2019, “17% of companies spend over half their marketing budget on influencers”.
To that end, Shopify provides both e-commerce vendors and influencers with a number of tools for support in influencer marketing. There are several plug-ins available for influencer marketing on Shopify, which when done correctly, can grow not only your immediate sales but also lead to an increase in the overall organic reach that your brand has. Through influencers and Shopify’s plug-ins tailored specifically to assist influencer marketing, you can leverage an able, willing audience into buyers.
Additionally, placing separate, standalone ads can be extremely expensive and often prohibitive for smaller brands that are just starting out; with influencer marketing, you can get the same done at a fraction of the cost.
Top Influencers based on store categories
There are several different categories of products, experiences, tangible items, and even services that you can sell on Shopify. Among the best Shopify store categories are clothing and fashion, jewelry and accessories, electronics, food and drink, and more.
Here is a look at a few top influencers based on store categories:
1. Clothing: Chiara Ferragni
Italian-based model Chiara Ferragni boasts a nearly 10m following on Instagram alone. The blogger, influencer, and fashion designer were voted Teen Vogue’s Blog of the Year in 2011.
2. Electronics: Marques Brownlee
Known popularly on the internet as MKBHD, Marques Brownlee boasts a 9.84 million following on YouTube, his primary mode of influence. Brownlee initially started off as a smartphone reviewer but has since expanded to include most of the other technology categories as well.
3. Food and Drink: Brad Lau
Among the top food influencers online, who is not a celebrity chefs is Brad Lau. He goes more commonly by his online pseudonym, LadyIronChef. With a highly engaged 650,000 following, this is one account that can definitely influence the sales of your food and drink brand or product.
Influencers can influence their followers to buy products, services, subscriptions, and more, and Shopify allows brands to sell tangential products- so it’s a win-win situation either way.
Best apps to use for Shopify Influencer Marketing
Shopify store offers several apps to help you with influencer marketing, including apps that can help you decide on which influencers are best for your brand, apps that help you figure out your ideal market, and apps geared towards specific product genres. Some apps you can definitely give a try are:
1. Carro: Influencer marketing
This app is particularly useful if you are just starting out on the influencer marketing bandwagon. Carro helps you as a brand to identify influencers who not only already follow your brand but are also its patrons. This means they, and as a direct corollary, their followers will have an existing market you can tap.
2. VWala
Vwala helps brands, particularly those at the early stages of functioning, easily find and partner with influencers. Brands signing up for this app will be given a sign-up link that is branded. This link may be embedded or shared via your brand’s social media to immediately, and quickly onboard influencers at just the click of a button.
3. Promio
Promio takes influencer marketing to another level. Helping your brand convert sales even quicker, this app rewards even existing customers by essentially making them mini-influencers. Customers who share your brand or products on their social media are rewarded for the same with discount codes and promotions for doing so. As a result, this leads to an increase in your audience organically via your existing customers, rather than pinpointing only one single influencer with a large audience. This helps leverage and horizontally spread the market for your own brand as well – all for a fraction of the cost.
4. Affiliate Marketing
As one of the oldest and most effective forms of digital marketing, affiliate marketing is where you can refer an online product to someone, and when that person follows your recommendation to buy that product, you receive a certain amount of commission. The commission, of course, depends on the valuation of the product.
Affiliate marketing works in four very simple steps:
- You join an affiliate program to get started
- You choose the product you want to promote
- You then go on to share the product link on social media channels, a blog if you have one, in the form of Facebook ads and more
- Every time someone makes a purchase following your link, you earn an affiliate commission
How does Affiliate Marketing work for Shopify?
Your first question might be – what is the difference between affiliate marketing and influencer marketing? Today, among the most popular forms of marketing for businesses in the e-commerce sector, both of these are the most cost-effective options. Costing significantly less than a traditional marketing strategy, affiliate marketing can be run via influencers, but is different from traditional influencer marketing.
Via affiliate marketing, unique links for online purchases are provided to people, who are labeled in this case, as affiliates. If someone clicks through on this special URL and proceeds to make a purchase through it, the affiliate receives a commission on that purchase, or for an agreed-upon number of purchases depending on the terms the brand has laid out.
Affiliate marketing is an effective strategy for Shopify. Shopify has its own dedicated affiliate program, which individuals, or affiliates, may join free of charge. Available for use to anyone in any sector who refers a buyer base or a new audience to a Shopify storefront, this helps these affiliates earn an income from each referral they make. Shopify also has several plug-ins dedicated to helping brands and affiliates alike.
Top affiliate marketers to reach out to your store
Among the top affiliate marketers on the internet today, here are some names you can reach out to:
1. Pat Flynn
Dubbed the top affiliate marketer online today, Pat Flynn runs several different websites in different sectors, all of which are fully integrated with his affiliate marketing. His open disclosure of affiliate marketing is also believed to be a part of what contributes to his success in that field.
2. Neil Patel
Widely considered, and in fact, a very successful entrepreneur, Neil Patel is an incredibly successful affiliate marketer. Today, he runs three different websites and runs an effective affiliate marketing strategy across several channels.
3. Darren Rowse
Primarily a blogger, Darren Rowse began his website in 2002, which hosts nearly 8000 different blogs, how-to’s, and tutorials across a number of diverse fields. He is proficient in writing ebooks and e-tutorials, and effectively leverages his site for online marketing. His primary website receives more than 30,000 unique hits each day.
Apps to use for Affiliate Marketing
Shopify has a number of tools and apps geared at helping affiliates and brands maximize profits and audiences. Here are three of the top apps geared toward affiliates:
1. Secomapp
Secomapp helps any brand build its affiliate marketing solutions in a short time without the need for tech expertise. With their own inbuilt tracking system, Secomapp helps you, as a brand, organize your affiliates in a manner that is easy for you to follow, and without having to get into the logistics of personally tracking each affiliate yourself. The app also has provisions for sharing media, banners, and other crucial files within a network of affiliates, communicating with them, and tracking sales through each affiliate individually.
2. Referral Candy
Handling the idea of customer rewards for referrals, ReferralCandy allows you, as a brand, the ability to customize each aspect of your referrals, from home pages and landing pages to emails, newsletters, and more, that are sent out to your network. As a brand, you just have to pick what gift your customers are given for a specific referral, and Referral Candy will take over the remainder.
With the customer-side logistics handled, you as a brand can see detailed reports and information on the affiliate sales themselves, with incoming traffic as well as their incoming data integrated with Google Analytics for a clear, easily accessible picture.
3. Refersion
A fully-loaded marketing platform, Refersion helps from end to end of the referral process, from identifying affiliates to recruiting them, locating influencers, payment, tracking traffic, and more, all in one place. Payment, too, can be handled via Refersion.
