The chances are that you haven’t allocated budget and invested time into marketing your new website, meaning that few people know about it and even fewer are actually visiting it. Here are three ways in which you can promote your eCommerce website and drive that all important traffic to it.

Boost organic search traffic

Google and other search engines return a list of results when a user searches for a particular word, phrase, sentence or question. These might be paid ads (usually positioned at the top or the bottom of the search results and marked as ads) or organic, non-paid listings of which there are usually 10 on the first page of Google’s search results.

Ranking high in the search results takes a lot of time and effort and so the earlier you implement a search engine optimisation (SEO) strategy, the better. An SEO specialist will optimise your website by adding relevant keywords and phrases to the page titles, headings, content, meta descriptions and images. They will also make sure your website is properly indexed by Google, and then work to boost rankings through strategies like creating relevant content - having a blog and regularly publishing quality articles is essential - and building links from other websites to your own.

Competition for good organic search ranking positions is incredibly fierce but by planning, implementing and maintaining a solid SEO strategy you can boost your site’s chances of ranking well and driving organic search traffic to your site.

Paid search ads

The fastest route to search engine visibility is to pay for adverts.

Google’s paid ad network is called AdWords and, as already mentioned, these ads appear above and below the organic results. They are triggered by searches for specific keywords or phrases; for example, if your eCommerce store sells shoes then “men’s trainers” might be a key phrase which triggers your ad.

Your ad should clearly show what it is you’re selling and be designed in such a way that it encourages the searcher to click through to your website. The position in which an ad appears depends on various factors including the bid that an advertiser has set; AdWords is an auction system where, all things being equal, the highest bidder’s ad will appear first in the results.

Actions taken from an AdWords ad can be tracked by adding code to your website. You can track how many people clicked through from an ad and then completed a contact form on your website, for example, or you can track how many people have called a phone number on your website.

Social media marketing

Even prior to the launch of your website it is an excellent idea to create social media accounts on platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram and start to build a community around your brand.

Regularly creating interesting, informative, and funny posts will attract people to your page and encourage them to share your content, increasing awareness of your brand. If your product is visually appealing, Instagram can be a particularly good place to share photographs – just make sure that you invest in a professional photographer rather than sharing poor quality snaps that you've taken on a smartphone!

Allocating a budget to social media marketing is definitely worthwhile and using Facebook's targeting tools a great way of reaching potential customers in your target market, driving qualified traffic to your website.

If you would like more advice on building and effectively marketing an eCommerce website, contact the friendly team at WTS Technologies today – we’ll be delighted to help.