You have a great website, but the traffic remains stubbornly low. What can you do to attract more customers? First, accept that it is nowhere enough just to have an attractive site. If people don’t see it, all that great design is a waste of money.
Having a popular site doesn’t happen by chance. You need to develop a strategic web marketing approach. Ideally, marketing and SEO should be an integral part of website development. But it is never too late to implement a more strategic approach. Here are our top tips to get you started.
1. Offer Discounts
If you have an e-commerce platform, share your recent discount offers and benefits on your social media pages to encourage customer engagement and increase website traffic. Additionally, try to promote discounts to reach more people. Depending on the platform you wish to use, think about the caption and design you think your clients will like. Moreover, always plan your campaign at least a couple of weeks ahead.
2. Ask for Referrals
If you work with other companies, ask your partners to send their clients your way as a means of exchanging benefits. On the internet, this means linking to your page. It’s one of the best forms of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), as the Google algorithm works on the principle of conferred credibility. A credible page linking to your page reassures Google of your quality and this will help your page to rank higher on search results. You could set up a page or section showcasing and linking to your partners’ sites and ask them to reciprocate in kind.
3. Link Your Social Media Together
Social media is another great way to drive traffic to your website. There are so many social media platforms these days that it can be overwhelming to manage. The key thing is to make sure that you have a presence where your main customer group hangs out. So if your audience is teenage girls, you will need to be on TikTok these days. For older women, it’s most likely Facebook. But either group is just as likely to also spend a lot of time on Instagram. If your’e not sure where your customers prefer to hang out online, ask them!
You can make your life easier by having a social media strategy where one piece of content is shared on multiple platforms. Tools like Canva are great for design and resizing and Buffer for automatically sharing across platforms.
Many of the image-led platforms, including Instagram, do not allow links from the feed and then only one link from your bio. That can be a dead-end if viewers want to follow up on a particular piece of content. Tools like linktr can help by creating an interim landing page that opens up the range of links readers may be interested in and also brings all your social feeds together in one place. These tools allow you to compile all your website and social media links into one link making your content much more accessible to your audience.
4. A customer newsletter
Email newsletters are having a moment. It’s almost like people are getting sick of fragmented snippets of information and prefer something a little meatier. A customer newsletter is a great way of building customer loyalty. People are more likely to sign up if the newsletter includes occasional offers and discounts. You can then include information about new products or services with links to find out more on your website. Your newsletter mailing list will, over time, comprise your most loyal customers.
5. Move Your Business Offline
Even if your business is online, if you have a local customer base, try to organize regular offline events to ensure people interact with the faces behind the brand. That doesn’t mean you should change your business model, though; online shops and services can also participate in festivals, bazaars, open-air markets, etc. If you know you can add your products to one of these, ensure you schedule your stock ahead of time. Remember, you can attract new customers offline, so pay attention to the quality of your products’ in-venue events.
Finally, remember that attracting more customers to your business requires a lot of time and effort. Don’t feel rushed or add pressure on yourself and others around you. Use expert advice when needed and try new solutions to experiment with your online presence. You can also improve your SEO, improving your visibility on search engines like Google, Bing, etc. This way, you open up the way to more organic customers.