How to Attract Customers to Your Online Store

Great products are complimented and completed by customers. However, offering what people need doesn’t always equate to sales. 

 

Whether in the brick-and-mortar store or in the convenient online stores, increasing traffic is a concern for every business owner. 

 

Whether as a newbie or a professional in the game, boosting traffic to your web store and learning the effective means of customer acquisition is the only way to keep your business going.

 

So how do you attract customers to your online store?

 

Ways to Attract Customers to Your Online Store

 

 

There are several tips on making your online store attractive to visitors and converting them from passers-by to purchasing customers. 

 

Though it is important to ensure that your approach is suitable for your business, there are 3 sure ways to leave your online store in hot pursuit! 

 

1. Learn Your Competitions To Improve Your Business 

 

What are your competitors doing? Why would customers pick them over you?

 

Competitors are one of the major pain points of every business, especially when you are a small-scale business trying to thrive in an ocean with giant conglomerates.

 

If customers are not coming into your store, they are definitely going elsewhere for certain reasons. 

 

Understanding what puts your business at an advantage and disadvantage with these competitions would help you position your business in a favorable condition to thrive and make better decisions.

 

 

Here is how studying your competition can help you grow your customer base:

 

Know your Business and Customers

 

Building an efficient marketing strategy is focused on your knowledge of your business and its target customers. 

 

Most times, understanding your competitors is what improves the knowledge of what you truly stand for and the reason for your business existence. 

 

Also, you get to analyze your target audience better from not only your business but competitors too.

 

From here, you can decipher your target audience in conditions different from your market to build your buyer’s persona- their behaviors, interests, pain points, demographic, and how to position your business to reach them and solve their problems

 

Create a Unique Selling Proposition (USP)

 

A healthy study of your competitors shouldn’t result in you copying them but should rather enable you to understand what to do and what not to do in your business. 

 

No business is 100% perfect hence the gaps in the market which gives the space for growth and diversification. 

 

Analyzing these gaps will help you to know the expectations of customers and how to use them to differentiate your business in the market. 

 

Leverage the gaps in your Competitor’s operation as an opportunity to make your business a worthy option for customers.

 

What a Unique Selling Proposition is not and what it is

 

Before now, you might have been defining your business USP as that interesting line of your mission statement or the 5% discount you give on your product.

 

The unique selling proposition of businesses has been mistaken for several things that it does not include a slogan, expected business values like “premium customer service”, or claims of “high-quality product”.

 

The USP of a business is not far from these though, however, one difference is that it is always unique and real! 

 

You just have to find a way to engraft whatever the initiative is into your business rather than adopt what every other business is doing. 

 

Delivering all that you promise is however the real USP. Just making claims and promises rather than attracting customers is the fastest way to lose your existing customers.

 

Utilizing a meticulous third-party logistics (3PL) company can improve how you deliver on your promises. 

 

For premium delivery, excellent order processing and diligent returns management on dropshipping businesses, you can check out Globallyfulfill, which is targeted at making business seamless for apparel e-commerce stores.

 

Make Data-informed decisions

 

Trial and error from experience or just doing what works for your business is not enough. 

 

Analyzing the data generated from your website with tools like Google Analytics and comparing it with results from your competitors will help you plan an effective inbound marketing strategy tailored to your audience’s needs.

 

Leveraging data analysis would not only target your audience’s interest to attract them but also save you cost in marketing. 

 

2. Publicize Your Business

 

Unlike years past, customers purchase only after thorough research. With the pool of diverse businesses offering the same thing, your business has to be seen for you to stand a chance. 

 

People only buy from businesses that they know, so how do you put your business out there?

 

 

Have a Content Marketing Strategy

 

With the rise in how much information people are consuming per time, sales start with you providing answers to questions that your target audience is asking. 

 

Businesses that provide answers to questions asked before proffering solutions tend to be more trusted and considered above those with just solutions. 

 

Therefore, you have to regularly push out original, quality, and relevant content optimized for search, on topics around your field based on your audience’s problems and queries. 

 

There are various forms of content including blogs, videos, audio, study cases, etc that you can curate for your potential buyers. But beyond curating content, you want to ensure that they convert to sales. 

 

Hence, your content marketing strategy should be based majorly on trends, your target audience search intent, as well as channeling your content to the right platforms that your audience uses.

 

What content marketing does for your business is that:

 

• It makes you stand as an authority in your field
• It optimizes your business for search engines
• It makes your audience believe you understand them and as such trust in your product
• Your audience would definitely consider your business as their first option
• You can easily promote your business without making it obvious in your contents

 

Optimize your Website for SEO and Users

 

Over 8 billion searches on Google each day, provides businesses with opportunities to increase their awareness and make sales at the end. 

 

SEO enables your website to be easily found by web crawlers during those searches, thereby ranking your website organically. 

 

Every time your business is found when your target audience searches for solutions to their problems takes you one step to gaining a new customer. Some of these SEO practices include:

 

• Include keywords that trigger meta description tags or featured snippets in your web pages
• Utilize internal and external links skillfully
• Insert clear and direct CTAs as appropriate in your website
• Make your URL simple

 

 

Aside from investing in SEO, optimizing your website for users is another factor you need to take into consideration, after all, your target is not to get visitors but customers. 

 

Like the traditional stores, the appearance and arrangement of the store contribute to the perception customers have of your business. 

 

Similarly, how organized, appealing, clear, and easy-to-use your web store is would determine if your visitors would stay and come back. 

 

Tips to making your web store welcoming include:

 

• Avoid long page loading time on your website
• Ensure that your pages are optimized for mobile devices
• Provide clear and concise product description
• Merchandize properly on your website and fine-tune the aesthetics of your web store design
• Improve your User interface and experience to make your site user-friendly

 

Build A Referral Marketing Program

 

In exchange for reward, the program implores your existing customers to tell people about your business and get them to carry out some task which could be making purchases or signing up for a service.

 

Word-of-mouth marketing and referrals from friends and family are some of the strategies several businesses both offline and online testify to yielding results and this is because people will trust in recommendations from people they know rather than in a business that they see as a third party.

 

The benefits of a referral marketing campaign are that:

 

• It reduces the risk of loss from marketing campaigns that don’t yield
• It helps to expand your market reach
• You can reduce your customer acquisition cost
• It converts sales 2x more than other advertisement program
• The new customers are easily retained based on the established trust

 

Partner with Brand Influencers

 

Just like the referral marketing programs, partnering with creators and influencers is another trust-based scheme that you can use to publicize your online business and boost traffic to your website.  

 

The partnership could be: 

 

• An ambassadorship contract
• Sponsored blog posts
• Sponsored social media posts
• Guest appearance etc

 

This is an effective means to boost traffic on your web store because:

 

• You can leverage the already built trust and credibility of the influencer
• Your business gets access to a new demographic and followership 
• You are able to target a highly specific audience segment

 

Run Ad Campaigns

 

There are several ad campaigns that can help your business get in front of your audience. 

 

Based on the size of your business and the level of control you want to have over the information that reaches your audience, you can opt for a free or paid advertisement tool. 

 

Some free ad tools and sites you can try out are:

 

• eBay
• Yelp
• Google business profile
•  Facebook marketplace
• Classified Ads
• Craigslist
• Online listings and directory

 

Paid advertising campaigns include utilizing search engine ads, display on websites and apps, social media ads, and native ads. Some of the popular ones are:

 

• Google Ads
• Instagram Ads
• Pinterest Ads
• YouTube Ads
• Bing Ads
• PPC Ads

 

3. Be Creative

 

One way or the other, we all get attracted to a positive difference in doing things. How can you do things differently in your business?

 

 

Run Flash Sales

 

Discount on a product is an old marketing strategy that never seems to lose its potency. Periodic flash sales are effective in delivering a sense of urgency for customers to purchase your product at a reduced amount within a time frame. 

 

Importantly, running a flash sale can serve as a means to bring new customers to your online store alongside returning customers. 

 

Especially when you offer a sought-after product, a juicy offer can induce interactions on your web store and catalyze decision-making from your potential buyers.

 

Implement the Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) Payment Method 

 

The BNPL payment method has provided a successful means to attract customers who need or want your product at a more convenient mode of payment. 

 

In an unpleasant economy, offering a flexible payment means where customers can own their product right at once or pay in parts is surely attractive. 

 

With the right knowledge and approach, your business order rate would increase and your customers can make purchases within their budget, hence a win-win for both parties. 

 

This would be a very good strategy for businesses with pricier products.

 

Enhance Customer Experience

 

 

Even after a long time of making a purchase, customers do not forget how they felt during the experience. 

 

This goes a long way to deciding their future with the business and that of those who hear about the business from them. 

 

Though profit maximization is the primary aim of every for-profit business, ensuring that your customers see the worth of their money is the core of your business. 

 

The experience of your previous and existing customers predicts if they are preachers or persecutors of your business to intending customers. 

 

Your customers when satisfied are one of the most effective means of marketing you can think of, several times more efficient when compared to other marketing strategies. And much more, they are FREE! 

 

Therefore to take your business to the point where you can vouch for your customers’ loyalty and trust them to grow your customer base,

 

• Position your customers and the factors influencing their decision at the core of your business
• Utilize automations and chatbox to keep your customers attended to at every time
• Endeavour to personalize your customers’ experience and interaction everytime they are in your web store
• If needed, ensure to partner with the right companies that align with your business values. A tested option for apparel online stores is Globallyfulfill who provides top-notch assistance from when your customers make an order up until post-delivery to make every shopping experience the best.

 

Conclusion

 

Throughout the lifetime of your business, you have to keep attracting customers both new and returning to stay in business. 

 

Implementing the means mentioned above would begin your success in increasing traffic on your website, however channeling them as fit to your business is as important for maximum yield. 

 

Getting a new customer is a huge task for even big corporations. So, celebrate every new customer you get as a milestone!!