18 Proven Strategies to Drive Traffic to Shopify Store

Have you invested a lot of time and effort into setting up your online store and preparing for the launch, but then find yourself confused by the lack of traffic?

Maybe you’ve had steady growth over the past few months but are now facing a traffic and sales slump. Or perhaps you’ve succeeded with a specific strategy to increase traffic and now want to explore other tactics to expand further.

Whether you’re aiming to attract your first customer or your thousandth, increasing traffic to your Shopify store is essential for business growth. With a conversion-optimized website, increasing traffic will bring in more potential customers, thereby boosting sales.

For this reason, here are 18 practical ways to increase traffic to your website, offering actionable strategies to not only attract visitors but also effectively convert them into loyal customers.

Why Driving Traffic to Your Shopify Store is Important

In the world of e-commerce, checking website traffic is a must for all marketers. Without traffic, there are no customers, and that means you won’t generate sales.

Traffic isn’t just a statistic; it represents the number of people interested in your products or services. Higher traffic translates to higher chances of successful conversions, increased sales, and business growth.

Additionally, traffic helps you build brand awareness, establish trust, and engage with potential customers. It also provides essential data on customer behavior, enabling you to optimize your business and marketing strategies.

Reasons Why Your Traffic is Low

It would be a shame if you invested heavily in your Shopify store business plan but faced traffic issues due to the following reasons:

Target Audience Misidentification

One of the fundamental reasons, which not all stores get right, is misidentifying the target audience.

When you don’t clearly understand your target audience, creating content and marketing strategies becomes vague and ineffective.

Therefore, having a clear grasp of demographic, psychological, behavioral characteristics, and the needs of your target customers is crucial to optimizing your marketing strategy and increasing traffic to your store.

Low-Quality Images/Videos

Low-quality images and videos not only detract from your store’s professionalism but also diminish its credibility in the minds of customers.

The more competitive the market, the more your competitors will invest in providing an engaging UI-UX experience for customers. Investing in high-quality images and videos is crucial for successfully attracting and retaining customers.

You will never regret investing in the quality of images and videos on your store, as it will help you increase traffic to your Shopify store.

Unappealing Content

High-quality and engaging content is critical in attracting and retaining customers. If your content does not provide the necessary value that customers need, it will not be sufficient to spark their interest, and they will have no motivation to revisit your website.

Therefore, always ensure that you are providing engaging, useful, and attractive content to your target audience to optimize traffic for your Shopify store.

No Obvious Social Media Links

One simple reason for low traffic to your Shopify store is unclear social media links. Many customers prefer to contact brands through social media for direct communication and to ask questions about products or services.

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However, if they encounter obstacles in finding the store’s social media channels, they may not get their queries answered and might choose not to buy from you.

Address this issue by adding social media icons to your Shopify store that link to your profiles and regularly update information related to your store, products, or services.

No Information Pages

The lack of essential information pages can also hinder traffic to your Shopify store.

Information pages like About Us, Policy, Terms of Service, and Contact not only help build trust but also provide crucial information for customers, making it easier for them to learn and contact the business whenever they need.

Ensure that your Shopify store has all the necessary information pages to increase its professionalism and reliability.

Lack of Promotions and Offers

A significant motivator for online shopping is attractive promotions and offers, which help drive traffic to your Shopify store and encourage purchasing behavior.

Creating unique and appealing promotional programs is an effective way to attract and retain customers, thereby driving traffic to your Shopify store.

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11 Free Strategies to Effectively Drive Traffic to Your Shopify Store

Traffic comes from many factors; it is the result of combining various valuable strategies for customers.

Not all traffic-increasing strategies require payment. Here, we will introduce you to 11 effective strategies to drive traffic to your Shopify store, and of course, they are completely free.

Boost Traffic through Content and User Experience Optimization

Create Valuable Content

• Traffic: High

• Time to ROI: Medium (1-3 months)

• Effort: High

In the digital world, content is king. Creating quality, useful, and engaging content not only attracts customers but also keeps them on your website longer, significantly increasing your traffic.

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Consider diversifying your content, such as writing blog posts that share knowledge related to your field, store events, promotions, and don’t forget to use high-quality images and videos to attract customers from the first impression.

Optimize SEO

• Traffic: High

• Time to ROI: Medium (1-3 months)

• Effort: Medium

One of the most effective ways to attract organic traffic without any cost is by optimizing SEO (Search Engine Optimization).

To effectively optimize SEO, you need to excel in everything from keywords to page loading speed.

Optimizing keywords, using accurate meta tags, optimizing images, and building internal links are basic but extremely important steps if you want to optimize SEO.

Additionally, the more you ensure your website loads quickly and is mobile-friendly, the better your SEO optimization will be.

Optimize User Experience on Your Website

• Traffic: High

• Time to ROI: Medium (1-3 months)

• Effort: High

Optimizing the user experience (UX) on your website is a crucial factor in driving traffic and retaining customers. When users have a good experience on your website, they are more likely to return and recommend your site to others.

To achieve this, focus on the following:

• Ensure your website has a user-friendly interface, is easy to navigate, and loads quickly.

• Additionally, ensure elements like a user-friendly shopping cart, smooth checkout process, and clear product information.

Spread Content to Reach More People

Spread on Social Media

• Traffic: High

• Time to ROI: Medium (1-3 months)

• Effort: Medium

Spreading information on social media channels is one of the effective and free ways to drive traffic to your store. Use platforms like TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest to share content, interact with customers, and promote products.

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Regularly update your social media with engaging posts and interact with followers to build long-term relationships and call them to action to visit your store.

Join Communities and Forums

• Traffic: High

• Time to ROI: Medium (1-3 months)

• Effort: Medium

Joining communities and forums is a free and effective strategy to drive traffic to your Shopify store. This is where you can interact directly with potential customers, share knowledge, and build long-term relationships.

All you need to do is find and join communities and forums relevant to your business field, contribute useful content, and share links to your website. Do this tactfully and naturally.

Many forums allow you to create personal profiles and add signatures to each post. Take advantage of this by adding links to your Shopify store in your signature or personal profile. This not only helps increase traffic but also provides users with more information about you and your store every time they view your post.

Email Marketing

• Traffic: High

• Time to ROI: Medium (weeks to months)

• Effort: Medium

Another great idea to diversify customer outreach strategies and increase traffic is to use email marketing.

However, due to competition, buyers today are overwhelmed by aggressive promotions, but a well-crafted email that feels natural to customers can have a positive impact.

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To not lose points in the eyes of readers and gain their favor when exposed to email marketing, make the email beneficial to the reader, including providing relevant information, creatively introducing your products or services to attract and engage your audience.

You can create your email directly in Shopify with available templates to choose from or get inspiration. Understanding who your customers are will make your emails more natural and relatable.

By sending regular newsletters to existing customers, you can keep them updated on what’s currently in your store, which will also help increase traffic and sales.

Additionally, since users today frequently use mobile devices, ensure your emails are well-designed and easy to read on mobile devices to optimize the advertising experience for your store.

Google Shopping Free Listings

• Traffic: High

• Time to ROI: Short (days to weeks)

• Effort: Moderate

Google Shopping offers the opportunity to list your products for free through Google’s platform and reach millions of users. Your products will appear on the shopping tab.

All you need to do is register and post optimized product information on Google Merchant Center to maximize this opportunity.

Because the advertising is free, the competition rate in the industry will also be higher, making it more important than ever to optimize all your product data. Speaking Google’s language will help your products be prioritized and promoted over competitors, thereby significantly increasing traffic to your store.

Utilize User-Generated Content (UGC)

• Traffic: High

• Time to ROI: Short (weeks)

• Effort: Medium

User-Generated Content (UGC) includes product reviews, creative content, customer photos, and videos. UGC not only helps build a customer community but also creates authentic, trustworthy, and engaging content.

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Here’s how to utilize UGC to increase traffic to your Shopify store:

Encourage Product Reviews

Customer feedback and reviews about your product will help build positive trust and convince other potential customers to make a purchase. You can offer small incentives like discount codes or reward points for those who leave reviews.

Create Contests and Promotions

Organize contests or promotions requiring customers to share on social media about photos or videos of your products. This not only generates UGC but also boosts your social media presence and attracts more attention.

Use Brand Hashtags

Encourage customers to use your brand hashtag when sharing content related to your products on social media. This makes it easy to find and aggregate UGC, as well as create an online community around your brand.

Drive Free Traffic with Ads Exchange

• Traffic: Medium

• Time to ROI: Medium (1-2 months)

• Effort: Medium

Exchange ads with other businesses in the same or related fields. You can display their ads on your website and vice versa. This is a way to leverage traffic from other websites without incurring costs.

How It Works

Ads Exchange is the process of exchanging ad space between different businesses. Instead of paying to advertise on another business’s website, you provide ad space on your site, and in return, that business does the same for you.

This is a win-win method, helping both parties reach new customer segments without incurring costs.

Boost Demand with Promotional Programs

Develop a Referral Program

• Traffic: High

• Time to ROI: Short (1-2 weeks)

• Effort: Medium

To help you attract more new customers, a customer referral program can assist you through referrals from existing customers. This also increases the chance to boost traffic to your store.

This is a win-win exchange; you achieve your goals of increasing sales or new sign-ups, while your customers receive discounts or free items.

By having a clear referral program, you will naturally integrate into customers’ conversations with their friends. Provide attractive rewards for both the referrer and the referee to encourage their participation.

Discount Codes and Offers

• Traffic: High

• Time to ROI: Medium (weeks to months)

• **Effort: Medium

There is no more direct way to appeal to customers’ interests and encourage them to purchase than by offering attractive discount codes and offers. This not only helps attract new customers but also invites old customers back to continue buying products and using discount codes.

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Offering appealing deals will draw customers to your store not just to browse but to buy. The offers will persuade customers to stay, browse your store, and decide to purchase to take advantage of them.

Use discounts strategically to add value to your brand rather than diminishing it.

You can implement your discounts by creating contests and giveaways or flash sales. These methods can increase brand-customer interaction and encourage participation to receive offers without devaluing the brand.

7 ways to drive paid traffic to a Shopify store

Diversifying your strategies to increase traffic to your store is essential. In addition to free traffic methods to your Shopify store, you should also invest in paid advertising strategies to optimize traffic effectiveness. Here are 7 proven ways to drive paid traffic to your Shopify store that you should know.

Social Ads

Facebook Ads

• Traffic: High

• Cost: Moderate to High

• Time to ROI: Short (Days)

• Effort: Low

Facebook, with its ability to reach a large number of users, deserves to be one of the most popular advertising platforms. You can create custom advertising campaigns based on the interests, behaviors, and demographics of potential customers. Facebook Ads Manager offers various ad formats, from images, videos, carousels to message ads.

Instagram Ads

• Traffic: High

• Cost: Moderate

• Time to ROI: Short (Days)

• Effort: Low

Instagram, owned by Facebook, is also a powerful visual advertising platform. With Instagram Ads, you can target users based on interests, behaviors, and geographical location. Ads on Instagram usually appear in feeds or stories, increasing the chances of reach and interaction.

TikTok Ads

• Traffic: High

• Cost: Moderate

• Time to ROI: Short (Days)

• Effort: Moderate

TikTok can help you advertise to a large and creative audience, especially the younger demographic. Advertising formats include In-Feed Ads, Brand Takeovers, and Branded Hashtag Challenges.

Pinterest Ads

• Traffic: High

• Cost: Moderate

• Time to ROI: Short (Days)

• Effort: Low

Pinterest is an ideal platform for products with high aesthetics, such as fashion, interior decoration, and DIY. Advertising on Pinterest helps your products appear in search results and users’ boards, increasing opportunities for discovery and shopping.

Google Ads

• Traffic: High

• Cost: High

• Time to ROI: Short (Days)

• Effort: High

Google Ads is one of the most powerful advertising platforms, allowing you to reach users through search, display network, and YouTube.

Search Ads

When users search for keywords related to your product, Search Ads will appear on Google search result pages. This is an effective way to reach people with shopping needs.

Display Ads

Display Ads appear on apps and websites within the Google Display Network. You can create ads with images, videos, or banners to attract users’ attention.

Shopping Ads

Shopping Ads allow you to display products directly on Google search results pages. This ad includes product images, prices, and store names, helping increase conversion rates.

YouTube Ads

• Traffic: High

• Cost: Medium

• Time to ROI: Short (1-3 weeks)

• Effort: High

YouTube Ads are a great way to reach users through video content.

TrueView Ads

TrueView Ads allow users to skip ads after 5 seconds, only charging when users view at least 30 seconds or the entire video. This is a good way to ensure you only pay for views that are genuinely interested.

Pre-Roll Ads

Pre-Roll Ads are unskippable ads that appear before the start of a video. This is an effective way to ensure your message is seen by users.

Influencer Marketing

• Traffic: High

• Cost: Medium

• Time to ROI: Medium (1-3 months)

• Effort: High

In addition to pushing ads, we can also collaborate with Influencers to reach their fans. Using Influencers will generate more traffic and sales because their opinions matter to their fans.

Choose Influencers with fan models similar to your target customers to reach the right audience. You should also try to ensure that the Influencers you choose reflect your brand values.

There are many budget options for booking these people, and it is equivalent to their influence in the market.

Sponsor a podcast

• Traffic: High

• Cost: Medium

• Time to ROI: Medium (1-3 months)

• Effort: High

The explosion of podcasts today has made podcasts a potential advertising channel, but it is important to note that advertising needs to be clever and natural to avoid causing negativity and discomfort to listeners.

Similar to selecting Influencers, choose podcasts with audiences that are suitable for your target customers and sponsor them to reach a large number of loyal listeners of these channels.

Podcast ads are often read by hosts, helping to build trust and connection with listeners. You can choose between pre-podcast ads, mid-podcast ads, or post-podcast ads.

Take it offline

• Traffic: Medium

• Cost: Low

• Time to ROI: Short (days to weeks)

• Effort: Low

Don’t forget that you can sell your items directly through Shopify POS Lite, which is available for all packages, so you can completely experience setting up a booth at exhibitions or trade shows, etc. along with your website information.

Shopify POS (Point of Sale) Lite is a powerful mobile app integrated into the Shopify ecosystem, helping businesses not only sell online but also directly in-store or at events, fairs. Shopify POS Lite helps manage inventory, track orders, and provide a seamless shopping experience for customers.

Advertising on blogs and related websites

• Traffic: Moderate

• Cost: Low to Moderate

• Time to ROI: Medium (weeks to months)

• Effort: Moderate

Advertising on blogs and websites related to your field is an effective way to reach potential customers.

Native Ads

Native Ads are ads integrated into the content of the website, making them not seen as regular ads and easier to reach users.

Banner Ads

Banner Ads appear in fixed positions on the website, attracting users’ attention and increasing click-through rates.

Content Sponsorship

Sponsoring articles or special content on blogs or websites can help you reach loyal readers and increase brand credibility.

Conclusion

Increasing traffic to your Shopify store is not an easy task, but with the right strategies and tools, you can achieve this. Combine free and paid strategies to optimize traffic and conversion success.

By focusing on providing value to customers and maintaining consistency in marketing campaigns, you will see significant growth in sales and brand awareness.

Start implementing these strategies today to enhance the shopping experience and boost revenue for your Shopify store.