Today, there are many online stores in the world, and the trend is increasing. The pandemic and the development of technology have contributed to the world turning towards online shopping. Most often, it is straightforward, fast, and beneficial for both the buyer and the sellers. And Shopify is one of the reasons for the sharp increase in the number of online stores. The platform has made it incredibly easy to create an online store. More and more sellers want to trade through Shopify, and this is not surprising.

Statista report that Shopify generated over 900 million U.S. dollars in subscription solutions and around two billion U.S dollars in merchant solutions in the fiscal year 2020. Over the measured period, both segments have witnessed rapid sales growth.

However, increasing competition has proven incredibly difficult for some, as many stores receive minimal traffic. Lowest traffic means lowest sales. Many sellers are intimidated by the enormous costs of attracting traffic. However, large advertising budgets are not always needed to promote your store on Shopify.

In this article, we’ll take a look at a few inexpensive ways to drive traffic to your online store.

How to drive traffic to your Shopify store

Traffic is the key to any store. Without traffic, you simply won’t get visits to your store, which means there won’t be any sales. The primary sources of traffic to online stores

Internet traffic comes from many areas of the Internet. But several sources will dominate your site. It often depends on the category of the website.

These are the main traffic sources:

• Search engines.

Many shoppers go straight to search engines like Google to find the product they want. In this case, your products can be displayed in one of two ways: through the ad you paid for or through the search engine SEO algorithms (also known as organic).

• Referral traffic

It is the kind of traffic that comes to your site through clicks on links from other sites. It usually happens because a third party is linking directly to your site.

• Email

Marketing campaign emails are still a pretty good tool for driving external traffic. However, the recipient must subscribe to your newsletters voluntarily.

• Social networks

Anything you can do on social media, show up with bloggers and influencers, or just run your page on social media will benefit you and drive traffic to your e-commerce site.

• Straight

Direct traffic comes when your site is already heard, and someone simply enters it into a browser to get to your store. It usually happens when they have already visited your site, and the URL is remembered by their browser’s search bar.

Here’s how you can attract traffic to Shopify store with a limited budget

1. Use free ads on Google Shopping

Thanks to free Google ads, you can now post information about your products on Google pages.

Your items will appear on the “Shopping” tab. You only need to create a Google Merchant Account and a relevant product description.

Since ads are free, there is a good chance your vertical will become overcrowded. That is why fully optimizing your product data is as vital as ever.

2. Use search engines organically

  Forbes writes that just under half of your income can come from regular site visitors, most of whom get there through SEO. Maintaining a solid search ranking is critical to maintaining a strong financial position.

Using search engines is a good, low-cost way to drive visitors to your Shopify store. If you choose to generate traffic organically with search engines, you will need to use SEO.

Effective SEO takes into account the big picture, from keywords to page load time.

3. Create discount offers

Discount and sale codes always attract customers and persuade them to buy from you.

You can also use offers with surveys and other tools to help you better understand your customers. This method can help attract new customers or at least help you gather more information about why someone is interested or not.

4. Create guest posts

It can be a good tool for driving external traffic to your Shopify store. Suggest writing guest blog posts on topics similar to your store. It can also be expert comments with a backlink leading to your store.

This interaction helps you build relationships with peers in your industry. Over time, this can become a mutually beneficial collaboration.

5. Drive free traffic with Ads Exchange

Free ad exchanges are a great way to trade ads with other companies. Using an application like Free traffic Exchange, you can place ads on your site, and other stores will serve ads to you. These advertisements shouldn’t be too distracting for shoppers as they appear at the bottom of the screen, generate excitement at any time, and last no more than 30 seconds.

6. Get active on Reddit

Reddit is an excellent resource for online store owners when it comes to driving traffic. Why? Because there are very narrow forums on almost any topic!

You can respond as an expert in your topic or give comments on how to troubleshoot forum members.

7. Create preview product pages for major upcoming product releases

 This strategy develops preliminary product page categories for major upcoming product releases such as iPhone, Oculus Quest 2, and Playstation 5. It could be a pre-order page or just a product details page, but if you can get pre-orders or email subscriptions to send out stock notifications, this is best for conversions.

Summarizing

The competition for traffic for online stores is growing, and it is impossible to enter this market today without a good marketing strategy. The Shopify platform provides many opportunities for both novice sellers and well-known companies. However, to get lost in a vast mass of similar stores, you will need to make an effort. At the same time, you already know from our article that these efforts are not necessarily associated with large advertising budgets.

If you are familiar with online promotion methods, you can use special tools and even create your pages to attract and generate traffic. In doing so, use software testing outsourcing to evaluate the effectiveness of your site.

Either way, your budget is a starting point: you decide which methods to promote your store and which free options are best for you.

Author’s bio: Anastasiia Lastovetska is a technology writer at MLSDev, a software development company that builds web & mobile app solutions from scratch. She researches the area of technology to create great content about app development, UX/UI design, tech & business consulting.