How to get customers to your webstore

It’s exciting unveiling a new webstore. It takes months of detailed planning and hard work to finally arrive at the big moment when your new site goes live. Then the money just rolls in, right?

No, not really.

Launching your business on its own webstore is like setting up shop on a side street nobody ever heard of before. You have done your homework well, stocked up with products that you know are in demand and have polished your margins to a fine sheen. You’re ready for business, but the problem is nobody else knows you exist. It doesn’t matter how groovy your shop looks, if nobody knows it’s there, you won’t sell anything.

For all the appearances, retailing online is nowhere near as simple and cheap as many seem to think. In a marketplace like eBay or Amazon, customers are already searching, so when you place your products on marketplace, sales can happen instantly. Because the marketplaces are generating and retaining traffic at massive scale, the fees you pay each time you sell something on a marketplace are substantially lower than it would cost you for the same result. Customer acquisition is not automatic any more than buying a hammer means a house will materialise. It takes deliberate planning and sustained effort to attract customers to your webstore, and more again to keep them engaged and coming back for repeat purchases.

Attracting traffic to your webstore

Having your own webstore has many advantages over selling through a marketplace, the most notable of which is that you ‘own’ a direct relationship with each customer and are not beholden to somebody else’s preferences and decisions about what you can and can’t do, and how you must treat your customers. But unlike a marketplace, you do need to help prospective customers find their way to your webstore and keep coming back for more. There are many options for doing this, and the most significant ones are…

Organic traffic

Customers often start their shopping journey in a search engine. Google is by far the most popular search engine, so ensuring your website is included in Google search results is critical. Adding your website domain to Google and other search engines is a good start, but the complexity of search algorithms means you will need to do a lot more than that to get them to ‘fall in love’ with you and rank your website high in search results. This rarely happens by accident, and requires a good deal of planning and effort from somebody who is well versed in Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). This can include some very obscure or technical things that may need changing in the back-end of your website, or may even require further changes to some specific aspects of your product and category data.

Paid traffic

Paying for attention is simply advertising. What, where and how you advertise can have a massive impact on the effectiveness of what you spend. Pitching your message poorly or targeting the wrong demographics or channels can drive a business into the ground. Which exact channel/s are most appropriate will depend on the nature of your products, your brand, your pricing and overall value proposition.

The stronger your own self-awareness, the better you will be able to convey your message. Remember, the more you spend on advertising, the less margin you keep. Unless you have an endless source of money, you will need to choose your advertising strategy carefully, and keep track of its effectiveness through regular monitoring and adjustment. Again, this is usually a task best done by somebody who has a deep understanding of marketing, and can demonstrate a track record of success.

The most effective advertising channels for ecommerce are typically Google and Meta (including Facebook and Instagram). Not all channels will be relevant. You’ll need to do some research so you know how to target and retarget the right type of customers, in the right places, at the right times. The most effective paid marketing campaigns are long-term, continuously monitored and regularly adjusted to remain effective. ROI will be negligible at the start, but should be steadily improving over time, until you reach an expected fair average for your category. An experienced SEO specialist will be able to provide you with benchmarking metrics for your category.

Reactivated traffic

Customers who have dealt with you before have already been ‘acquired’. Hopefully they had a good experience and will therefore have the inclination and confidence to deal with you again. Competition for customer attention can be fierce, so don’t assume that past customers will automatically think to come back and shop with you again. Customer retention is a specific strategy that requires deliberate planning and sustained effort to get results. Customers who have already dealt with you are up to 16x more likely to deal with you again, and can be 6x cheaper to reactivate compared to first time customers.

Methods for reactivating customers may include:

Email marketing
It can take a while to refine your communication style and voice, the mix of useful information and marketing pitch, campaign frequency and relevancy. Segmenting customers based on their transaction history and location allows you to deliver more curated and relevant messaging, and this kind of personalisation can really pay dividends if done properly and consistently.
Social media
Most of your customers will be active in social media including Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Pinterest, TikTok, X, Threads and more. Which social media channels are worth your effort will depend on your customer demographics, age group and income levels. Although there are no fees for posting and interacting via social media, don’t underestimate the cost of time required to do it well, whether you do it in-house or engage a specialist marketing and communications agency or contractor. There are plenty of low cost offshore freelancers and upworkers who offer social media marketing, but don’t assume they all know what they are doing, or will properly understand the local Australian consumer psyche.
In-consignment marketing
How you package customer consignments can also amplify your brand. Consider having your branding and some basic marketing messaging on the outer or inner shipping boxes. Inserting a professionally printed flyer can also boost customer confidence when unboxing, and provide relevant information about quality, returns, special offers and support right at the moment the customer needs it. Including referral program offers and discounts for buying related products can also trigger more sales.
In-store communications
Customers comfortable to deal with your business will often not distinguish between online and offline experiences. Presenting the same visual graphics, images and messaging across both physical stores and your online channels (including social media) will reinforce your branding and help position you front of mind when customers are contemplating a purchase of products you sell. Allowing customers to move freely across physical and online channels creates a homogenous brand experience which helps keep you front of mind.
Physical advertising
Depending what products you sell and how your customers interact with their world, it may be appropriate to run ‘above-the-line’ advertising in relevant magazines, newspapers, billboards and other locations such as bus stops, train stations, shopping centres and the like. These act to reinforce visual communication and brand recall in the minds of those who are in the market for what you are offering.

Budgeting for customers or sales

The cost of customer acquisition via both organic and paid strategies can be substantial, and how much you pay is unfortunately not always a reliable determinant of how good the results will be. Traffic agency provider fees typically start at $1500 per month for a professional or specialist team who knows what they’re doing, to develop and drive the right strategy, monitor performance and implement the bits you can’t easily do yourself. The more keywords you need to work on, the more it will cost. Then on top of this if you’re advertising, you will also have cost-per-impression (CPM) or pay-per-click (PPC) fees with Google, Facebook or other platforms depending on the campaign/s you have in place, and where your target customers tend to frequent. For results of significance, be prepared to commit to a 6-12 month program. Without this, you will likely struggle to attract qualified customers to your new website in any meaningful volume. The largest uplift in traffic tends to occur in the second year of a focussed and well-maintained SEO strategy.

Who should I trust?

There are three key things you should factor into a decision about which digital marketing agency to work with…

Are they a registered partner of the platform your webstore is on?
If not, they are less likely to have the knowledge of how it works and how to implement SEO or marketing strategies on it. Don’t risk your budget on somebody who doesn’t fully understand how your system functions.
Can they demonstrate successful traffic campaigns in the same category?
If they’ve not dealt with your type of business or products before, they may struggle to understand your target audience and product range.
Do they speak your language?
An important part of working with any provider is their ability to comprehend your priorities. It’s equally important that you understand what they’re telling you and that it aligns with your strategy and aims.

Commitment to success in any business requires a medium to long term view on performance. Make the effort to educate yourself on the essentials of traffic strategy and you will be better equipped to amplify the work that your chosen agency does. If you develop and implement the right strategies, you will look back a year later and thank yourself for putting in all that effort.

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