There it is in the blog title. That is one of the most frequently asked questions after launching a new online store and realising that sales figures don’t add up.
A store with unique and exclusive collection, topped up with exploding sales figures is just a dream for the most. Usually you get more realistic after a while. When that happens you start to realise the thing you really need! Before you can watch your bank account explode, you need a customer acquisition strategy.
When it comes to visitors you learn to be humble very quickly. As people visit shops with mobile devices, session duration tend to get shorter. Also if your UX (user experience) is too complicated potential customer don’t complain. They simply run away, never to return.
Because of this you should focus on usability and also on analysing your current traffic. The harsh reality is that the vast majority of merchants need to find out all sorts of ways to generate traffic to their shop to secure growth.
Usually when you can achieve traffic with paid advertising via Facebook, Twitter and Google Ads you realise your happiness is short sighted. It’s not all about volume, it's more about the quality of the traffic. You would like to gain high enough volume, but potential leads.
In other words potential customers who convert into paying customers and if possible long-term, valuable customers. You should move your focus from pure volume to the tasks, actions that happen in your particular store: photo viewing, video watching, visits to product pages or add to cart -action.
It’s not just traffic, they're human beings
When taking a closer look on Shopify’s dashboard and its analytics, Google Analytics or Facebook Analytics you easily start to treat these figures as high school math. That is a classic mistake and soon it all gets shady.
Sessions in your online store should be viewed as human beings and potential customers. The reality is that each of them is an individual. That is the reason why some do the tasks you wish, but some other customers behave in a completely different way.
Focusing on customers is the key thing! You should try to understand why people execute certain tasks in my store? It’s not all about prices or a posh photos. Yet they both might be decisive when hunting for that conversion and valuable purchase.
Recording sessions with softwares such as Hot Jar or Lucky Orange gives you visual feedback of how customers use your store. You can probably find out UX issues. You should get those fixed and develop your store further.
Remember! Developing your store and learning more about your traffic is a It’s a continuous process.
As an online store manager you should focus on the following questions:
- Where does the majority of my daily traffic come from?
- What is my traffic forecast? Has my traffic been increasing or decreasing? What's causing it?
- What can I do to get more traffic? How much can I pay for customer acquisition?