16 Ways to Attract Customers to Your eCommerce Store in 2023
When it comes to success in eCommerce, it’s not enough to just have a good product – you also need to know how to attract customers to your products.
While marketing strategies often stay consistent, marketing tactics are constantly evolving.
So, what trends should you expect in 2023 and beyond? In this blog post, we’ll discuss 16 ways that you can attract customers to your eCommerce store.
How to Attract Customers to your eCommerce Store: 16 Actionable Ideas
- Make your website fast and mobile-friendly
- Follow SEO best practices
- Create a lead magnet to capture prospect info
- Use social media to your advantage
- Leverage user-generated content (UGC)
- Collaborate with other businesses
- Offer discounts and coupons
- Incentivize your customers to share their experiences
- Participate in trade shows and events
- Streamline your checkout process
- Dial in your product pages
- Include a video on your website’s home page
- Make sure that key information is easy to find
- Add an element of interactivity to your website
- Conduct A/B testing
- Participate in online communities
1. Make your website fast and mobile-friendly
For better or worse, people expect websites to load quickly. Very quickly.
In fact, according to a study by Google, 53% of mobile users will leave a site that takes longer than three seconds to load.
If you want to keep people on your website, you need to make sure it is both fast and mobile-friendly.
Thankfully, all major website platforms (WordPress, Shopify, Squarespace, etc.) all have mobile-friendly themes out of the box.
If you’re not sure if your site is mobile-friendly, you can use Google’s free mobile-friendly site tester.
The best ways to speed up your site are:
- Using a content delivery network (CDN)
- Compressing your images or converting them to the lightweight WebP format
- Using browser caching
If you’re using WordPress, there is a bevy of helpful free plugins that can help you cache your site and compress your images for speed.
With Google’s new emphasis on Core Web Vitals, having a fast website may be the difference between you ranking highly on Google and being buried deep below page one.
2. Follow SEO best practices
If you want your website to rank highly on search engine results pages (SERPs), you need to follow Google’s best practices for search.
What most people don’t know is that Google clearly lays out the blueprint of what they want to see in their Webmaster guidelines.
This includes optimizing your website for relevant keywords, earning backlinks, and creating high-quality content.
You can use tools like Google Keyword Planner to research relevant keywords for your business.
Once you have a list of keywords, you can start optimizing your website according to those search queries. This includes adding those keywords to your titles, meta descriptions, headings, and body content.
Earning backlinks is also critical for SEO. You can do this by guest blogging on other websites, creating infographics and other shareable content, and participating in online communities.
Finally, make sure all of your content is high quality, well-researched, and provides value to your reader. This will not only help you rank higher on SERPs but also encourage people to stay on your website longer.
By following these SEO best practices, you can attract more organic traffic to your website, which can lead to more customers for your business.
3. Create a lead magnet to capture prospect info
Most people won’t be ready to buy the first time they visit your site. That’s where nurturing them through email marketing comes in. But before you do that, you have to capture their information via a lead magnet.
A lead magnet is an incentive that you offer people in exchange for their contact information. This could be a free eBook, white paper, or a coupon code.
By offering a lead magnet, you can attract first-time visitors back to your website for repeat sessions, as well as follow up with them via email marketing. This allows you to build a relationship with potential customers and eventually sell them your products or services.
To create a lead magnet, start by identifying what would be most valuable to your target audience. If you’re not sure, research competitors in your niche.
Once you have an idea, create the content and then make it available in exchange for an email address.
You’ll need to use a service like MailChimp or ConvertKit to set up an email capture form. These platforms are often free for smaller lists, and while they have a bit of a learning curve, they’re essential tools for eCommerce businesses.
Once you have people’s contact information, you can add them to your email list and start marketing to them. Just make sure you’re providing value in your emails and not always trying to sell them something.
By offering a lead magnet, you can attract customers to your website and then follow up with them via email marketing. This allows you to build a relationship with potential customers and eventually sell them your products or services.
4. Use social media to your advantage
Social media is one of the most powerful tools in your marketing arsenal. It allows you to connect with potential and current customers, build relationships, and increase brand awareness. In fact, according to Sprout Social, 71% of consumers are more likely to make a purchase based on social media referrals.
The first step is to create profiles on the major social media platforms that are relevant to your business. This includes platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, and Pinterest.
Once you have created your profiles, start sharing engaging content that will interest your target audience. This can include blog posts, product photos, infographics, and behind-the-scenes videos.
Pro-tip: Create the content first for your blog, so you’re getting the benefit of organic search traffic. Then, convert that content into social-friendly formats such as videos or images for your social platforms.
That way, you’re not reinventing the content every week, and your site content is congruent with your social content.
Make sure to post regularly and interact with your followers. This will show that you are active on social media and make people more likely to follow you.
You can also use social media ads to reach a wider audience. For example, Facebook Ads allow you to target specific demographics, interests, and even geographical locations.
5. Leverage user-generated content (UGC)
Now that practically everyone has a 4k video camera in their pocket, a massively popular trend in 2023 has been user-generated content.
User-generated content is any kind of content that has been created by your customers or fans. This can include things like product reviews, social media posts, and blog comments.
UGC is a powerful marketing tool because it helps build trust and credibility with potential customers. In fact, 92% of consumers say they trust UGC as much as they trust recommendations from friends and family.
To start leveraging UGC, you can create a hashtag for your brand and encourage customers to use it when they post about your products. You can also showcase UGC on your website or social media platforms.
Finally, make sure to respond to any negative UGC in a constructive way. This will show potential customers that you are committed to providing a good experience for all of your customers.
By leveraging UGC, you can build trust and credibility with potential customers, which can lead to more sales for your business.
6. Collaborate with other businesses
One of the habits in Stephen Covey’s leadership masterpiece, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, is to “think win-win.”
A great way to do this is to collaborate with other like-minded businesses in a way that’s mutually beneficial. There are tons of ways to do this, but here are just a few.
One option is to partner with another business in your niche and co-host an event or webinar. This will allow you to reach the other business’s audience, as well as generate new leads for your business.
Another option is to collaborate with a complementary business on a joint marketing campaign. This can include things like co-branded content, social media posts, and email marketing campaigns.
Finally, you can guest blog on each other’s websites. This helps build real relationships, get in front of each other’s audiences, and earn those sweet backlinks for SEO.
7. Offer discounts and coupons
Discounts and coupons are a great way to attract customers to your eCommerce store.
In fact, according to Criteo, 93% of U.S. shoppers cite discounts and offers as important factors when deciding whether or not to purchase from a retailer or brand.
Discounts also allow you to get customers initially in the door at the lower price point and then continue to sell to them over the long haul. If you have enough historical data to work with, you can even do the calculations to understand how much of an initial product discount you can offer and still have a profitable relationship over time.
8. Incentivize your customers to share their experiences
One way to attract customers to your eCommerce store is by incentivizing them to share their experiences with your brand.
This can be done by offering discounts, coupons, or even free products in exchange for a social media post or online review. By incentivizing your customers to share their experiences, you can reach a wider audience and attract new customers to your eCommerce store.
You can also create referral programs that give customers a discount when they refer a friend or family member.
Just make sure you fully understand the terms of certain platforms. For example, Google expressly forbids soliciting reviews on Google My Business in exchange for a discount or monetary gift.
This doesn’t mean, however, that you can apply this tactic on your own site.
9. Participate in trade shows and events
Another great way to attract customers to your eCommerce store is by participating in trade shows and events.
This is a great way to network with other businesses and reach a new audience. You can also participate in online events, such as webinars and Twitter chats.
Not sure where to find relevant trade shows? There are a number of trade show listing sites online for you to start your search, including Events in America and The Tradeshow Calendar.
10. Streamline your checkout process
Even the best website’s can be ruined by a terrible checkout process. In fact, according to Baymard Institute, the average cart abandonment rate is 69.99%. That’s practically 70% of potential sales going straight down the tubes!
There are a few things you can do to streamline your checkout process and reduce abandoned carts. First, make sure your checkout process is easy to understand and user-friendly. You can test this by performing some usability tests on friends and family and watching how they interact with the site.
Second, offer multiple payment options, such as PayPal and even crypto, if you can. And third, eliminate any unnecessary form fields in the checkout process.
You can also configure Google Analytics to see all the steps in your checkout funnel and determine where your audience is dropping off. Then, you can study those particular pages and make changes to improve your conversion rate.
By streamlining your checkout process, you can reduce abandoned carts and attract new customers to your eCommerce store.
Additionally, if you can capture any information prior to checkout, such as email or phone number, you can try reaching out to customers with abandoned carts and try to get their sale across the finish line.
11. Dial in your product pages
The product page is by far the most important thing to get right on an eCommerce website. There are a few critical things every product page should have, including, but not limited to:
- A high-quality photo
- Detailed product descriptions
- Customer reviews
- Related products
If you’re not sure where to start, you can study competitor websites and see what they’re doing right (and wrong). You can also look at examples of well-designed product pages to get inspiration.
12. Include a video on your website’s home page
Videos are a great way to attract customers to your eCommerce store. In fact, according to 2023 data from Wyzowl, 87% of marketers say video has helped them increase traffic to their site.
The most common video types are explainer videos, which work really well for articulating the benefits of your business in an entertaining and informative way.
By including a video on your website’s home page, you can reach a new audience and attract new customers to your eCommerce store.
13. Make sure that key information is easy to find
When potential customers visit your eCommerce store, you want to make sure that they can easily find the information they’re looking for. This includes things like your contact information, shipping information, and return policy.
By making sure that key information is easy to find, you can reduce friction and increase conversions.
14. Add an element of interactivity to your website
Adding an element of interactivity to your website is a great way to engage potential customers and attract them to your eCommerce store. This can be done by adding quizzes, surveys, or even games.
For example, you could add a quiz to your website that helps potential customers find the right product for their needs. Or, you could add a survey to collect feedback from your customers.
By adding an element of interactivity to your website, you can engage potential customers and create a better user experience.
Quizzes can also serve as excellent lead magnets!
15. Conduct A/B testing
A/B testing is a great way to improve your website and attract new customers to your eCommerce store. A/B testing involves creating two versions of your website (or of a particular landing page) and testing which one performs better.
Some helpful tools for A/B testing are Google Optimize and Optimizely. These tools will help you create different versions of your website, track the results, and determine which version is more effective. Small wins quickly add up to large profits over time, so even the smallest incremental conversion win counts!
16. Participate in online communities
Another low-budget way to attract new customers to your eCommerce store is by participating in online communities.
This involves joining relevant forums and groups and answering questions that potential customers might have.
Some great places to start are Quora and Reddit. Just do a keyword search for your niche and start answering questions and offering value.
You can also do a Google search for “your keyword” + forum to find relevant communities with which to engage. This is not only a great way to find your customers but also a great place to continue learning and adapting your company to meet the market’s growing needs over time.
Final thoughts
By following the tips we’ve provided, you will attract new customers to your eCommerce store in 2023 and beyond.
We know it’s easy to be overwhelmed, but if you just take one of these at a time and implement them into your marketing strategy, you’ll be on the right track in no time.
If you need a clear-cut way to get started, here’s what we recommend:
- Make sure your website is well-optimized for speed and search
- Dial in the UX/UI of your product pages
- Start creating regular pieces of well-researched content based on your niche
- Start contributing to online forums and communities like Reddit, Quora, and Facebook
Once your customer reviews start rolling in, you can use those as social proof on your website and across your marketing channels. If you don’t have any reviews yet, consider running a contest or promotion to jumpstart the process.
And for more information on building and growing your eCommerce business, be sure to subscribe to our blog and check out these other related posts:
