Top Ecommerce Traffic Sources
One of the advantages of running an ecommerce business is that there are many ways to attract buyers to your online store. Whether it’s through social media posts, paid ads on search engines, or email marketing, each of these ecommerce traffic sources carries great potential to increase your website traffic.
However, not all ecommerce traffic sources are made equal. Here’s a look at the top traffic sources of online businesses and their effectiveness at attracting traffic.
Top ecommerce traffic sources
According to a recent study, direct traffic tops the list of the best traffic sources. This is when visitors arrive at an online store by typing the store’s website directly into their browser’s search bar, as opposed to having arrived by clicking on a link. More than one in four (27%) visits to an online store come from direct traffic.
Given the high percentage of direct traffic, ecommerce owners may want to keep their store name and URL short and sweet. This prevents consumers from forgetting it and committing typos. Business name generator tools can provide inspiration, but it’s ultimately up to ecommerce store owners to make sure their brand name is memorable.
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Second on the list of the top ecommerce traffic sources is organic SEO. This refers to traffic coming from the results of search engines that aren’t paid for. As much as 22% of the total traffic to online stores comes from organic SEO. Before creating content for your store’s website, whether that’s the home page, product pages, or blog posts, doing keyword research tells you what consumers are searching for so you can incorporate them into your content.
The third-best traffic source for online stores is paid search engine ads. These are online advertisements that are highlighted on search engine results pages for better visibility. Nineteen percent of all ecommerce store traffic comes from paid search ads.
This is followed by links embedded in emails. Five percent of ecommerce traffic comes from email links. While this number may not be as high as that of other types of ecommerce traffic sources, it is still significant enough for businesses to focus on. This is especially true if your store is receiving hundreds of thousands of visits per month.
Social media is also a great source of traffic for ecommerce stores. Four percent of an online store’s traffic comes from paid ads on social media sites, and 1% of them comes from organic social media posts.