Hi Reader,
I want to round off our series (email one | email two) about deciding what to prioritize for your online shop by considering exceptions to the general rules.
Low Traffic
For businesses that get less than 5000 visitors a month (or match some of the other indicators in my second email), I said your priority should be growing your traffic to build a customer base online. When would you want to have a different priority?
Other priorities if you have low traffic:
- Build a website if you don't have one.
- Migrate your website if you're on a platform that's not great for ecommerce, like Squarespace or Wix.
- Set up a mailing list and email marketing strategy so you can keep engaging with more of the visitors you get.
- Work on your brand if it's letting you down.
- If you've run a retail business before, you often can skip over beginner steps and jump into more advanced strategies.
It's important to drive traffic, but you also want to be prepared for it.
How Aeolidia can help you get traffic:
Aeolidia's SEO expert is personable, smart, and his reports are simple to understand and implement. His suggestions work! I hired him myself, and our on-site SEO now drives a substantial amount of Google traffic.
We offer SEO consultation, or we have a "done for you" service. If migrating to Shopify or redesigning your site are on your near-future goal list, I'd recommend doing that first because you won't have to redo or copy over any of the SEO work. Keep in mind that SEO is important and it's going to take a long time for you to start seeing the results of the work—sometimes up to a year. This isn't a quick way to get traffic, though it is vital.
For shorter-term methods of getting traffic, there's a lot you can do for yourself at the start. If you'd like help, you may want to hire a marketing agency or advertising agency.
How Aeolidia can help you with other priorities:
Over the last few years, we have created fast and affordable services for lower-traffic shops. We want you to get a strong start. We can build your site, migrate your products from another platform, or redesign a poorly working site. Our Klaviyo email marketing service prepares you to start building your customer base and staying in touch with them automatically. Grab our rate sheet here.
Medium Traffic
For businesses that get between 5,000 and 100,000 visitors a month (or match some of the other indicators in my second email), I said your priority should be to optimize your site and keep customers engaged. When would you want to have a different priority?
Other priorities if you have medium traffic:
- If your site is already converting very well, you have a strong average order value, and everything else is going fine, you could focus on sending even more traffic to your site until you reach the tipping point where you want to always be optimizing.
- If you don't have the current ability to scale your inventory or your team, you may not want to make any big moves with your website just yet. You may want to grow the back end of your ecommerce business so you can then shift back to improving the site and growing traffic.
- Maybe the website truly is "good enough" for a minute while you grow another channel, like wholesale or in-store sales.
If you have this kind of momentum, though, it's almost always a good idea to keep it going. That's why shop owners at this stage usually juggle multiple priorities, including the site.
How Aeolidia can help you get traffic:
We can work on your SEO, as mentioned above, and we can refer you to our partner agency to grow your traffic through paid ads.
How Aeolidia can help you with other priorities:
Like I mentioned in my last email, this sweet spot is where we thrive! Nearly everything we do is built for your business. If you're not sure what would be the best use of your time and money, we'd be glad to get on a call and talk it through with you. We'll never recommend a project that we don't think would be a smart move for your shop. Grab our rate sheet here, and click the link in the email we send to schedule your call.
High Traffic
For businesses that get over 100,000 visitors a month (or match some of the other indicators in my second email), I said your priority should be to fine-tune and test to increase ROAS and LTV. When would you want to have a different priority?
Other priorities if you have high traffic:
- Emergencies, I guess? It's really just a crime to neglect your site if you're getting this much traffic, because almost anything you do can have a huge payoff.
How Aeolidia can help you get even more traffic:
As mentioned above, we can work on your SEO and refer you to our partner agency if you don't have an ad agency you're happy with.
How Aeolidia can help you with other priorities:
There is so much we can help with here! Aside from digging into your analytics and testing to ensure that all your traffic-generating efforts are paying off, we also know what works for other businesses at this level and can share those ideas and strategies in a way that will be unique to your business and your customers.
I hope you will email me back if your very busy website is outdated or not performing at its peak. We would love to discuss what we do for brands that don't have trouble attracting customers. Hit reply now, if you'd like, and I will send over more info and a link to schedule a call.
