If you are asking how to get traffic to your online store, the first answer is a narrower question: traffic from whom? A thousand visitors who were never going to buy cost you time and, if you paid for them, money. A hundred people looking for exactly what you sell can keep a small store busy.
This guide is about bringing the right people to the store. If people already arrive but do not buy, that is a different problem with different checks, covered in website traffic but no sales. It is worth knowing which one you have before you spend on more visitors.
A quick test: if your store already gets a steady flow of visitors but very few orders, look at that first. More traffic into a store that does not convert only makes the leak bigger.
Check who you need to reach
Write down the customer before you choose the channel. Three things matter most for traffic.
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What they are doing when they could find you.
Searching for a solution, scrolling for entertainment, reading a review, asking a friend or browsing a marketplace. Each points to a different channel.
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Whether they already know the product exists.
Someone searching for ‘refillable deodorant’ knows what they want. Someone who has never considered it has to be shown it first.
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What makes them trust a store they have not heard of.
Reviews, a recommendation from someone they follow, a stockist they already use, or a clear returns policy. The trust signal your customer relies on shapes which channel will convert.
Then check the product against the customer. Channels behave differently for a $25 impulse buy and a $600 considered purchase. The cheaper product needs reach and a fast decision. The expensive one needs more information and often several visits before anyone buys.
Two stores, two different traffic problems
Store A sells replacement parts for a common coffee machine. Its customers search by model number when something breaks. They know exactly what they need, so the traffic question is: are we visible when they search?
Store B sells hand-printed linen tea towels. Nobody searches for them by name. People buy when they see them, often as a gift, so the traffic question is: how do we get the product in front of people who like this kind of thing?
Same goal, more of the right visitors, and almost opposite first channels. Hypothetical stores for illustration.
Compare paid, organic and partner channels
Most traffic sources fall into three families. Paid channels buy attention. Organic channels earn it over time. Partner channels borrow it from someone else’s audience. Email and SMS sit alongside them as owned channels: they bring back people you have already reached.
| Channel | How it brings visitors | What it needs from you | Main trade-off |
|---|---|---|---|
| Search ads | Shows your ads or products when people search | Budget, accurate product information, pages that match the search | Limited to demand that already exists; costs rise with competition |
| Social ads, such as Facebook and Instagram | Shows ads to people chosen by interests and behaviour | A steady supply of creative, budget and a clear offer | Can create demand, but only if the creative earns attention |
| Organic search | Your pages appear for the terms shoppers use | Useful product, category and guide content, technical care and time | Slow to build, with no certainty of results; tends to last when it works |
| Organic social | Posts reach followers and sometimes new people | Regular content and time to engage | Reach is unpredictable and depends on platform decisions |
| Creators and affiliates | Someone trusted recommends you to their audience | Samples, fees or commission, a clear brief and tracked links | Results vary widely by partner and are hard to predict |
| Stockists, collaborations and PR | Another brand, retailer or publication introduces you | Relationships, wholesale margin or a story worth telling | Slow to arrange; the effect often comes in bursts |
| Marketplaces | Shoppers find you inside the marketplace’s own search | Listings, fees, stock and service to the marketplace’s rules | The traffic is theirs; margin and customer data may be limited |
| Email and SMS | Brings back subscribers and past customers | A list, permission to contact people, useful messages | Only reaches people you already have |
General characteristics, not measured costs or results. Platform features change, so check current platform documentation before planning around a specific one.
No row wins in general. Search ads suit Store A above and would struggle for Store B, because nobody is searching. Social ads suit Store B, provided the creative is good enough to stop someone mid-scroll. For a closer comparison of the two largest paid options, see Google Ads vs Meta Ads.
One point is easy to miss: the channels feed each other. Someone may see a social ad, search for your brand a week later and finally buy from an email. That makes it hard to credit any single channel, and it is one reason to judge traffic by what happens in your store rather than by each platform’s own report.
The same applies to a Shopify store or any other platform. The store software matters far less to traffic than who you are trying to reach and what you give them a reason to click on.
Match the channel to your time and budget
The channel that fits the customer also has to fit the business. Two resources decide it: cash and hours.
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More cash than time.
Paid channels let you buy reach quickly. The risk is spending before you know whether a visitor is worth what you pay, so set a capped test budget first.
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More time than cash.
Organic search, organic social, partnerships and PR cost mostly effort. They are slower, so plan in months rather than weeks, and keep going long enough to see whether they work.
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Short of both.
Pick one channel and do it properly. Email to people who already know you and one well-chosen partner relationship often need the least of either.
Before you pay for visitors, work out what one is worth. Take what a first order leaves you after product, shipping and fees (your contribution per order) and multiply it by the share of visitors who buy. The result is roughly the most a visitor can cost before you lose money on the first order.
What a visitor is worth
A store makes $36 contribution on an average first order. Across its last few hundred visitors from a similar source, about 1 in 100 bought.
Each visitor is worth about $0.36 on the first order ($36 × 1%). Paying $0.80 a click loses money on first orders unless something else changes: a larger average order, more visitors buying, or repeat purchases the business can afford to wait for.
Hypothetical figures for illustration. With only a few hundred visitors, the 1 in 100 is a rough estimate, not a fixed rate.
This is why budget planning comes before buying traffic. How to set an ecommerce marketing budget shows how to include creative, people and testing alongside media, and building an ecommerce marketing plan shows how to fit your chosen channel into a plan with owners, dates and a stop rule.
Measure visits that lead to useful action
Traffic is a means, not a result. For each source, the useful question is what those visitors did next.
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Tag your links
Add consistent campaign tags (UTM parameters) to links in ads, emails, partner posts and social profiles, so your analytics can tell sources apart. Agree a naming pattern and stick to it.
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Choose the actions that matter
Orders first. Then the steps that lead to them: product views, add to cart, checkout started, email sign-up. Treat likes and raw visit counts as supporting signals only.
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Compare sources on the same basis
Look at orders, revenue and contribution by source over the same period, using your store’s own order records as the base. Platform reports often claim the same order more than once.
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Allow for small numbers
If a source has sent a few hundred visitors and two orders, you do not yet know how well it converts. One order more or fewer changes the picture a great deal.
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Review on a fixed date
Decide in advance when you will look and what would make you continue, change or stop. It prevents a slow week from ending a good test early, or a lucky week from funding a weak one.
If a source brings engaged visitors who look at products and add to cart, then drop out, the traffic may be fine and the problem sits further along. That is where website traffic but no sales takes over.
More traffic is worth having when you know what a visitor is worth and which visitors buy. Start with one channel that fits your customer, measure it against orders, and add the next only when the first is working or has clearly shown it will not. The resource hub has guides on each channel.
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About the author
Mareike NiedermeierMareike Niedermeier is the founder and CEO of Sales Savvy Online and the creator of Survivable Distance, a theory of ecommerce viability. Since 2019 her team has worked with more than 200 ecommerce brands. The Australian Business Journal named her a Top Ten Marketer in Australia.
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