How To Get More Traffic To My Online Store From Instagram

Shop owners everywhere are asking, “how do I get more traffic to my store website from Instagram?” In fact, it’s one of the top questions we get asked when consulting with shop owners to improve their website, traffic, and sales.

Now, let’s preface this by letting you know we’re NOT Instagram experts, but we are website experts and tend to get really nerdy about organic traffic

*We get all of our Instagram knowledge from Nicole at Lattes for Lunch! She’s brilliant. We’ve worked with her to build my own Instagram strategy and highly recommend her to anyone who asks.

Instagram is a very different platform than other social media channels in terms of the way you share content. On other social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, or Linked In when you share a link to a website it shows up in your feed and when someone clicks on it they are taken to that website. It’s easy for someone to click over to another website if they come across a link.

This is not the case for Instagram. On Instagram there is only one link in your profile, no links are included on your posts except for hashtags which only lead you to other posts on the platform, not away from the platform. We all know just how easy it is to get caught in a loop of hashtag jumping on Instagram. This is much like the way YouTube is set up. It’s really easy to go down a rabbit hole of videos, right?

They want you to stay on the platform!

It’s much harder to get clicks on Instagram than it is on Facebook because that’s how it’s designed! Conversion rates on Instagram are much lower than most other platforms. According to Forbes, the conversion rate on Instagram is around 3% while Facebook is at almost 5%.

Here are some more really great Instagram statistics from Sprout Social. 

Now that we’ve gotten some of the background info down, let’s talk about how to improve your traffic to your shop. 

Since it takes more effort on the part of the shopper to get to your website from Instagram than it does on other platforms, we have to try just a bit more to bump up that conversion rate.

Here are three strategies to help you get more traffic to your store from Instagram.

Focus less on getting sales and more on engagement. (It does lead to more sales, we promise!)

Your Instagram should feel more like a community and less like a catalog. When you create posts that create engagement, you are really creating fans of your business. 

From personal experience, I was following a wonderful soap maker for months. We chatted via DMs about nothing in particular for a while. And then, and I honestly can’t tell you how it happened, but one day she offered me a sample of her soap and I became hooked. I’ve since placed several orders. She treated me like a human and with so much kindness. Went WAY above and beyond. And now has a lifetime fan and customer. It didn’t start with a sale. It started with engagement. 

Shout out to Amber from Am Happy Soap! 

Give them a reason to go to your website even if they don’t intend to purchase anything.

We see too many posts that say “go check it out on my website” when there’s really no reason to visit the website unless the shopper wanted to make the purchase. If I’m not ready to buy, then obviously I wouldn't click over to your website. This means we need to give them a reason to go to the website, even if they are NOT purchasing today.

Here’s a really great example from Encircled. With this post, they are adding value to their customers, even if they aren’t buying. 

Create a sense of urgency so take action now instead of continuing their scroll.

Horse Feather Gifts does a really great job using urgency to get shoppers to visit their website immediately. This sets the expectation for shoppers to know they need to click over right away. 

There are a lot of different ways to get people interested so they click over to your site. You just need to get creative and give them a reason to want to do so. 

Humans don’t do things unless they have a reason!

You might also like this blog post: Five Simple Strategies for More Traffic to Your Blog.

Don’t be afraid to test out different things to help you get more traffic to your online store from Instagram. If you aren’t seeing the results you’d like, mix it up and try something else. You can always go back to the old way of doing something. Social media is the perfect place to experiment because in a couple of hours it will be forgotten and replaced by standing brooms. 

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