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Exponential growth of an e-commerce site: myth or reality?

PentaGuy
PentaGuy
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As we already know it by now, mobile is the future of web traffic. According to a recent Ericsson Mobility Report, “By 2022, there will be 12 times more mobile data traffic in Central & Eastern Europe and Middle East & Africa (CEMA)”.

When deciding to increase traffic on one’s site, the first logical step would be to target your website’s mobile potential. But this is not necessarily the best way to go. While working on an e-marketing consulting project for an e-commerce site, we decided to first focus on an audit of the traffic channels.

Quick reminder of the potential of each channel (the Air France and Blablacar case studies):

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The above image contains the main traffic sources used by e-commerce sites (important market players). In what follows, we are going to analyze the potential of each channel to produce an exponential growth:

– Direct traffic
Direct traffic can have an exponential increase following a viral marketing campaign or if large promotion budgets are used. This channel directly emphasizes brand power. Most of the traffic falling into this category indicates the existence of a powerful brand. A comparative study can also show whether the brand can conquer other areas as well or if it is already saturated and must target other niches. Special attention should be paid to this category. If the Google Analytics tracking code is not correctly set, this category can include other typologies of traffic as well.

– Referral traffic
This channel is not dedicated to the exponential growth of website traffic. It directly points to the power of each brand’s partners. A very high volume indicates a high conversion rate. Normally, traffic generated by partners is already qualified. Attention should be paid to the spamming traffic included into this category by Google Analytics.

– Organic traffic
The potential of this channel is to be seen in the long term. It can exponentially increase if indexation obstacles are overcome. This channel indicates the size of a website and its bounce rate. A highly performing site has a low bounce rate and it is thus really relevant and well positioned.

– Social traffic
The potential of this channel is by default viral. Social traffic can exponentially increase but the main obstacle resides in the quality and the conversion rate. Paid social traffic can increase the impact of a campaign.

– Emailing traffic
Emailing traffic is mainly used for lead nurturing and remarketing. The potential of exponential growth is not too high.

– Display traffic
Display traffic and, by extension, paid traffic can exponentially increase traffic on short term.

Audit to increase
Following an audit of the existing traffic sources, we came up with a growth strategy based on the activation of each channel in order to optimize each type of traffic.

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The above image illustrates the growth of the pages indexed for our client’s site. As indicated, this channel is not famous for the quality of going viral, but if activated the right way, it can bring an exponential growth. E-commerce sites contain many pages (going from 100 000 to several millions), but the way the site is built also requires the use of different filters and sections. An incorrect setting of these elements might directly impact the volume of indexed pages. Our site soon reached 761 380 indexed pages in only 9 months starting with almost nothing. Exponential growth continues following several optimization methods such as:

– Creation of UX and SEO optimized pages, depending on the users’ search. For example, the search for apartments in Paris is most often than not pretty specific. By dynamically creating pages for each search, we emphasized the potential of exponential growth.
– Optimization of the internal structure in order to maximize the indexing of the entire content available on the site.
– Optimization of the bounce rate, by offering the chance to customize results that depend on all the preferences of each user.
– Counting on mobile traffic for the campaigns used to attract new traffic.

Total traffic also shows the same growth curves. Mobile traffic had the highest impact in terms of generating new traffic and the UX optimization improved the bounce rate.

Exponential growth in 5 steps
Each site can benefit from its own potential if you follow the steps below:

1. Audit of the potential of each traffic source
2. Audit of the site’s indexing
3. Optimization of the channels with a high exponential value
4. Continuous UX optimization
5. Concentration on mobile traffic

The living proof: our client’s site went from around 12 000 visits per month to an average of 116 000 visits per month. By complying with the 5 development steps of a growth strategy, the site can become more important and benefit from all the existing potential.

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Site growth also has an important impact on the acquisition of new clients and brand development. In order to boost your site’s traffic and optimize the presence of your brand online, don’t hesitate to contact our commercial team.


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