Convert More Paid Traffic—9 Strategies That Always Work (eCommerce)

While paid ads have proven successful in driving traffic to websites, leads from paid traffic tend to be a lot more hesitant when compared to other channels. This is because they might be skeptical about your brand, product, or even pricing.

In this article, we’ll be sharing nine strategies you can implement in your next campaign.

Here are 9 ways you can get more paid traffic to convert on your eCommerce store.

9 Paid Traffic eCommerce Strategies for Repeat Conversions

1. Align your ads with your landing pages

The typical bounce rate for landing pages is between 60-80% and that’s because 77% of these landing pages are homepages.

Put simply, each landing page should uniquely reflect what a paid ad states in the Google search results.

Here are a few things you’ll have to watch out for:

✅ How well the meta description and meta tag capture the landing page’s content

✅ How well the meta description captures the USP of your brand/ product & sets it apart

✅ How well the landing page delivers on the overall experience for visitors to convert

When we were looking for “athleisure on sale” to explore paid traffic eCommerce, we found (and felt excited about the deal):

But when we went into the landing page, all we found was the following with no iteration of the flash sale or the discount that may be automatically applied:

What we’d have liked to see:

✅ Flash sale info in the first fold

✅ Any discount code that may be applicable

✅ Any other ongoing offers in the 2nd or 3rd scroll to keep us on the site

Pro Tip: If your product ad is about a specific product, ensure the landing page is the product page—similarly, your discount ads need to be connected to pages where microcopy states the discount is auto-applied.

2. Make paid copy target high user intent

Across the internet, you’ll find advice like “write killer headlines” or “talk about your USP” to guide how copy under eCommerce PPC management should flow.

However, it’s not as simple and we’ve got three paid ad results from the same search term “best vegan lipstick in UK” to elaborate on:

For each, a different set of factors is working to convert—but look carefully and you’ll see the third result serves TG intent the best:

✅ It assures shoppers the brand’s products are “always vegan…”

✅ It talks more about the brand—and in effect is able to relay to users what they can expect on-site

✅ Microcopy drives confidence in the business’ authenticity as well as offers links that can be off assistance to people ready to buy

3. Offer “more” on the landing page than the ad

While alignment between paid ad and landing page is absolutely essential for paid traffic marketing success, enriching the latter with savings, quizzes or even urgency nudges could inspire more conversions.

When we went looking for “ best portable cooking stoves in the US,” the following popped up:

Walmart paid traffic ad on portable cooking stoves

So we were definitely prepared for a lot of variety when we got to the category page that was serving as the paid ad landing page. What we didn’t expect was:

✅ Social proof labels to drive confidence

Walmart paid traffic ad landing page with urgency nudges

✅ Great price slashes on some of their bestsellers

✅ Free shipping nudges applicable on several products

4. On-site UX that delivers the brand promise

In your eCommerce PPC strategy, you’re likely to forget on-site UX to enable paid traffic conversions.

But what the visitor is able to see and do to make sense of your brand, will decide if they’ll convert.

When we looked for “handcrafted fine rings in the US” and came across Misahara’s landing page, we saw how many UX aspects this eCommerce jewelry brand had gotten right:

✅ Easy filtering and sorting methods (especially if your landing page is also a category page)

✅ Limited navigation links in the main menu (Misahara centralizes their “about us” and “stories” pages to create customer trust

✅ Live chat that answers several questions a first-time customer may have

✅ A social wall for visitors who’d rather get into micro-conversions before converting

Misahara paid traffic ad landing category page of bestsellers

Other UX aspects that your eCommerce brand will need to convert paid traffic:

✅ Few distractions—this includes too many deals set up as categories

✅ Long-term benefits—highlighting membership rewards is a good way to go

✅ Review snapshot panel—even third-party review validation from names like TrustPilot works, having mentioned the total number of reviews your brand has received

5. Prioritize UVP as much as USP

If you say “skincare made from the most natural ingredients, sourced only locally and authentically,” you’re leaving it at the USP—but if you say something like “naturally good skincare tested to give you maximum nourishment through the seasons,” you’ve moved a few notches up to the UVP.

Highlighting the UVP in your eCommerce paid search begins with how your Google or Facebook ads read.

The next step is to optimize the copy the visitors first see when they arrive on your site.

When we went looking for “outdoor gear for dry cold in US,” we found Truma’s paid search listing clearly elaborate the UVP:

Truma paid traffic ad copy features UVP clearly

What’s better, when we reached their site, it reiterated the UVP to create greater assurance for us to scroll and explore:

Truma paid traffic ad landing page copy features UVP clearly

You might like to read: eCommerce copywriting: 22 inspiring examples from the US

6. Get your retargeting strategy sorted

For your paid traffic marketing to work after visitors land up on your site, the ad they see should have been worthwhile.

If you’ve been running a retargeting campaign, showing the same ad to the same visitors multiple times, it’s time to stop.

According to research, if a paid eCommerce ad shows up more than 5 times, it becomes annoying and intrusive—more than 10 times, anger becomes the leading emotion.

Here are a few aspects to remember while setting your retargeting ads in place:

✅ Show a repeat of products not more than thrice

✅ If you’re retargeting them for cart abandonment, ensure you reach out with a limited time offer

✅ For top of the funnel visitors, keep your retargeting restricted to products similar to the ones they may have searched

✅ For more mature visitors, your retargeting ads can explore limited edition product drops and even exclusive bundling opportunities

7. Offer more reasons to engage & micro-convert

Sure there’s a kind of pressure to deliver on your paid search optimization efforts, but don’t be in a tearing hurry to convert such traffic.

This can mislead you to focus on offering only great deals on your website—instead pay attention to what you’re showing them to convert in smaller steps:

✅ How you help them sign up on your email list—the quality of pop-up content will matter a lot

✅ How you help them arrive at a great product or deal—show funnel quizzes that can narrow down their search

✅ How you help them discover all the different ways your brand & products can make a difference—a blog / resources section that builds awareness and deepens understanding can be great

✅ How you help them know how to leverage long-term benefits—a separate website section or page on loyalty programs could set them on the conversion path

8. Collab with influencers in your category

There’s a good reason why 72% of marketers used Instagram for influencer marketing in 2022—and seeing the results, 17% invested in this form of paid promotion in 2023.

A great example of this is how Caruselle created a partnership between influencers and Radha beauty products. After running traffic-optimized social ads, they were able to exceed their traffic and conversion goals by 15%.

On the other hand, eCommerce brand Mejuri ensures they showcase both major and more micro influencers on Instagram, making their posts shoppable—here’s an example of the singer Reneé Rapp wearing Mejuri products as part of a paid collaboration:

Mejuri shoppable Instagram post using influencer marketing paid collaboration

Here are a few things to remember while trying to convert paid traffic through influencers:

✅ Create relevant #hashtags for wider reach—you can even use these in your social media ads and meta tags to improve recall

✅ Create a separate category page for this influencer on your site—showcase products across price points here

✅ Experiment with “account takeovers” to drive more of the said influencer’s traffic to your site

9. Make it super easy to move towards checkout

For your eCommerce PPC strategy to fly, it’s important that your paid visitors find least friction on their journey.

Create a checkout flow that features the following capabilities:

✅ Make it easy to add products across the site—feature “add to cart” buttons right from the homepage

✅ Show a product recommendations pop-up but also make sure there’s a CTA there for visitors to click

✅ Show a secondary CTA of a popular payment method on the product page, cart and checkout

✅ Promote trust badges where they’re easily visible—locking them away in the footer until checkout might be a bad idea

✅ Make forms super short and limited to name, email, phone number and shipping address

Convert More Paid Traffic—9 Strategies That Always Work (eCommerce)

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