You are doing your best inventing killer promos, ordering bright banners, you even launched a contextual advertising campaign, but the sales stay low. This article provides answers (yes, several ones) to the main question of any business.
Gap Analysis
If your website does not sell, then something went wrong (с). Our task is to find out what it is. Fortunately, when it comes to websites, everything follows a quite evident logic, and you need to search in one of the next three directions:
- Number of traffic channels
- Marketing of a business/product/service
- How clear and user-friendly the website is
All specific causes you may surface originate from this triad one way or the other. If you just consider launching your website, place your primary focus on these directions.
Based on our own experience and common problems our clients face when trying to sell via their websites, we set aside 5 basic reasons why this happens.
Reason 1: Too low number of traffic attraction channels
Companies often use one or two channels complaining that this results in a small number of visitors. Such complains are groundless because a more or less acceptable portfolio of traffic attraction channels includes:
- SEO
- Publishing articles containing active links to the website on popular third-party platforms
- A campaign of targeted advertising on social media
- Contextual and targeted advertising
- Traffic from own accounts and groups
- Working with aggregators and advertisement boards
- Blogger involvement
All these put together provide for a good flow of visitors making it possible to talk about the significant growth of sales conversion. It is obvious that 1 website and a launched contextual advertising campaign cannot deliver such flow rendering only unsatisfactory results.
To summarize, analyze the efficiency of those attraction channels you are currently using. Stop focusing on dead ones. Instead, develop those of them that are growing. If you have 1 or 2 sources, increase their number gradually since you can hardly immediately handle 5 or 6 sources as this requires various competencies and the cost is much higher. For example, bloggers are expensive; collaborating with influencers is a luxury not everyone can afford.
Reason 2: Poor marketing
Probably, this reason should be at the top of the list. This story is global: were you negligent or made a mistake describing the target audience profile? Then, you positioned the product/service incorrectly and used the wrong unique selling point (USP) and advantages resulting in declining or even missing orders.
So, what should I do?!
Start from the very beginning. First of all, studying the target audience, and its needs with respect to your product/service is the basic principle for the selection. Then define a unique selling proposition (USP) and offers to potential customers.
Second, analyze your competitors thoroughly. But, mind you, consider competitors operating online. Top positions in the search results for competitors, even large ones, working offline are far from being certain. Your major task is to find companies directly competing with you in search results in order to understand the criteria where they are ahead of you.
Of course, marketing is a much larger matter than we described here. You often have to reevaluate the product itself to see, for example, if it is positioned correctly or, possibly, it is designed for another target audience. It sounds a bit complex, but you can handle it yourself or involve experts.
Reason 3: Low usability website
On one hand, this is a rather subjective criterion (one may find its usability good, while another would think it is terrible), but on the other hand, it is the most objective one (no result means low usability). One certain thing is that you should work through the Customer Journey Map (CJM) thoroughly.
CJM is the critical thing as it determines how quickly the user gets to their target action page, for example, the page of the required product or payment page. Besides, a such page is not necessarily an order page. The convenience of obtaining important information, finding out delivery terms, etc. is also important. Conversion is in direct dependence on CJM. The shorter and easier CJM is, the larger number of orders you get. Vice versa is also true: the more difficult it is to sign up and check out, the fewer sales you have.
We have gathered several critical aspects affecting the quality of the customer journey. Remember!
- Your website should be fully adapted to mobile devices. The largest portion of the traffic comes from users of such gadgets, so, any website should display and operate correctly on smartphones and tablets.
- Excessive animation, advertisement, and pup up banners. The more distractions you have, the higher the risk of the visitor leaving the website.
- Font. The unreadable text is entirely unacceptable.
- UX. User experience means creating graphic interfaces that are as clear and convenient for the user as possible. This is not just a matter of design (shape of buttons, the display, etc.); it is also an intuitive understanding of the operation performed by this control. This may be button text calling for target actions like Buy, Order, Submit Contacts, etc., links to the next pages at the bottom of the current one, breadcrumbs, etc.
- The website should load quickly both on computers and mobile devices.
Reason 4: Low-quality visual content
You would think it is obvious that a high-quality photo and video are a must on a good-selling website. In reality, this situation is far from common, and the reason is understandable: good content is very expensive. However, we strongly recommend you invest in it. Nice visuals mean a lot for the first impression, so, the conversion is higher when they are available.
Reason 5: Poor user communication
The ability to contact a company representative, find out the required information, and appoint an exact call time, are the things that must be closely considered when implementing a solid sales process. So, make sure they are as much convenient and noticeable as possible. For example:
- Provide the ability to call a manager directly from the website by clicking the phone number in the Contacts section.
- A widget allowing you to clarify details with a manager online is a must.
- Specify the time when your manager is going to contact the client in the contact collection modal. For example, “Thank you, we are going to call you within an hour.”
- Long response time. This should be addressed on a first-priority basis. Imagine a client studying a washing machine model but its card is missing the country of origin. The client asks this question in the widget chat and gets the answer only the next day. By that time, the washing machine had already been bought elsewhere, of course.
Audit is Crucial
Selling properties of any website for sales should be regularly audited either by you (provided you have the required competencies) or by contracted professionals. Make sure to correct any shortcomings discovered by such an audit. If you have any new theories or ideas, test them. Of course, the 5 reasons we described are not a complete list of causes making the website selling potential decrease. However, these should provide sufficient information to understand what is wrong with your website.
