But not a sale in sight !!!
Many clients are often impressed by the level of traffic that their website is receiving. It’s a very similar principal to walking down the high street and seeing a busy shop. “Wow they must be raking it in”. Well the shop may be busy but how long is the queue at the cash tills? In a nutshell, people may be attracted to go in the front door, but are they buying goods?
The website is no different in this respect; high numbers of visitors do not equate to a high number of sales. So what are some the key barriers which stop your visitors making a purchase?
Navigation – can I find the product I want?
Price – not just the product price, think about the addition of VAT as well as any delivery charges which may be added during the checkout process. How much has that added to the customer’s inital outlay?
Poor Images – would you buy a product if you can’t see it?
Poor Descriptions – I want to know all this product can do for me and if you don’t tell me, Ill go somewhere else. However if you give me too much information which is badly organised, it will be too much to take in and I will go somewhere else. A fine balance – yet a very necessary one.
Stop Asking me Questions – if I have to fill out form after form just to buy a single item, chances are that I will be put off. Imagine just wanting to buy a pint of milk from the supermarket on Christmas Eve with queues stretching as far as the eye can see – just not fun
Attracting the wrong type of customer – if you don’t deliver abroad, the thousands of daily visitors from the USA are just leaving disappointed.
Non existent offers or promotions – make sure all you offer information is up to date. If you have a promotional code offering 20% off, don’t make the customer jump through hoops to get it – or worse find out that it no longer exists
All this information is easily managed via a website statistics package such as Google Analytics. This is free and can be easily installed within in your website by your web developer.
Using tools like these can help you identify areas of the website which require improvement as well as the sections which are working. Do your research before making knee jerk changes to the pages on your website. It’s your website, it’s your business – make sure it’s doing everything for you.
