In the last week or two I’ve chatted to a number of website owners about the lack of sales on their website. In each instance their first thought was to get more traffic.
I explained to them that just throwing more traffic at the site would not necessarily increase the amount of sales, at least not significantly. If you’re already getting traffic and no sales I’d be looking at why your prospects aren’t buying. Some issues to consider:
- Your traffic isn’t targeted
- There’s problems with your website
Targeted Traffic
Is what you’re selling what you’re visitors are after? This is a good time to review your search engine optimisation (SEO), Pay Per Click (PPC) and other marketing initiatives to make sure you’re targeting the right people. Perhaps your visitors are expecting “genuine widgets” and you’re offering “generic widgets”.
Website Issues
Is your website compelling? Does it provide your users with a reason to buy from you? Are your product/service descriptions informative? Are your product photographs of high quality? How does your site compare to your competitors?
Take the time to really review your website. Focus on the design, usability, your unique selling proposition (USP) and your copy.
Merely throwing more traffic at your site does not necessarily mean more sales. And let’s face it, if you’re getting 5 sales for every 1000 visitors wouldn’t you rather get 50 sales for every 1000 visitors. Then an increase in traffic will bring an even larger increase in sales.
Nice post.
It constantly amazes me that people can be satisfied with really low conversion rates for their sites instead of looking at the things that they can do to improve those.
Sure, traffic is nice, but if the goal of a site is to make sales or generate leads, and there are things that can be done to meet those goals, the time doing that is worth spending.
Sophie
Do you mind if I add part of this post on my blog and then link to yours in detail?
I do find a lot of business owners just want traffic as tend to think thats the cheapest and fastest way to generate sales.
A lot of them cannot see the benefits of going through the hoop to get a site (like you say) to be compelling and want to spend as little as possible.
In this instance I can rely on my portfolio to show them that suggestions such as yours DO work – but it takes time and a financial investment.
I think thats why it pays to pick your clients carefully.
Gonna add your blog to my blog roll (hope thats oK!)
Daz
Thanks Bill. 🙂
> Do you mind if I add part of this post on my blog and then link to yours in detail?
Daz go for it.
> I think thats why it pays to pick your clients carefully.
Very true. I find that with all the information out there, there’s still a lot of education to be done.
> Gonna add your blog to my blog roll (hope thats oK!)
It sure is. I’ll do the same. 🙂