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All the Traffic but No Sales: 5 Things You Might Be Doing Wrong

Category: Growth Hacks

All the Traffic but No Sales: 5 Things You Might Be Doing Wrong
Mohab Growth Hacks, Guest Posts 0

All the Traffic but No Sales: 5 Things You Might Be Doing Wrong

Your e-commerce website site is shiny, ready, and that fresh marketing campaign is driving traffic like gangbusters. Newsletters are flying out, and your tweets are picking up tons of action. But, you do not see any pickup in sales.

All that marketing spending is just going in smoke, and it’s got you down.

We get it, and nearly every e-commerce store has been there. Driving traffic was supposed to be the hard part, so what’s gone wrong? Where’s the breakdown?

The bad news is that there are hurdles throughout the process that you might not be clearing. The good news is that you can definitely overcome them. Let’s look at five of the biggest to get you started in matching sales with the new traffic boom.

Getting the Wrong Traffic

Most e-commerce stores believe that traffic is the key. As long as they’re driving eyeballs, then they’re golden. Unfortunately, that’s often not the case because you have to drive the right eyeballs to make a sale. Your traffic must match the content of the site and the offer you provide.

Here are three of the most common disconnects in this space:

  • Targeting the wrong people for your product (right product, wrong people)
  • Sending your target audience to pages or content they aren’t interested in (right people, wrong product)
  • Targeting people not interested in your core offer and sending them to landing pages that don’t focus on your core offer (wrong people, wrong product)

You’ll need to do some customer research to find out who is most likely interested in your products. Start with this data and get as much demographic information as possible. Use that to build your ad campaigns and your social targeting.

Next, review your messaging and sales funnel to ensure that this new audience of people who need your core products are being sent to pages highlighting those products. If you’re sending someone to the wrong stuff, they’re more likely to click back to the page they came from instead of browsing around your site.

Having a Complicated Site

Another big sales killer is a website that’s hard to use. Most office this means it is too complex for the visitor. Complexity hurts in a few ways.

First, it can make your site load slowly. More than one-third of visitors will leave a site if its images don’t load quickly and about half of your audience thinks your site should load in two seconds or less. Second, complicated sites can impact how they display on mobiles. This can harm you if you’re in one of the categories where mobile accounts for at least half of total ecommerce spending.

And the final note about web design is that 75% of your audience will judge your credibility and trustworthiness based on your web design.

When sites get too complicated to use easily, they cut against the engagement and trust required for a sale. Address this by simplifying your website, working to reduce load times, and keeping your product images and “buy” buttons clearly visible toward the top of each page.

Missing Pertinent Product Details

If you were buying a product you’ve never tried before, would you get a small, medium, or large?

We know what you’re thinking: “It depends. Tell me more about the product.”

That’s exactly right. You need a wide range of details to understand any product. Plus, you also need information about why it is a right fit for you and, often in the e-commerce space, if this product is the right style for you too.

Customers who don’t understand your offer or get these details aren’t going to buy.

Approach each one of your products and the pages that host them to see if you’re providing the right details. Here are some of the bases to cover:

  • What problem does the audience have?
  • How does this product solve that?
  • Are the available options able to do that for this particular visitor?
  • What do they need to narrow down the options? (Think size charts, how much liquid a cup holds, etc.)
  • What does it look like? What will this visitor look like or feel like using the product?
  • Why do they want to look/feel like that?
  • How can they easily buy it from you?

These questions will give you the structure to present the customer with an idea about their problem and how you solve it, convincing them that you have the right solution based on how they want to look or feel after the purchase. Everything else is designed to help them make their choice.

The faster you can do this, the better.

No Clear Differentiation

Many e-commerce stores offer a similar selection of products — this is even more true if you’re drop shipping.

Do a quick online search of your business area and specific products to see how your competitors are describing the products and how close their offers are to yours. If you’re one of many talking about products in the same way, or are using the same stock photos, you won’t be creating a clear reason for a visitor to make a purchase from you.

Tell a story that highlights what you like best about the products and match it to your overall personality. Align that with your target market, because it may create a personal connection with a site visitor who would then be more willing to buy.

You need to show brand and product personality to stand out. It can be difficult in the e-commerce space to do that because you’re often working with limited products. However, the design you give your site and the way you talk about your products can go a long way. If you need inspiration on how to feel different, look at websites from the brands themselves. Don’t copy their style but find things you can emulate while adding your own flavor.

No one needs just another bland catalog on the Internet.

Problems at Checkout

The final place to check is your purchase process. Messy, complex, or broken checkout systems are often a cause of failed sales. Again, you want to be as simple and straightforward as possible.

Show users the price of the goods and have their cart follow them throughout. You can indicate expected costs like taxes or add a note to the cart overlay text that says, “plus shipping and handling.” This way there is less of a surprise jump in price when checkout time comes.

If you offer free shipping or have a partner who guarantees speedy ecommerce delivery, then note this information on the page to help customers feel more comfortable with the purchase.

Breaking the process into multiple steps also helps people stick with it, instead of getting overwhelmed by long forms. You can see this practice on most leading e-commerce sites, especially Amazon. Another trick to grab from Amazon is to show product detail summaries on your checkout pages, including things like size, color, and quantity.

One final note to consider is that you might not want to force customers to create an account. Ask for an email to send the receipt, but wait on making them choose a password. You can use the receipt or “thank you” email as a place to ask them to create an account. It reduces the burden and can increase your overall subscription volume too.

Here’s hoping these 5 tips will help you onto the path of greater sales.

All the Traffic but No Sales: 5 Things You Might Be Doing Wrong

About the author

Jake Rheude is the Director of Marketing for Red Stag Fulfillment, an ecommerce fulfillment warehouse that was born out of ecommerce. He has years of experience in ecommerce and business development. In his free time, Jake enjoys reading about business and sharing his own experience with others.

7 years ago
6 Effective Ways to Boost E-Commerce Conversion Rate
Mohab Growth Hacks 0

6 Effective Ways to Boost E-Commerce Conversion Rate

If you are running your e-commerce business, you don’t just want traffic; you want as many conversions as you can. So how do you actually get the traffic to convert without looking desperate. Here is a list of ways you can use to boost your conversions when your budget is restricted and the year is winding down.

Customizing Checkout Experience

Based on a study conducted by the Baymard Institute, the average cart abandonment rate is 69.89%. If you can optimize checkout experience, you can drastically boost the conversion rate.  There are various options to do so. If the customer plans to exit at the last moment, you can give an exclusive offer like a discount coupon. Ensure that the integrated payment gateway offers enough payment methods to take payments online. In addition to these, let users log in using their social media credentials, and keep the checkout process short and simple.

Make Product Pages Look Better

The website layout plays a crucial role in the user experience, and when it is an online store, product pages must be organized neatly to boost conversions. The most prominent aspect is to include influencing visuals, comprising of images, 360-degree photos, videos, and so on. Adding a countdown, depicting the number of units left of a product, works wonders by instigating visitors to buy at the earliest. Focus on filters so that buyers can streamline products as per their requirements. At the same time, avoid adding too many filters to avoid confusion.

Call-to-Action Prompts

The aim of call-to-action (CTA) is to engage visitors and prompt them to take an action. The simplest way is to add sharing options, ensuring an extended reach of your online store. If the visitor decides to bounce off the website, a popup should emerge showing exciting deals or exclusive discounts or other product options. Placing a floating “Add to Cart” button impels buyers to conveniently add a desired product in the cart, thereby, boosting conversion rate.

Welcome Offers

A new customer or a visitor is a special person because this is the first interaction of yours with the visitor. Be ready with welcome offers such as giving freebies, sign up discounts, and so on. You can also give them a referral code. If they promote or share your online store link with their contacts, they will earn a commission or a gift voucher. One of the most effective strategies is to offer free delivery on the first few orders.

Sell on Marketplaces & Social Media

Other than selling on your e-com store, you can exploit social media platforms for selling products and services. Social media sites like Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest let you add a “Shop” option on your website’s social media page. Once a user clicks on the shop icon, the link redirects to the payment gateway process, allowing the user to check out instantly. And since mobile e-commerce is on an exponential rise, it is wise to expand your presence on social media apps.

Enabling Customer Reviews

Humans are influenced by humans, at least when it comes to online shopping. Enabling reviews and ratings on your store assists in building connections with your visitors. When real humans, not robots, leave genuine reviews, whether positive or negative, buyers become aware of product attributes. This further convinces them to buy. Let customers log in using social media credentials to write a review of their purchase or send them a personalized email asking to write their views.

 

Now we cannot say that a particular strategy will work for you if it has worked for others. It is recommended to continue with A/B testing to identify the right strategy for increasing conversion rate. And this is an ever-going process since the online shopping experience is always evolving.

7 years ago
Scaling Your Business with Recurring Billing
Mohab Growth Hacks 0

Scaling Your Business with Recurring Billing

There is no better news than a fast-expanding customer base for a business owner. However, with the good news comes a new challenge – how to effectively tackle the large number of payments from your growing list of customers.

One of the best ways to do that is to use the recurring billing model. This will not only help you automate and simplify the business model while assuring a fixed revenue stream, it will also help your customers by offering them regular payment options, fewer late fees, greater convenience and faster payment methods.

Let us take a deep-dive into how you can take advantage of the recurring billing system and scale your business.

Benefits of Recurring Billing Model

  1. Pricing as per Service Offerings

Recurring payments generally deal with software-as-a-service (SaaS) offerings. However, there are no predefined norms when it comes to the type of products and services. You can take payments online for a bunch of services, offered in a package. Create suitable packages comprising of products and services, and allow users to purchase subscription packages. The recurring subscription system is a secure payment processor that takes care of all the billing cycles, maintains client records, and ensures encryption of sensitive information like credit card details.

  1. Inter-linked and Automated Process

While installing a recurring payment model, customer acquisition should be a priority. When we talk about customer acquisition, harnessing multiple channels like online, mobile, and affiliates should be considered. The inter-linking of channels and payment mediums depict the seamless functionality of recurring billing software.

Raising invoices, linking payment gateways, managing accounts, scheduling periodic reports, and adapting to changes – a perfect recurring payment system automates all these processes for a simplified functioning. Scaling your business becomes easier as you can focus on other peripherals other than billing.

  1. Enhanced Customer Relationship

Do you know that the probability of selling to a new customer is 5-20% whereas it fluctuates between 60-70% for an existing customer? When you have a subscription model in place, you should ensure customer satisfaction. Furnishing facilities like automated payments, usage metrics, timely notifications and updates, and prompt support services are necessary to develop fruitful customer relationship. Moreover, the recurring billing model can assist you with subscription chores like renewals, terminations, customization, upgrades, and so on.

  1. Accurate Analysis & Growth Prediction

Data is the key to your success. As subscription services are constantly evolving, you should be agile enough to adapt to the latest methodologies. Data metrics and customer behavior analysis play a crucial role in determining your next move. An efficient recurring system will emphasize data metrics such as retention rate, subscription patterns, customer acquisition, cost analysis, and much more. This will ensure a stable cash flow and growth in your business.

Integrate Recurring Billing Software

There are various online payment platforms that offer reliable and scalable recurring billing system, along with various payment features. Considering the aforementioned benefits and your requirements, you can integrate a payment gateway on your website. Most of the payment gateways, like PayTabs, offer hassle-free solutions for collecting recurring payments.

You can expect complete or partial automation, as per your convenience. From generating periodic invoices to upgrading subscription plans, the payment gateway takes care of all the aspects. In addition to automation, customization is also an influencing factor. There is a wide scope of customization involved such as designing invoice and email templates, updating subscription packages, setting up notification alerts, and much more.

Payments can get complex in a recurring model. For example, if a credit card expires and the payment is due, there could be a possible decline. Generally, recurring payment software is capable of managing card details and client information, thus, reducing the possibility of declines at the time of payment. And since the recurring model deals with a client’s personal information, it is advisable to rely on secure online payment systems that vouch for encrypted payment processes.

There is no doubt that recurring billing system assists you in scaling your business. At the same time, we cannot rule out the possibility of complex mechanisms, which may hamper your business growth. An automated and reliable recurring payment system lets you focus on other organizational aspects, without compromising sales and customer relationships.

7 years ago
9 ways To Earn a Customer’s Trust
Mohab Growth Hacks 0

9 ways To Earn a Customer’s Trust

Online shopping is the norm today, rather than the exception, owing to the convenience and flexibility it offers. However, remember that before you can start to take payments online, you need to earn your customers’ trust. If you are an online merchant, those who wish to shop for your products, cannot see you or meet you physically. All they can see is how you present your online store, how securely you enable transactions and how transparent your processes are. Wondering if this is going to be difficult?

Contrary to what you might think, it is quite easy to build your customers’ trust in your business if you follow certain rules. Here are the rules if you want to win at earning the trust of your customers:

  1. Be yourself

Everyone living on this planet has had scenarios where they had undesirable experiences with sales people. Needless to say, many of us have also felt manipulated by salespersons and hence walked away. So, it is suggested that rather than acting like someone trying to sell, just try to act the way you would when you are meeting a colleague. In simpler terms, try to be yourself and you will be headed to a good start.

  1. Value the relationships

If you want the customers to trust you and value you, it is important that you first believe that building relationships with your customers is important. Try and understand what is it that they need or what their problems are, and come up with products that solve such problems accordingly. This way, you will be adding value to the association you have with the shopper.

  1. Be curious about your customers

Online shoppers in general are drawn to those who show a keen interest in knowing them more. So, if you are curious, you will be able to build a better relationship. A great way to go about this is by asking questions or requesting your customers to participate in polls. This will give you greater insight about their purchase behaviour too.

  1. Be consistent

A customer will trust you only when he/she know that your behaviour is not temporary. Building trust is not an overnight task, it takes time. So, it is important that you show consistency and persistence over time. When the customer is able to predict your behaviour, he/she is more likely to trust you and your product.

  1. Always choose to be true

Trust is built when you approach your selling as a means to help the customer – so, try to find out the real areas where you can work together. This makes it more important for you to spend time in actually knowing your customers. Also, never be shy of pointing out that your company or product may not be the right choice for a particular customer.

  1. Open-mindedness is important

If you are excessively convinced that the customer needs only your product and nothing else, you might come across as a close-minded business. So, avoid pushing your products too much on social media or blogs, and rather incorporate them subtly into the solutions that you present to your customers in answer to their problems. This way, they will know that you are open-minded and that you realise that the customer might shop from somewhere else if that suits them better. If your customers know that you have their best interests at heart, they will trust you more.

  1. Go for a real dialog

It is important that your meeting is not just a sales pitch but a real conversation. So spend more time listening rather than speaking. While you do that, also make sure than the conversation is not just chit chat but related to your business.

  1. Think and act professionally

People tend to trust people who are serious and professional in their attitude. So, take time to learn more about your company, your customers, their challenges and their respective industry.

  1. Express genuine integrity

It is important that you take a stand when required. You should have the ability to make decision based on your understanding of what is right. The stand may not be a common norm, but it’s ok. While we are at it, it is also important that you refrain from making false promises or committing something that you cannot deliver.

Always remember, gaining the trust of your customers is only a fraction of the entire equation. It is also important that you have a product that the customer wants and needs and you possess an ability to add value and solve problems.

7 years ago
6 Things Shoppers Want in Online Stores
Mohab Growth Hacks 0

6 Things Shoppers Want in Online Stores

The internet seems to be taking over the world, one day at a time. In a scenario where nearly, anything can be found online, it feels as if internet has simplified all aspects of human life. However, the true convenience is displayed in online shopping. People want to save their valuable time and purchase everything online. This means it is amazing if you have an online store. But, it is not enough. With so much competition coming up, it is vital that you know what your customers are expecting from you and deliver that to stay ahead of your game.

So, besides a wide range of products, here are 6 things that shoppers want from online stores:

  1. A website that is easy to navigate

As an online shopping website owner, it is essential that you operate a website that is easy to navigate. Seamless shopping experience is the key to online shopping, and that is the first thing they want when they log in to your website. It should be easy to know where to browse, what you offer and the website should load quickly. Besides an easy navigation, your website should also be mobile friendly, which means it should have a mobile version too as most people browse from smartphones.

  1. A fast checkout option

One of the very important considerations in an online shopping website is the actual checkout process. In an offline store, people need to wait in line at the cash counter and the queue is unusually longer in peak hours. You see, this is the prime reason people resort to online shopping. So, offer an option where people can opt not to fill a huge registration form needing irrelevant details. Your e-commerce payment portal should be efficient and fast. Along with that, there should be adequate and secure payment options. It is important that you get your e-commerce payment gateway integration from a reputed source in order to provide secure payment at the time of checkout.

  1. Customer reviews

Customer reviews of products on your website are trusted as much as a personal recommendation. They also give more credibility to your store along with a trust factor for your customers. But, do not resort to getting fake reviews written. Let your work speak! You can send an email to your customers few days after their purchase to write a review. Do not forget to mention a direct link to the review page.

  1. Free shipping

Who does not love free stuff? At least, all your customers do. Free shipping or competitive shipping policies greatly influence customer behavior. It has been seen that shoppers do not mind spending a bit more if the shipping is free. It makes more sense to them to buy an additional product rather than spend money on shipping.

  1. A blog

Numerous online stores now have their own blogs. These blogs are mostly about their customers. A blog basically helps as an opportunity to position yourself as an expert and hence leads to customers trusting you more. Many shoppers turn to blogs for help, advice and a variety of information. The topics can range from how to posts to latest fashion trends – basically anything that goes with your store. A good blog can act as a voice of your brand, but you need to be careful that you do not use your blog entirely for sales purposes.

  1. Good customer service

This needs no mention. A good customer service both before and after sales is one of the highest and very rational expectations of an online shopper. If you are dealing with unhappy customers at your hand who need quick answers, it is vital that you have a solid customer support network. You may think of including a chat box on your website or a social media team to handle your queries.

As an owner of an online store, you need to understand what motivates a person to shop online in the first place and then give those reasons why they should shop with you. Adding the above mentioned things to your store will surely lead to a successful e-commerce platform.

7 years ago