Help! Traffic but no sales
Time and time again, we’ve spoken to online store owners who complain that their stores have a high number of visitors but no sales. This problem could be attributed to hundreds of different issues and it can be a challenge to narrow down exactly why your bounce rate is so high; you could be driving the wrong kind of traffic, or the problem could be with the online store itself; either way, the underlying issue is that your store is not meeting people’s expectations. So how do you curate your traffic to bring the right people to your store? How do you ensure that their experience on your platform doesn’t disappoint? Here’s our list of useful tricks and tips to upping your conversions.
#1 Appear trustworthy
Once a potential customer has found your website, he/she needs to be convinced that the products you’re offering are of a high quality, that they will be delivered as promised and that you, as a brand, can be counted on if there are any issues subsequent to purchase. Here are a few key things your website should include to put the customer at ease:
Trust badges
There is an abundance of trust badges you can make use of at different stages of the buying process and in different locations on your website.
Accepted payment badges
Accepted payment badges tell shoppers that you accept payment from recognized brands, instantly instilling confidence in your store. You want to use badges from popular, trusted brands like Visa, MasterCard or PayPal. These badges are generally placed at the bottom of your website and you can find them here:
Safe checkout badges
Safe checkout badges assure your customers that the information they share – like name, address and card details – is encrypted and their card information will not be stolen. These badges should be visible to your shoppers at checkout. You can acquire these badges when you sign up with a company that offers an SSL certificate – Secure Socket Layer- such as the ones shown below:
Returns badges
One of the biggest fears online shoppers have is being stuck with a product they don’t want, which is why many store owners offer free collections for returns. This way, your customers know that you have a returns policy and that they won’t have to incur the cost of posting your product back to you. This not only highlights great customer service but it also helps customers see your store as low-risk. For an extra boost, offer your customers free shipping or a money-back guarantee.
You can download free badges on the Shopify app store.
Reviews
Adding product reviews to your online store is an excellent way to let new customers know what they’re in for when they shop with you. One of the keystones of reviews is transparency- one of the most encouraging things to see from an online merchant. Many online store owners are afraid to embed reviews on their websites because there will inevitably be bad ones. However, if you actively respond to each and every poor review, you’ll show your customers that you can be counted on to follow up on disputes and problems, and that you are willing to assist your customers in any way. Don’t see a bad review as an obstacle, but rather an opportunity for you to show people how great your customer service is, and an opportunity to improve on your fulfillment processes.
We’ve got our own customers reviews displayed on the ShoppingFeeder website:
#2 Know your keywords
When it comes to generating traffic, you want to ensure that you’re attracting the kind of people who will actually be interested in your products. One way of doing this is to get a comprehensive, in-depth understanding of what your customers are searching for online to ensure that your ads / content / website is triggered by those search queries.
SEO
Ubersuggest is a free keyword research tool that lets you enter your competitor’s domain and find out which keywords they rank for. And yes, these are the keywords you need to be using as well! Remember, you want to be looking for keywords that have a high search volume, but also those keywords that are not impossible to rank first for- this means not going after keywords that higher authority pages are ranking for. You want to try and rank for something in your ball park. We’ve got a great article on keyword research that will help you understand which keywords are worth going after.
Tip: Remember that many businesses hire SEO experts, something you may want to consider rather than going it alone, as it can be incredibly time-consuming.
So now you may be asking, where do these keywords go? Try and incorporate them in your product descriptions, in your About or Home pages on your website, as well as in any content produced by your brand i.e. authoritative blog content.
#3 Check for technical issues
Technical issues on e-commerce stores are one of the most common underlying reasons for high bounce-rates. Try and think of your customers as the most impatient people in the world, and prepare for that. One second delays in page loading speeds can make or break a sale; grey screens can mean customers never return to your store; lost carts can mean extremely poor brand associations and negative word-of-mouth. So here’s how you can solve these issues:
Page loading speed
Page loading speed is the time it takes to display all the content on a given page on a website. Enter your store URL in Google’s PageSpeed Insights to find out how fast your site is across multiple devices. Longer load times negatively affect your conversions, so make sure you take a look at Google’s optimization suggestions for each device.
Checkout process
Your checkout process needs to be intuitive, easy to use and glitch-free in order to keep shoppers from abandoning their carts. Make sure you test your checkout process thoroughly, with multiple permutations, to ensure that every possibility has been accounted for and optimized. Here are some other things to look out for in checkout:
- Shipping processes and costs are described in detail
- Checkout button at top and bottom of page
- Final price is displayed before checkout (no hidden costs)
- Use visual indicator to show how far through the checkout process shoppers have progressed
- Ensure your trust badges are visible
- Allow saving the cart for later
- Recommend related products before checkout
- Ensure customers understand how their products can be tracked
- Provide links to your returns and shipping policies
#4 Optimize your Google Shopping Ads
Google Shopping is one of the most popular channels for e-commerce stores, and also one of the best opportunities to convert. If you haven’t already listed your product there, we’d highly recommend it and here’s why:
With shopping ads, it’s your product data that triggers your ads and not keywords. What does this mean? When shoppers search for products and begin adding filters to narrow down search results, the products that show up are exactly what the customers are looking for (if the product feed was optimized, that is).
Better product data = more qualified leads = higher conversion rate
Optimizing your product data is another sure-fire way to getting your products in front of the right people, so how do we make that happen? Well, the first step to optimization is ensuring completeness. No essential product data fields can be omitted in your product feed as this will lessen the chances of your ads showing at all, let alone under the right search queries.
With ShoppingFeeder, you get a list of all required fields and attributes for the channel you’ve subscribed to, and this means Google won’t reject your products. In addition, ShoppingFeeder has a mapping feature that relates your product categories to Google’s product taxonomy. Again, this means your products get seen by the right people and are more likely to convert.
You can sign up for a free trial on the ShoppingFeeder website.
#5 Use Facebook retargeting
With dynamic retargeting ads you can promote your products, on Facebook, to users who have browsed your e-commerce site in the past. Remember, the more shoppers are exposed to your products the more likely they are to make it to final purchase, so retargeting really brings you the kind of traffic you want- traffic that’s more likely to convert.
Tip: Read our guide to setting up Facebook dynamic ads.
SalesCycle statistics reveal that from the total number of browsers on en e-commerce site, only 14.4% eventually add to cart, and an even smaller 3.3% culminate in final purchase. For this reason, retargeting is a key strategic tool, as well as email reminders sent out to your customers.
#6 Use abandoned cart emails
Dynamic ads is one way to remind customers of your brand; another way is to email individual shoppers who have added products to their carts and then left the checkout flow before final purchase.
Most e-commerce marketers use a series of emails which are triggered in different checkout phases and automated using a database of verified email addresses. Try to email the customers an hour after they’ve abandoned their cart, as well as a day or two later to really make your mark. Be sure to include the details of the products they were interested in, as most shoppers will have forgotten which offers they were browsing in the first place. It’s also essential that your email includes customer support data in the event that there was an issue during the checkout process.
It’s important to remember that your lack of conversions can be caused by a number of issues. For this reason, you’ll need to assess your site performance, user experience, marketing strategy and product quality regularly to keep your bounce rate down and your conversion rate up.
