Throughout our blog series ‘Why Isn’t My Website Getting Sales?’ we have been looking at things you can change about your ecommerce business in order to boost your sales.
If you’ve tried everything we’ve recommended so far, and particularly if your website is getting visitors but not sales, it might be that you are reaching the wrong people. That is very easy to do. Investing money in a poorly targeted or poorly planned PPC advertising campaign (on Google or Facebook, for example) is one sure-fire way to attract traffic that doesn’t convert into sales.
So, how do you make sure the people that come to your website are the right people?
Product and value
The first step is to make an honest assessment of your offering. Do you have a product that people want to buy? If not, you’re already in trouble. If you do, does the format and price at which you’re making it available represent value to potential buyers? That doesn’t mean it has to be cheap, just that the price is suitable for the product, brand and market involved. If you are attracting website traffic but not sales, something might be wrong in this equation. It’s not just the facts and figures that matter: the look of your website, the tone of voice of the copy and the style of the photography all need to match the proposition you’re presenting to customers.
Not everyone will buy the first time they visit your website. A good and cost-effective way to get those who are potential customers to return is to get them to sign up to your email list. That makes it easy to get in touch with them in the future with new products, sales and other information that might be of interest. Many ecommerce stores offer up a discount code or a freebie as a way of enticing people to enter their email address. If they go to the effort of doing this, you know they have at least some interest in buying from you.
Paid search
As we mentioned above, if it is done badly, PPC is a great way to spend a lot of money with no return. But with the right strategy in place, you can attract people who want to buy your product right there and then, and do so at a price that doesn’t put too great a dent in your bottom line. Things like avoiding clicks from geographic markets you don’t serve and setting up a proper campaign rather than just hitting the Boost button are simple ways of reaching your intended audience more easily.
Blogging and social media
How do you reach the type of people who would buy your product? One good way is to write about the things that are of interest to them. If somebody is invested in the content you’re publishing via your blog or social media accounts, they will be more likely to keep tabs on what you’re up to. That, in turn, increases the chances of them seeing something they want to buy.
As always, if you’ve got any questions, feel free to get in touch.