Many online retailers are struggling with the same problem: they have significant traffic but the number of sales does not increase. How is it possible?
Most commonly this is caused by many problems with the website ranging from design, price to required information.
Do not forget to think about where your traffic comes from. Do you advertise, if yes then where, do you use SEO (Search Engine Optimization)? A possibility can be that your traffic is significant but actually, it is not from your target audience and some of the people who come to your web store isn’t even interested in what you sell.
Why don’t you have sales, what is the problem?
In the following parts below, we show you some points about web shops that can be problematic and due to these mistakes the visitors’ willingness to buy can be hindered, and they can become insecure. We tried to consider as many elements as possible so that you can actually figure out what you need to change on your site after reading the article. We won’t just enumerate issues, we’ll give you advice too. Don’t just draw people in, keep your audience, let them become buyers!
The key sentence: If your visitors are insecure, they won’t buy!
Content: price • reliability • main page • product page • quality • design • images • grammar • call to action • reference • text • orderliness • warranty • delivery • size chart • information • social media • live chat • aida • drop shipping • focus on the target
Price
One of the reasons why you don’t have sales can be the prices. Think it through, did you define a realistic price for your products? Check your competitors, those who have similar or the same items as you.
Be careful not to have noticeably big margin compared to the supplier’s price – obviously, customers don’t know what the wholesale price was, but if you sell a simple mobile phone case for $100 that can be unrealistically high.
Many problems can occur be because people do drop shipping with eBay, Amazon and other marketplaces, get products from these sites, but the prices they define are too high. Of course, they want to get more income. But nowadays it’s really easy to recognize products that come from these marketplaces, and after people check out the original site for the original prices, they will close your website immediately, and they’ll buy from the marketplace for way more less money. There aren’t many solutions to this situation. You can believe in being lucky, you can set lower prices, you can try to choose your products in a unique way and be attractive because of it. However, the best thing to do is to use another way of drop shipping: work with real suppliers, manufacturers and not with marketplaces.
Now, we’re going to tell you three examples.
1. Prices are too high:
you did this to yourself, you set too big margin because you wanted to have a bigger income, but this price makes potential customers run away.
2. Prices are too low:
if you have too low prices, it can make customers feel insecure. Probably they will start to think that there’s something wrong with you, you got your product from dubious places, or your web store is a scam. You may just want to attract customers, and later try to earn more money, not just to cover costs, but watch out, not every trick comes in.
3. Prices are high, the products are high-end:
if you decide to sell products from “luxury” brands, you have to make sure you can reach your target audience. These items are not for the average people’s wallet, so your sales probably won’t be high immediately. You can play with prices, but you have to pay much attention to marketing.
Try to find balance, look at the market, how others do the pricing, and what their traffic and popularity are like. Try to find out what’s best for you.
Reliability
Show others that you are reliable. There are several aspects that can aim for to make people believe that you are trustworthy, but the best is if you use all of them at the same time. Every section of this blog post is about these elements. Your whole content has to be neat – picture and text, design –, it also shows how you are doing when it comes to cooperation and customer relations. You can upload photos that customers sent you, about the products they ordered from you – for example, that they wear those new clothes, or show their new carpet on the floor. Show quotes from them about being satisfied, tell who is your supplier, who/what does the shipping, story of your web store, achievements so far, the number of products, supporters, and anything else. Be on social media! People can check there that you really exist, they see your activity – e.g. if they see you haven’t uploaded anything for 9 months, they won’t order from your shop at ease. The best is if you have a profile on Facebook and on Instagram too. You can check the customer’s opinions there.
Main Page
You should look at the main page as an entrance door or an ante-room. This page has to reflect your whole store. This is the page visitors usually land on, you have to raise attention, maintain interest, persuade, and encourage further action.
Do not upload too much content on the main page, only a few paragraphs. As for text: write down what you sell, it has to show who your target audience is. Don’t be boring and trite with your text, but try to make it be easy to accept. A few words or lines are enough, you will tell more about the story of your website in another menu. Use attractive, catchy headlines on your main page. Talk only about essential things. Upload high-quality images, make the Call to Action button/sentence prominent, provide links to your social media pages to make people sure you are authentic. Show them why your store would be a great choice, don’t forget about formatting, make everything well-built and aesthetic. The content has to have a hierarchy, the most important parts have to be in the beginning. Use keywords.
If you have a seasonal offer, it has to appear at the top of the main page and place a Call to Action button on it. Also show your top offers, promotions and the most popular products.
Be temperate, don’t upload too much content. Each category has its own menu, so it’s not worth to say more information about them than the names on the main page.
Product Page
If the product’s page has only the name and the price of an item and nothing else, it won’t encourage customers. Show as many details as possible: exact name, sizes, colors, utility, features, delivery time, warranty. Upload more high-quality images of the product you can open in a bigger size, and upload even photos you got from previous buyers. Place a short description about the manufacturer too. The whole product page has to be easy to see through, you have to use headlines in the product’s description so that you can make it reader-friendly. You can also create submenus. It’s also beneficial if you give an option to buyers to write an opinion. Place the most important information on the top of the page so that people can read them without scrolling. The page has to reflect the product’s quality, high standards. Encourage people for shopping, but do not be boring.
It’s also good if you upload images of all variants.
Have a sort of hierarchy, headed by the name, price, Buy/Add to Cart button and pictures. Highlight the most important parts of the texts.
Quality
Show people that there’s nothing wrong with the quality of the products in your e-shop, but don’t be too much, don’t say with large letters that you are the best. Use another kind of tools. The visualization is also very important. If your web store is pleasing, people will feel you have quality products. References are also important. Do not just say you have excellent products, you have to make sure about it.
Design
Another source of your problem can be that you use a design that was trendy 10 years ago, that does not look pretty, not aesthetic. It’s also not the best if the layout is bothering, it’s not clear what’s what and it’s difficult to navigate. Before you publish the store’s site, do some tests, ask others what they think about that.
What do you have to pay attention to when designing your site? Use matching colors, use unified branding elements, use attractive headlines, slogans, and these have to be easy to take in. Use high-quality, high-resolution, spectacular, demanding images. As for the menus: everything has to be touchscreen-compatible, and the font size has to be easy to read. Being clear-out can benefit you.
If your website doesn’t look good, people won’t feel comfortable and maybe won’t want to buy. With a nice design, they may think you are more reliable. Every purchase is about emotions.
Images
Images have to be unique, reflect the style of the whole web store. This content speaks for itself.
Pictures have to be high-resolution, high-quality, neat, and the elements of this have to be placed-well. It’s important that people can open the images in a bigger size. Also, beneficial factors are to upload more photos from more view, images of all variants and the ability to zoom. Maybe uploading videos can be another useful idea.
The trust of future buyers can grow if they can see a segment on the product page where they can see photos from former customers about the ordered items.
Here’s an example of what a unique image might be like:
Grammar
No matter what language you use on your site, you have to pay much attention to the grammatical correctness, spelling, and punctuation. It’s really bothering if the descriptions, titles are incorrect on your site, and the only thing it can show is that you don’t pay enough attention, you aren’t doing your job right, you do not strive for quality. People will have a conclusion that if you can’t write well, your products also won’t be good, you are unreliable, your site is a scam, and they won’t order from you – even just because of you were not quite thorough.
Call to Action
Call to Action (CTA) is a key element in your web store, on a product page. It’s important to make this call clear, make it easy to notice, discernible at a glance. Put such information around it that will provide visitors with the feeling that they can have a lot of benefits buying from you. But make sure nothing will distract attention from that outstanding CTA content.
As a webstore-owner what else would be your aim than to sell? That’s why Call to Action is one of the most important elements you need to deal with and highlight. It’s essential that people can see the Buy/Add to Cart button without scrolling down on the product page. This button needs to be embedded in a frame, having a colorful background, but be aesthetic. It’s not good if people need to search for this. There can be for example an arrow near the button or anything that catches the eye.
If you have another aim – so not adding things to cart – you have to highlight that important element in a similar way.
The Call to Action button is as important as the name and price of the product and images. CTA tells – e.g. – to buy and what to buy. You tell people what to do. This can be accessed by a Click here button in texts and on images. Another option is to write Buy Now or Shop Now. On the main page, you can also include a call to action if you have a promotion, a campaign. A Get more info/Send me news button (for subscriptions) can also work like this. You are the one who has to figure out the appearance and function of this. You have to test it for a while.
Reference
A reference can appear in your webshop as a quotation coming from a former buyer about a product or your whole e-store. Reference can be photos on product pages that also comes from customers about items they ordered before.
Having social media pages is important. Those are the places where people can write public feedback about products, services so that others can create an opinion before actually buying from you. Some also look at the number of followers. And what everyone says: if you are not registered to – in this example – Facebook, you do not even exist. You won’t be authentic in the eyes of the buyers.
You can also give your customers a chance to tell their opinions in the webshop, so your visitors can experience an immediate rating on your site.
If visitors feel insecure and they can’t decide whether they want to buy a certain product or not, they will start to search for opinions about it on Google, on social media – mainly Facebook, Instagram or even YouTube –, or if you have a place for opinions on your site then simply there too.
For the reasons mentioned above, it is also worthwhile to launch an affiliate program so that bloggers and vloggers can comment on your product and provide more visitors to your website.
Incentive, Appealing Text
A lot of people like when they meet inspiring, incentive texts that either draw attention to something or persuade about something, so visitors start to feel they need it. These texts need to be highlighted by using big font size, having frames and non-disturbing background image. They need to stand in the spotlight. It has to be catchy.
When can a text be effective? If visitors see that an offering is limited, they will feel the urge to buy. They don’t have an option for procrastination – then forgetting their initial drive to buy.
Appealing texts can be applied almost to everything. What are these? A limited offer, discount, unique product, novelty, creative description, slogan, information about manufacturer – its history –, but it’s important to have a more detailed description about your incentive text to confirm that’s relevance. A simple example: if you tell your product is excellent, you have to write down why you say this. But even a discount can have a reason, for example, that your web store has its second anniversary, and as for the campaign, you need to create a new page where you tell more information.
Your slogan has to stuck in people’s head. The appealing texts on your products’ page and main page have to say what your item is like, but you have to be creative.
Speak! If you write a product description right and you say what advantages can your visitor have if he buys, that can be impulsive too.
Try to have an effect on emotions, create needs and desire. These texts can increase sales.
Orderliness
Your product pages, main page, and every page has to be neat. It’s better if there’s no need to read for a long time – except if necessary. Highlight parts of the text, upload pictures to make it pretty, use tabs because the content is sometimes overwhelming. Information has to be easy to take in. You can split content (text) with images too. Everything, every option has to be clear on your site, don’t hide anything. It’s important to have logical structure so that visitors don’t run away from your web store.
Warranty
If you provide warranty, talk about it, do not hide any detail. It can have a great effect on potential customers and future purchases.
Delivery Information
First, it’s important to show the delivery time (and whether the item is in stock or not) on the product page. Second, it’s important to have a menu where you put every detail about delivery and its costs. It’s good if the link of this menu is available in every products’ page. What does that menu have to contain? National and international delivery time, costs, who will deliver (post or courier), if courier does, what is that company, do they have a place where you can pick your product anytime, in what intervallum do they deliver in a day, what happens if you’re not at home, and so on.
A lot of people abandon their cart because they don’t have enough information about shipping.
Size Chart
No matter what products we are talking about, size is important. If it’s a carpet, a dress, a bag or anything, a size chart is necessary to be on the product page. For example, if you sell clothing, write down the sizes in the description and also create a separate menu with all necessary size information. If people don’t know a product’s size, they may abandon their cart.
Provide Enough Information
Give every important information in different menus on your web store – everything you are curious about when you are the one who’s about to buy. Delivery information, info about replacement, pricing, sizes, guarantee, and it is good to have a page about the frequently asked questions. At the same time, product pages have to include every useful detail about the certain item, do not make people search for your product on Google or write e-mails. Convince them that it’s worth buying from you. If you have high prices, tell them what are the reasons – e.g. it’s a premium product. The same backwards is also good. Write a description about the web store itself, about the founding story etc. Also, create a menu for payment information. Don’t forget about writing down the contact options.
Social Media
Today, it is unavoidable to a web store to have a Facebook page, because here people can make sure you are real and authentic. As we’ve already told – just like many other people –, if you are not registered on Facebook, you don’t even exist. It’s not just important to have a profile on those pages, you have to be active there, and your followers have to be that too. Share posts frequently so that people can know you are still alive. If your last post has been published half a year ago, people will think the web store that belongs to the Facebook page doesn’t work anymore. Of course, the greater the number of your followers, the better your position will be. And it’s also good if people leave likes and comments, everyone can see those feedbacks. However, this traffic mainly generated by itself, but the content you share – and how you share it – has an effect on this.
Nowadays Instagram has an increasing role. Especially for online stores that sell clothes, people love to check what pictures are available about certain products on this social network page where visuality has the main role. Even for Twitter, you can share content there too, but you have to consider, not every country’s audience is big, states like the US has the most active users.
If you are on social network sites, you will be more sympathetic to customers. You can’t even neglect your advertising opportunities on these places. You can track the customers’ reactions, opinions about your products on your profile page or by hashtags. Others will get inspiration from these posts and comments, and your traffic will increase.
Create colorful content so that you can make your potential customers become real buyers.
Introduce Live Chat
Often, both of you – you as a webshop owner and the potential customer – can benefit from providing live help in chat support, that is mainly hidden by a small icon in the bottom left or right corner of the website. If you provide a chat option, you probably won’t lose customers, and the other party will get answers to all questions and then will buy the product he wants. If you can not always sit in front of the computer and be online in the chat window, write a short message there with your e-mail address and tell visitors they can send questions by e-mail in case you are offline.
AIDA
AIDA is a marketing model. It is an English acronym, consists of the followings:
- Attention: get people become aware of a product, a brand, or any content.
- Interest: get people become interested, raise interest.
- Desire: raise desire, make people feel a need for your product or what you have.
- Action: it is a call to action, make people have the intention to e.g. purchase.
Imagine it as a pyramid…
with building blocks and levels that are inseparable, because one follows the other. This model is used in several areas. You can create a blog post, a product page, an e-mail, an advert or anything else with using this frame. You can use this model freely on what you want, you don’t have to be scared of novelty.
In our case, this is important because you can guide potential customers by using this model. You put something in front of the customer, he notices it and finds out that your brand or product exists. After this, he becomes interested in the certain content. For example, because you have shown him something that makes him realize one of his problems. He starts to like your product/offer, it makes a desire, the potential customer realizes that he needs your product (to solve the problem). In the end, the intention to do something comes into being – the purchase will be done, or at least you point out to the person what to do. It is something like the Call to Action and its steps, where the ultimate goal is the purchase (or any action) in both cases. At the fourth level, at the action section, it’s still not sure you have a winning case, because you may have cart abandoners – that otherwise you can fix it. As a final basic fact: some people say awareness instead of attention when talking about the first level.
Why are we talking about AIDA here – as a problem – and how you can use this model in your webshop?
You can think of this as a love-partnership – by trying to consider it as easy as possible. It’s like you start to like someone, start to fall in love and you try to entice her/him with different methods. You must have a gradual effect on the other’s emotions. For a web store, you can use AIDA model in several ways (you will see what problems can you have with it), now we’re going through three examples hereinafter.
- From the outside to the inside. In each case, it’s important to see the whole thing in an abstract. At this point, it’s essential to look beyond.
attention: raising attention can be started for example with an advertisement. Show people that your web store exists or that you have some offer right now. Simply just show yourself to others e.g. with a Facebook ad that can reach the specific target.
interest: you can raise interest by for example asking about a problem, pointing to one. You can show what seasonal, unique offer you have. Not only the text, visuality is also important, you have to use catchy content to do not let viewers scroll down, away from your advert. Be persuasive at this point too, you won’t only want people just to visit your page, but also to buy from there. That’s all that matters.
desire: here, at the level of raising desire we could say that with an unbeatable offer and with having an effect on emotions you have to be more convincing, and make people spend more time on watching and checking your ad so that people can get more information. After that the action part could come, so people would click on the link that directs them to your web store. This previous one would also be a possible way, and that’s why we could have introduced 4 possible examples of using AIDA for an e-store, but we didn’t intentionally do it because this From the outside… example is not about how to advertise in a good way, but how to reach out to a visitor to become a real customer. That’s why the text and the picture on the ad must be cool, catchy and convincing to really make a purchase. Probably you’ve already had an incident when you just have been glanced at a promotional content and you’ve already known you will buy because you saw a visibly reliable, unmissable offer. You need to be more powerful here than in the interest level, you must have more effect on emotions. However, staying at the original idea, it can also be said that after the level of interest right away, people click immediately, and you have to come up with a webpage at the desire level that has evidence of the quality you have and the relevance and the good offer.
action: the call to action has to be a Buy or Add to Cart button for example with an illustration of an arrow pointing to that important word to highlight the good bargain again. - Main page as an entrance door. There aren’t big differences in the examples because we use the same gradual method everywhere.
attention: now let’s start with an occasion when someone lands on the main page of your web store, for example, because of one of an acquaintance has just mentioned your site to someone. You have to raise attention with good quality, spectacular images. The design has to be aesthetic at first sight, and you have to reveal what you are selling, in the first moment.
interest: raise interest by showing or writing down why your web store is a good place for purchase, in what it is different from the others, and what problems and needs may arise. For example, highlight those with product images.
desire: you can awake desire by showing that you are able to satisfy those needs, and you are selling your products at a good price, or you may have some special offers. Here we can also talk about two versions. One of those is that everything is done on the main page, so there you raise desire and action part also happens. So, for instance, a particular product has been shown in a window with a Buy/Add to Cart button, and the process was completed. (action, as mentioned earlier, can not only be the aim to make a purchase, you can set it for any other purpose, the main thing is to trigger an action). However, let’s say you set the desire level to a product page or a page that is about a seasonal offer (or something about downloading a coupon, subscribing to the newsletter). In this case, by having a strong influence on emotions, the next certain thing will be the last step:
action: the call to action can be a conspicuous button or banner. Make it clear what people can get, what they have to or recommended to do. - Product page. This can be compared to writing an e-mail which is about a new product and the aim is to make them click further on your web store. It can also be compared to a blog post where the goal is almost the same. The difference is that we work with other data/details in this example. By the way, AIDA can be used not only for product pages but also for product descriptions, however now we won’t talk about the latter.
attention: here, there are antecedents, and after all those things you have to think about a new “pyramid”, you have to raise attention somehow – anyway, attention is already there because your potential customer has already got to that certain product page. You can raise or increase attention with for example a “telling name”, that can be seen without scrolling, and it has to be catchy. Other methods can be highlighting a discounted price or some incentive words/sentences, slogans or impulsive images.
interest: examples mentioned at last can be used here too. As for pictures, it’s worth putting them near to the top, or they have to be seen without scrolling even just a bit. You better upload more photos and illustrations. As for product descriptions, you have to highlight the most important keywords, headlines with bigger font size or different color too so that they can be seen if people just scroll through the page quickly. You also have to show with these highlights, what information is available with more detailed reading – for example, menus for product features, reviews, etc. Shipping info under the price may also belong here.
desire: at this point the whole description counts. Write down every useful information about the product, the exact name, utility, size, color choice, and everything you would like to know if you were about to purchase at a store. Tell people on the product page the warranty information you have, whether the item is in stock or not, upload a video about how the product works, or any other content referring to references – for example, customers’ experiences in quotes, photos they have made, etc. Another tool can be trying to do cross-selling within product pages, that means you recommend matching options, show people other products that they can buy with the certain item, and they may have a discount on that way. If you write some promising thoughts about the manufacturer of the product or its story, it’s also beneficial. Try to impress people and have an effect on emotions, tell why the product would be good to the customer or to the one who he wants to give that as a gift.
action: keep the Buy or Add to Cart button ahead, in focus. Obviously, this can appear near to the price of the product, but this button won’t raise attention or interest. Here, you can even create the add to favorites option. After the product description part or on the top of the page – because of scrolling back – point out the opportunity to go ahead. Use one to three words that they should shop now, and why. Around the Buy/Add to Cart button you should place the most important information, quasi-summing up why it’s worth buying the product, but these data and text shouldn’t distract people’s attention from the action.
The problems may be the followings. There’s no ad which leads, the ad is inappropriate, the connection is not proper between steps. Even if people don’t recognize that they use a method that is similar to AIDA… The content doesn’t have that much effect on emotions and consciousness, the appointed route is not the best. And the most important: it’s not clear what to do. If it isn’t clear, people won’t even try to do or understand anything. You have to guide them if you want them to become buyers, let’s not only give them the direction to the first step and show yourself. AIDA assists the mindset that is beneficial to you as a web store owner.
Drop Shipping
If you haven’t known anything about drop shipping yet, you can learn about it by clicking here, and about what is the best kind of this method that is beneficial in the long run.
If you do drop shipping, you have to think about whether you are doing it well. Whether you get your products from eBay and from other similar marketplaces, and you may also use noticeably big margin, it’s understandable if you are having problems with getting purchases. There are so many people ordering products from these marketplaces. So it’s easy to almost anyone to recognize the items that are from these places. If they notice this, they will check the original page for the original price. Probably they will rather order from there. So, that’s why it’s better to get your products from real suppliers, manufacturers, wholesalers. Drop shipping is a good business form. However, you have to do it right so that it can worth the effort in the long run and you can be successful. Or, it’s also important to find a niche for your business.
We have a new way of drop shipping called remote warehousing. It is the best e-commerce method to use if you want to put just a small amount of money in your business. Also, it is the best if you want to make sure that you will be successful in the long run, because of doing every detail right and you don’t have to worry about anything. Soon you can read more about it. Look at this short description like a teaser of a new big thing.
Focus on Your Ideal Customer
Always keep in mind who is your target audience, who you want to sell your products to. Do everything thinking about this fact. The type of the texts and images, the appearance of the entire page, the design, the colors and shapes and other different things depending on the type of the product and the target audience and the age group. If something doesn’t match, it will be felt by the visitor of the web store. Then he may not consider your site as an ideal place to do the shopping.
It can be seen that the entire text of this article is related. Its parts inevitably refer to each other, and some elements appear several times. The reason is – beside each point has differences and some elements are not only important in one place – that if someone just scrolls through the text only to see what components are listed, then the content he may be wondering about has to be highlighted.
It’s important to really pay attention to the content. Try not just putting almost random stuff to the webshop without giving support to customers and encourage them to buy. The motto from the beginning once again. If visitors are insecure – for authenticity, quality and anything else – they won’t buy!
