So you have your brand new site set up with a beautiful store attached. You tell your friends and your customers and everyone is excited and visits to check it out. But for some reason, even though you’re getting lots of visitors they’re not turning into a lot of sales. That’s enough to make anyone feel a bit blue, but here are some tips to helping increase your conversions.
It’s something that affects many sites so don’t worry; from the smallest new store to even giant corporations. But the good news is that it can be fixed with just the tiniest of effort. And you’re gonna do it! Here are our top 4 common conversion killers and how to kill them, so that your store can kill in sales!
1. Your photos are terrible
It’s all very cute that your best friends sisters cousins daughter offered to take some photos of your handmade hand-made silk scarves. The best part of it was that is was all for free wasn’t it. Now we’re not discouraging this as maybe they’re super talented, but let’s be honest – time to call the pros in.
You should have a series of photos for each product. If it’s apparel or accessories then get them on a model as well as by themselves. You should be approximating how the item will look and feel for your customer as best as you can. Remember this is all online so the more you can do to make sure they’re going to absolutely love your item when it arrives then all the better for your return rate.
The photos should be bright and properly lit. No strange shadows or anything to make a potential customer all WTF about. If it looks off and feels shady, the close tab button is just a second away. Basically, you want your photos to look and feel professional don’t you, otherwise you just feel amateur and nobody wants that when they’re shopping out in the wild-west which is the online world.
2. Your product descriptions suck
Now it’s just about the photos, it’s the copy descriptions that you attach to them. Remember even though a photo is worth a thousand words – a thousand words are still worth a thousand words. Studies have shown that touching and feeling an object increases a person’s desire to buy it. Now they can’t feel it online and stroking their screen won’t do anything but make them look a bit crazy, so reading your description is really the next best thing.
Writing weak copy is again one of the biggest ways to lose a sale. You might be thinking, but hey, I do describe my products! They’re blue. Made of wood. And are nice. No. That is copy yes, but that is awfully weak copy that you should banish at once. Your copy should be used to craft a story about your product and describe the benefits to the buyer.
If they’re taking the time to read about your item after looking at the photo, then they’ve made it past stage 1. You want to keep them hooked! So let’s do it:
This shirt has an innovative design and was manufactured with the utmost craftsmanship.
If you could see my eyes rolling right now then you would instantly delete that line. You need to be more specific. Less cliched. More fresh. Be zesty. Make an actual point. The same goes for technical products. Saying something like this:
This blender is made of steel and it’s motor runs at 24,000 RPM.
What does that even mean? As if anyone would expect your blender to be made of anything but steel. Does it crush ice? Does it crush ice fast? If I fill up the whole thing with all sorts of fruit and ice cream – how fast can I get my milkshake done. These are the things you need to express more succinctly.
3. Your store is a big mess
In real life when you walk into a store and you see all the signs pointing to the right aisles and everything is all nicely laid out for you – that makes you smile and actually want to shop. So why wouldn’t your online store be the same? If someone gets annoyed in a real store and walks out, you think they won’t do the same thing and close that tab on your store? Of course they would.
There are two main ways that really kill an online store’s layout and turns people off. First, it’s if you make it difficult for customers to find stuff they love fast. And secondly, it’s from arranging products in a manner that discourages them from actually making the purchase.
The most obvious examples include not having a link to your store anywhere on your site, not having product categories (or at the very least tags), or – the opposite – hiding your products under too many categories. This ties into what we just said about photos and product descriptions, they all work together.
Now about discouraging sales – you feel suspect going into slightly dodgy stores in real life don’t you, so why wouldn’t you feel the same online? Make sure your site has a nice presentable clear template and looks good. Make it feel a part of your actual site by integrating the same menu bars and footers if you can.
4. You have no trust
Now this is where the online world truly differs from the physical. Every day people go into new stores that they’ve never heard of before and buy stuff. Never mind a store, they do it from temporary stands and stalls that they’ll never see again. But in this case unlike online, they can have their goods immediately and can often talk to someone about it before buying.
What do you think happens when someone goes online knowing that, but then also you don’t have:
- An about page that talks about your company history
- No product reviews or testimonials
- No telephone number or names anywhere on the site
- No mention of how payments are secured
- I know what I’d be doing – clicking right off that site. And so would all your visitors.
Even something as simple as a live chat, email or Skype name is better than having nothing. Knowing that they can get in touch if there is a problem means they might at least take the risk of buying your item in the case that something is wrong, than the opposite.
Conclusion
So there we have it. This post wasn’t about how to get more visitors to your store. Nobody can promise that and hold people to gun point to click and buy on your store. This was about fixing the top issues that prevent those already on your site from actually shifting into that purchase territory. Remember if you have any comments of questions just comment below. We’d love to help you out more and hear from you. Go and make Crozdesk proud!
