Why WebSite Hits Does Not Always Equal To More Sales!
By IT Master Ken
Most of us, IT-savvy people, have already learned that it is not easy to make a sale, regardless of how many visitors come to your website. Even with the best search engine marketing and professional advertising, you will soon discover that your sales are not getting anywhere, and for some strange reason you just can't get your online business started.
You are not alone. You are just one of the millions of websites and online businesses on the net, some of which are getting thousands of hits every week and have yet to make a decent sale of a product or service. Online vendors of both physical and digital products are facing this problem every day. The cause of the problem can be narrowed down to several possible reasons , all of which you have to consider when analysing your own situation and before starting your next marketing or advertising campaign or before pointing your fingers at those you sold you your million of guaranteed website hits.
Any reason or combination of reasons below might be affecting your sales.
a). It is imperative that you market and promote your website on and off the internet. Try all ethical methods available to you: Search engine promotion, banner and popup advertising, newsletters, classified ads, word of mouth, etc. And be sure your pages are functioning. It will be a real waste of money and effort to find out that your webpages were down during a marketing campaign.
b). Your website should look professional and credible. Ask yourself, would you buy from a site that looked like yours? If you hear the words, "liar", "scam", "cheats" echoed in your mind when you answered "sure I would", then it is time you get a second opinion. Many visitors will flee from your site because of the way your website looked, even if it is selling great products. If you don't want to spend money on web design, try looking up website templates using search engines and see what you can find. These templates will allow you to plug in your content and you basically get a very professional looking web site for a lot less than you might ever imagine. e.g. of templates http://www.scintillating.info
c). If visitors are not interested in what you are selling, you can pump thousands of dollars and countless hours into advertising and it won't make any difference. In other words, perhaps that glow in the dark camouflage suit wasn't such a great idea. Your products or services have little appeal.
d). If what you are selling is ideal for a certain type of person, region or interest group, don't ignore this fact and waste time and money promoting outside of this focus area. In other words, try focusing your advertising on a targeted audience. If you are selling car products, do not advertise to computer enthusiasts unless you are selling a car computer. Instead figure out where auto customers shop and what sites they like to visit and then try to focus your advertising on those destinations instead.
e). Your product is too expensive for your target audience. If visitors cannot afford or do not want to afford what you are selling, perhaps you need to target a different audience. Don't try to sell expensive perfumes to an audience looking for discount 99 cent store products.
f). Your product service is too cheap. Some products do not cost enough. Think "perceived value" and price your products for what they are worth. A great product can be scarred for life, if visitors perceive it as too cheap to be of quality. Try raising your prices and see what happens, you might be pleasantly surprised.
g). Your product is free so why should anyone pay for it? Many great software downloads have been created as freetrial versions with just one problem, they are full working versions with no real incentive to upgrade. Most people ignore the so called "nag screens" and continue to use these products for years without ever knowing that they are violating license agreement. Give the user a reason to upgrade. Perhaps by disabling features that are critical to the operation of your product, but won't prevent the user from experiencing your products value. When they upgrade by paying, they get all the features turned on.
h). Visitors cannot the link to place an order. It is surprising how many web sites are not order-friendly. Some webmasters spend time and money developing fanciful websites with flashy graphics and animation only to forget the most important reason for their site's existence. They forget to invite and make it easy for visitors to place orders. I recently visited a site with great enthusiasm after getting an email announcement. It was the "must have product" for Internet Marketing. Problem is that there was no order button!
i). Your buy order process is too painful. Try to place an order yourself. Click on one of your order links and experience the process flow. If the order pages load too slowly or the process is too painful, you will lose potential customers. This sales losing process is called "abandonment" by the industry and affects many online businesses where visitors wanting to become customers suddenly abandon their order in mid-process to do something else.
j). You have unrealistic expectations and need to take a scientific approach to advertising. Don't buy a 100,000-visitors package and then expect 100,000 sales. It won't happen unless there was no oxygen left on earth and you just so happen to be selling oxygen. There are proven formulas that can help you estimate roughly the amount of sales that can be achieved by driving a certain amount of traffic to your site.
Try this simple formula to estimate how many visitors you need to meet your sales/sign-up goals.
1). Figure out your conversion rate: A conversion is = to a visitor that becomes a customer or a sign-up. A conversion rate is defined as the number of actual sales or sign-ups divided by the number of site visitors in a given period. For example, two sales per 100 visitors = 2% or a .02 conversion rate per 100 visitors.
So take a good look at your recent sales and number of visits to your product/service web page. This can be done by taking a look at your web site's statistics. If you make one sale per 100 visitors to your site, then you have a conversion rate of 1%. This number, by the way, is considered by many average marketers to be difficult to achieve and rightly so. Many web sites, lacking million dollar budgets, are happy to get a tenth (.001) of a percent. Still, anything is possible. We are using 1% in this calculation to make the example easier to understand (the industry average is said to be 1% to 2%)
2). Figure out how many sales/sign-ups you want (quantity--not dollar value)
3). Once you have this info, plug your numbers into the equation below.
Number of Visitors = Desired Number of Sales / Conversion Rate (in decimal)
So as an example: To sell 200 items at a conversion rate of 1%
Number of visitors = 200/.01 (200 divided by .01)
The minimum number of visitors required = 20,000
Therefore, you would need at least 20,000 visitors to get 200 sales, provided you can convert your visitors with a hot offer! The "right words" can convert the "right visitors" into paid customers. Just as easily as the "wrong words" can turn them away. Sometimes a single word can make a difference. If you can raise your conversion rate by applying the ideas in this article, you can also reduce your cost of Customer Acquisition.
The information above is by no means exhaustive, there are other possible reasons that I may have missed in this article. Nevertheless, if taken seriously, the information contained here will help boost your sales and sign-ups. Just remember this final thought. "Sales are never guaranteed... no one can guarantee that a customer will put funds into your bank account". You can, however, increase your probability of success by becoming aware and then taking the right action.
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