5 Simple Ways To Improve Your Website Sales
Up your conversion rates and grow your sales.
A 2020 breakdown of online retailers shows that there are nearly 5 million online retailers worldwide who operate off their own web platform. 1.5 million of those e-commerce sites are in the United States alone.
That can be some pretty hefty competition.
While most businesses are unique, and there is a market for nearly everything, the competition may not be as bad as you think, but catching potential customers’ attention is essential.
Even more critical is converting those potential customers into paying ones.
That’s why you need to take a good look at your website and a good look at your conversion rates and see if there is some way to improve both.
According to an August 2020 report from Wordstream:
“Across industries, the average landing page conversion rate was 2.35%, yet the top 25% are converting at 5.31% or higher. Ideally, you want to break into the top 10% — these are the landing pages with conversion rates of 11.45% or higher.”
All of those numbers seem frustratingly low.
What are some simple ways one can improve those numbers and capture more sales?
Upgrade your website’s images
People respond to images. There are just no two ways about it. There’s a reason cave drawings came before writing.
Armed with that knowledge, why are you still using any old vaguely-related picture on your website?
If you’re selling tech support services, you probably have pictures of computers. If you’re selling writing services, you have images of leather notebooks and elegant pens. Maybe you have a sleek looking laptop in there beside a cup of coffee.
That’s all well and good, but how are they related to what you’re trying to sell?
Take a few extra moments to incorporate both the service and the service in action.
For example, in the image above, I chose the traditional laptop image, but the computer’s screen is clearly displaying a quality image of another computer — suggesting they are selling computer-related services. It’s not a blank screen. It’s not showing a random spreadsheet.
Sites like Pexels, Picabay, and Unsplash have hundreds of thousands of images available for free. Don’t use the first ones that come along.
Take some time to curate your images.
If you’re handy with a camera and know how to use good lighting and backgrounds, try using your own images. Show us your work desk. Show us your product being used.
If you’re selling a product, show them in the best light possible. Hire someone if you have to.
It makes a difference.
Clean up your website
Nothing is going to turn a visitor to your website off faster than a website that:
- Takes too long to load
- Is constantly reloading
- Contain more ads than content
- Uses over-persistent pop-up windows
- Slows down your entire computer.
I can’t believe there are still websites that haven’t learned these lessons yet.
There’s a writer I know whose work is fantastic. I hate visiting her site and pretty much only read her blog when she copies one into her mailing list. It’s a shame, because I’m sure I’m missing out on some great content, but I noticed after a while that my computer always slowed considerably after visiting her site. And her banner ads sometimes doubled up and took up a lot of screen space.
I’ve tried to use an art sales site that would blank out halfway through filling out a form and reset itself. It wasn’t me. Other people have complained about it.
They lost sales.
Test your website on different browsers. Delete your cookies and test them again. Get rid of anything that would slow things down — buggy ad software, images that are too large, obsolete form scripts, etc.
Go for a clean, easy-to-read design and don’t make the user experience a trying one.
Cover shipping, offer discounts and free stuff
There’s nothing quite as disappointing as seeing that people have gone and filled their cart with items only to abandon them at the last minute.
What made them change their mind?
Shipping
In many cases, it was shipping costs. They may not seem like a lot to you, but to a customer, it could be that few dollars more than they wanted to pay that make a difference — particularly if they can find something similar on Amazon and have it shipped for free or nearly free.
Provide limited time offers for free shipping within your home country. Offer occasional discounts that could defray the cost of shipping overall.
These don’t have to be permanent. You can regularly change your offers — although I recommend not more than every few weeks — and see what customers respond to the most.
Discounts
Whether you’re selling a physical item or a service, occasional discounts and specials can entice customers and encourage them to complete their purchases. Hopefully, their satisfaction with your product or service will keep them as customers, but if you think they need a little more encouragement, make sure to offer sales and discounts when you can.
A limited time 40% discount for your ebooks might be enough to hook them as a reader for the rest of your books, or any seminars or classes you sell online. A buy-one-get-one (BOGO) deal on some t-shirts could turn a break-even sale into repeatedly profitable future sales.
Look around at what similar businesses or services are offering, and see if you can’t pick up some ideas.
Free Stuff
If you offer a bundle of, say, a t-shirt, sweatshirt, and baseball cap at a price less than what all three would have cost separately, position it, instead, as a t-shirt/sweatshirt bundle with a free baseball cap. You’re not being dishonest or “pulling a fast one.” It’s the same deal both ways. Just one leverages the idea that people like to get things for free. If someone purchases the bundle and, for whatever reason, informs you that you need not bother with the hat, then add a little discount if you’d like.
The idea is that the offer of something free is often all the push someone needs to go through with a purchase.
If you’re selling services such as writing, editing, design, and so forth, you can still give away stuff for free. Write a short ebook or compose a whitepaper on a topic related to your service and offer it as a free download from your website. If you’re a designer, reusable templates are popular.
Better yet, offer it for free in exchange for joining your mailing list. You can not only showcase your services with free giveaways, but it’s a great wat to begin building a relationship with your customer base.
Update your product or services listings
Old photos. Out-of-date pricing or product details. Writing portfolio pieces that are several years old.
These are all things that could use some updating on your website if you want to convince visitors that your business is on top of things.
How complete are your product or service descriptions? Do they give a full picture of what you have to offer?
These are other questions you should consider when updating your website. It’s one thing not to overload your site with extraneous detail. It’s another not to provide nearly enough.
Have some trusted friends (trusted to give you honest feedback) or a professional consultant look over your site to see where information may be lacking.
The fewer questions your customers have before making a purchasing decision, the better.
Highlight your call-to-action
If you’re posting a blog entry on your site to drive traffic, don’t forget to make the call-to-action (CTA) nice and clear. You want your customers to click that link that takes them from your informative and enlightening blog post to your sales page.
Otherwise, what’s the point?
Use bold type. Use a different color of type to highlight the CTA. Maybe put it in a box or create an attractive graphic link. Make it attention-grabbing.
That said, don’t go overboard. Gaudy CTAs don’t impress customers.
Just the same, make the CTA stand out, so the customer doesn’t forget you’re trying to sell them something. And definitely don’t make the customer search for where to find sales information.
I can’t think of a single website that couldn’t do with some improving tweaks here and there. When it comes to your website offering products or services, you want it to be the best possible tool it can be for converting potential customers to paying ones.
These tips are a great start toward improving your conversion rate.
What are some strategies you use?
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