Why No One is Buying
First, if your ecommerce conversion rate is greater than 10%, you do not need to read this. 99% of ecommerce stores have less than a 1% conversion rate. If you are not tracking your conversion rate, you are probably wondering why your ecommerce store does not have more sales.
How an Ecommerce Transaction Actually Happens
Step 1) The very first action will be taken with the eye, ensure that you have something that looks great.
Customers want to See it, Before They Read It. They buy with their eyes. They abandon with their brains.
Build confidence in the visual design and visual messaging including logo, colors, font size, photography quality and smiling faces.
Step 2) The back button is 1 second a way from your biggest concern, User Abandonment. Make sure that your ecommerce store is so awesome that the back button is not needed.
Be respectful, get rid of the annoying pop ups, slow load times, 404 pages and all the other reasons that cause visitors to have a poor user experience.
Step 3 ) If there is no trust. There is no sale.
Take that statement, print it out and hang it as big and bright as possible in your office. The most fundamental rule in sales is that people will not buy from someone they do not trust.
If you have Privacy, Refund and Terms of Service Policies
with language like this:
“Section 5 – PRODUCTS OR SERVICES
Go Ahead And Shut Down Your Store.
Would you buy from a store with that policy?
So that is actually boilerplate language included in 165,000 Ecommerce website store policies which is hosted on one of the most popular ecommerce platforms, Shopify.
It’s always amazing to me what lawyers will do to sneak in some crazy, asinine language into a websites refund, privacy and terms of service policy statements. Then, the stack holders are confused why no one is buying from their online store. Would you?
Step 4) Getting more traffic to your website. It only takes 1 click to make 1 sale.
The notion, if you build it they will come, is make believe with ecommerce stores. Just because your ecommerce store is online and you have visitors, do not expect that you will get sales. So if you think buy increasing traffic to your store, you are going to get more sales and everything is going to be better, you are wrong. Do not buy into the myth that increasing traffic is the solution. You first need to focus on increasing the conversion rate, then you want to increase traffic.
Most ecommerce store conversion rates are less than 1% That means that it takes more than 100 visitors to your site to get just 1 purchase. The cost per visitor to your store must be treated just like overhead on your P and L.
The ecommerce conversion rate is your most important metric in business. Constantly work to improve it by building a better user experience.
Step 5) Don’t sell crap. Don’t be a crappy ecommerce merchant.
Reviews and buyer ratings will be the make or break to your success. It’s estimated that 30% or more of online shoppers check reviews prior to purchase. The better your reviews and Star ratings, the higher your conversion rate will be and the more sales you will have. It is that simple.
Step 6) If the customer made it this far on your website, chances are they have already viewed at least 3 webpages and have spent roughly 3 minutes on your site. That is the sweat spot where the probability of a purchase increases significantly. At this point they are reading, engaging and demonstrating the behavior that is most likely to place your product in the cart and begin the checkout.
Do not run customers off with poor content and thoughtless content like: “We do not warrant that the quality of any products, services, information, or other material purchased or obtained by you will meet your expectations, or that any errors in the Service will be corrected.” Yes, this is actual statement on an ecommerce website.
If you have to include language like that on your site, go back to step 5 and start over.
