The Business Library

Once you have set up your online business, spent time and money promoting your services and products, and finally got a stream of new visitors coming to your site, you’ll need to think about how to convert those visitors into paying customers. I am going to look at methods by which you can improve your conversion rates by discussing some of the reasons that people will not make a purchase when visiting your site.

Getting the wrong people to your site

If you are targeting the wrong market sector with your advertising, then it really doesn’t matter how successful in drawing the crowds it is – they are not going to be interested in your products or services.

Be as specific as possible. If your market is a niche market, then put advertisements in magazines or on Web sites that serve your niche. Decide on your target audience, and bombard them with advertising. You will find that targeted advertising will pay dividends more than generic advertising – if you add your business to our directory, then make sure you list it using relevant keywords and phrases. Giving your guttering cleaning business advertisement keywords relating to generic construction or repairs will get you very few interested parties. Add keywords and phrases specifically related to gutter cleaning services, and you’re target market will find you!

Poor content quality

People will not read everything on your Web site or marketing material. Most people skim read when browsing, and as such, need content that is easy to process and digest.

Always ensure that you have spellchecked your copy before posting it to your site; misspelled or grammatically incorrect passages will instantly give your visitors a bad impression of your business, after all, if you can’t be bothered to check your own marketing material for correctness, then your products and services are probably going to suffer from the same lack of professionalism and attention to detail.

Not describing products or services fully

Visitors will want to find out more about your products and services before they buy. By not explaining the features or specifications in full, you are leaving questions unanswered in the minds of your customers. If these questions are important enough, there is a good chance that your visitor will look elsewhere for answers, and end up purchasing from your competitors.

Make sure that you cover as much detail as possible when describing your products – ideally, you should aim to be able to explain enough about the

Not providing clear prices

If you are targeting customers that are liable to make spontaneous purchases, then you need to be able to provide them with a barrier-free path to making them.

By not having prices listed clearly with your products, you are placing a barrier in the way of a customer making a purchase – they need to know if the item is affordable to them. Adding clear pricing guides seems to also have an effect on the amount of trust that customers place on the site. If you appear trustworthy, open and to the point, then users appear to be more inclined to make a purchase.

Confusing navigation

This is a great sin of web development – poor navigation, and confusing menus or forms can cause customers to abandon your site very quickly.

The navigational elements of a site should aid the customer in moving around your pages, and additionally, give them some feedback as to where they currently are. Poorly designed navigation frustrates users, and will almost certainly cost your business money.

I have discussed some of the reasons as to why people may come to your site and not make a purchase. If you can avoid some of these common mistakes, then you are effectively reducing the number of barriers standing between a browsing customer becoming a paying customer.

One final word of advice: Take a look at your site now – can you see any other potential barriers that may prevent a visitor from finding what they want and spontaneously purchasing it? If so, look at how you can remove these barriers – each time you do, you are effectively opening your doors further, and allowing more people to make purchases.

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 23rd, 2006 at 1:58 am and is filed under Advertising, Design. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.