Ecommerce has created some huge opportunities for businesses across the globe, giving even the smallest businesses the opportunity to expand their reach, grow their audiences and generate more sales. With online sales in the UK alone growing even more year upon year, I think we can officially say that ecommerce is here to stay.
However, despite the huge amount of great opportunities out there, with competition growing, the ecommerce world is becoming much more cut throat, knowing exactly how to get it right is becoming a much bigger challenge and generating conversions is becoming even more important.
If you’ve noticed a drop in conversions or even a complete failure to convert your customers, it can be easy to panic, especially if you’re gaining huge amounts of traffic. Fortunately however, there are a plenty of very common reasons why your website isn’t converting and a number of great opportunities available to not only improve your sales but also make huge improvements to your ecommerce business as a whole.
So what’s the issue?
From simple website problems to issues with your photography, there’s plenty of simple things that can drastically hinder your sales. Here are five reasons why your website might not be leading to the conversions you want.
Poor Functionality
A reliable, user friendly design website is essential, meaning that if your site doesn’t work as it should in a way that customers can easily understand, it can drive potential customers away, encouraging them to convert elsewhere. A website that includes broken links, slow loading times and even sites that don’t load at all are all red flags for website visitors and could be all it takes to judge your site enough to avoid purchasing something from it.
By carefully checking through your site in a way that mirrors how your visitors interact with the site, you can monitor what works and make sure everything is working the way it should, helping you understand what improvements need to be made.
Your Site Isn’t Mobile Friendly
As mobile browsing continues to take over, these days you have to have a mobile friendly website, there’s no way around this fact. With more people using mobile and tablet devices to browse the internet and make online purchases, if your website doesn’t offer an experience that is optimised for this audience then you’re likely to drive them away, straight towards a site that has mobile users in mind.
Through a responsive design that gives your audience the full experience on both mobile and desktop devices you can treat your audience equally, not showing that you favour one type of user more than the other, increasing your reach and expanding your chances of growing your conversions.
Poor Product Images & Descriptions
Your lack of conversions doesn’t have to be complicated, if you’re not offering high quality product photos and product descriptions you can easily drive your potential customers away. Even one poor quality photo can be enough to create a bad first impression, making customers think less of your business and instantly killing your chances of converting. Your customers don’t want a messy, unorganised website, they want a clear view of what it is you have to offer and failing to provide this can very quickly drive people away.
When thinking about your product photography you need to be sure to make sure that you’re showing your customers exactly what it is they are likely to receive, showing a number of angles, as well as offering a detailed, yet engaging description that tells people exactly what is being offered.
No Calls To Action
A fully functional website is all well and good, however becomes completely redundant if your visitors leave the site without actually doing anything or carrying out an action. You should encourage your visitors to find out more about your product or even purchase your items with well thought out, carefully placed calls to actions. If your website doesn’t feature these, you aren’t asking your visitors to do anything, which can lead them to simply click away from your site if they don’t see anything worth keeping them there.
Through offering a variety of different types of call to actions, including links to sales, discounts, email subscriptions and obvious links to purchase items, you can create simple ways to encourage more conversions and all it takes is knowing exactly how to place these CTAs in a way that your customers will naturally click.
Your Load Times Are Painfully Slow
The simple fact is if your website is taking too long to load then it’s incredibly likely that your visitors are going to leave almost straight away and if someone leaves your website because it’s too slow, it’s probable that they aren’t going to come back, instead they’re likely to head straight to your competitors to make a purchase, meaning you’ve lost all chances of converting that customer both now and in the future.
There are a number of tests available out there for businesses to test the speed and load times of their website, letting people gain more of an insight into what is wrong with the site and how it can be rectified.
You should never just accept a drop in conversions and failing to make any conversions isn’t something that should be ‘the norm’ for your business. Instead you should address these concerns as soon as you can, looking for new ways to optimise your site in order to boost your conversions and generate you a profit. By taking the time to look through your site and even speaking to conversion rate optimisation specialists in order to make the corrections needed, you can improve your site and start generating the sales you really want!
