Why some websites succeed when other’s don’t

Over the years I’ve helped hundreds of companies with their online sales. Some websites struggle to get one sale per month, while others receive multiple orders every hour of every day. What’s the difference? Marketing. Specifically, marketing that drives traffic to your website, followed up by marketing that converts visitors into customers.

According to Neil Patel, less than 25% of ALL websites ever receive ANY traffic. I’m not sure where he got those numbers, but I recently reviewed a website for a potential client and what I discovered was true of about 75% of all the websites that I look at, so I suspect his numbers are accurate. Because I see these same issues in so many websites, I decided to post my reply to this company in this article. Here is my response:

At first glance, your website appears to be clean and professional looking. It is using a modern and robust content management system. You have Google Analytics installed, which is recommended. Technically, there is nothing wrong with your site. So why isn’t it performing? Let me explain.

It appears as if there are 38 products listed on your site. All products have good quality, high resolution photos that looks like they were professional shot. They are all consistent and all have white cutout backgrounds so the product appears to float on the page. These photos are great for the primary product photos, however you would probably get more sales conversions if you added some secondary photos and videos of the product “in-context” – that is action shots of how the product is actually used. Multiple images of your product, and even videos of your product being used should be considered the norm.

You need testimonials and reviews on your website. This is huge. Social proof is one of the main selling points for anyone buying online and you can greatly ease their mind by having testimonials and reviews on each and every page of your website.

Make it easy for someone to do business with you. Your phone number is on the contact page, but we recommend adding it to the header and/or footer of every page.

The single biggest problem you have with your website is that no one can find it (your site is not listed on alexa.com, which means it gets very little traffic). An Alexa rank by itself may not indicate sales volume, but it does show relative traffic volume over time. For example, the number one site on the internet (Alexa rank of 1) is Google. The number 2 site (Alexa rank of 2) is YouTube. Facebook is number 3. Alexa ranks approximately 28 million websites. For reference purposes, WebStoresLtd.com sits at 132,259 (21,303 in the United States). Your site does not make it into the top 28,000,000 meaning you do not get enough traffic to show up.

To see if your site comes up in the search engines, use a new private (incognito) browser and type in the search term you think you should rank for. The simple truth of the matter is that no one (other than your friends and existing customers) would ever think to search on “Your Website Name” (changed to protect the client’s privacy) to find your website. Instead, they would search for “Cajun Seasoning,” or “Gourmet Teriyaki Sauce.” When that happens, you are not showing up in the search results. As you learned at the seminar, the best way to overcome this is to create a YouTube video for every one of your products, focusing on a long-tail keyword that is highly searched but has little competition. For example, “gourmet teriyaki chicken sauce” or “gourmet teriyaki salmon sauce” are long-tail keywords that you could probably rank for, as there are over 200,000 monthly searches for these terms with a competition score of only 0.02.

In addition to driving traffic from search terms, you need to drive traffic to your website yourself. Click To Tweet

In addition to driving traffic from search terms, you need to drive traffic to your website yourself. Successful ways of doing this include: instructional YouTube videos, guest posting on other people’s blogs, writing your own (weekly) blog, testimonials and reviews – especially on Google and Facebook, social media post (Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest), and paid advertising.

Once people do find your website, you need to give them a reason to provide you with their contact information. 98% of all website visitors leave without ever converting into a customer. Over 80% will NEVER return.

98% of all website visitors leave without ever converting into a customer. Click To Tweet

That means that you need to:

a. collect their contact email before they leave

b. give them an incentive to come back and visit you again, and

c. keep in front of them, probably through a series of re-targeting ads.

I continued the letter with what WebStores Ltd. could specifically do for their company, but here’s the thing: I want you to take a serious look at your website. Do any of the points above sound like your online presence? Are you creating new and consistent content every week as a means of driving traffic to your website and to keep visitors coming back for more? If this post sounds like you, give us a call at 877-924-1414 and let’s see if we can help you grow your online sales.

Did you find this article useful or learn anything? If so, I’d love some feedback about what you thought.

GregJameson

Greg Jameson has been writing blog articles on ecommerce and internet marketing for over 10 years. Learn more about Greg at https://webstoresltd.com/about/