Plenty of Traffic to Your Website, But Not Many Sales? 4 Reasons Why...

Is this familiar to you? Google Analytics tells you that you’re getting lots of traffic, but you’re not getting lots of sales?

If this is happening to you, usually it is because of one of four reasons. I will highlight these reasons and use my own case studiesand experience to highlight what’s going on and how to fix it.

Reason 1 - Your website is not created to convert visitors into customers.

Could it be that your website is too “brochureware” and doesn’t have the correct sales voice or calls to action? I have seen so many websites that drivel on about their services or products but never actually try to sell them. One of my previous clients was a tool manufacturer who decided they were going to put their whole portfolio of products online.

This information included product specifications, user manuals and technical diagrams which was fantastic for SEO and really helped potential buyers with their purchasing decision. The problem was that the only route to purchase was to either call the company and speak directly to the sales staff, or to view a list of official distributors that you may or may not be able to buy online from.

Obviously,  the information was great, but the site had a barrier to purchase. The site was getting plenty of hits, but very little calls to the sales team because people online want to purchase online without having to talk to someone which is the whole idea of online transactions. And dealer orders showed no significant rise so we couldn’t equate the website to any purchases.

There was only one thing for it, actually, in the case of this client we made two major additions to the site. As a quick fix I enlisted a third-party basket system (called Roman Cart) so that we could quickly get a shopping cart working on the site. Secondly, we employed an online manager who would put the companies’ best-selling tools onto Amazon to sell using the stores Fulfilled by Amazon service.

Within weeks, as a direct result of having quality content and a “Buy Now” call to action or links directly to Amazon products, sales started coming in thick and fast. The lesson here is that if you don’t make it easy for a customer to purchase or make a booking from your site, your potential customer will move on to another site and you will lose them!

Reason 2 -  Your website is not targeting the right audience.

This could be especially a problem if you use paid-for adverts or pay-per-click which is attracting the wrong audience.

One of our clients was a travel agent. They had a number of physical high street stores which worked very well. Google Pay Per Click (PPC) wasn’t new but had only been available for a few years at this point and the DoubleClick advert network was a surefire way of getting your company or brand in front of users in the form of adverts placed on other people's websites.

The client couldn’t understand what the issue was because adverts and PPC while costly, were bringing lots of traffic to the site but nobody seemed to be purchasing a holiday at all.

The unique selling point of the holidays our client was selling was centred around getting your sunshine fix during the wintertime… Most of the holidays sold on the site would be to countries that offered a suntan from November to February.

When we looked at the money spent on adverts and PPC, it was clear that the wrong message was being presented. The adverts focussed on cheap holidays instead of winter sun holidays and therefore during most of the year, the people clicking would be expecting a bargain holiday for those standard school times, completely the opposite of the times that the travel agent was selling.  Once that was apparent the users would leave the site looking for more appropriate holidays elsewhere.

The obvious fix for this was to tailor the PPC keywords and graphical adverts to winter holidays in the sun, this meant fewer clicks (and therefore less cost) but resulted in a much higher conversion rate than they had previously.

If you get your message right when dealing with ads and pay-per-click, and conversions can be high… If you bring your traffic using the wrong keywords, then those people are going to feel like you have got them there under false pretences and leave as soon as it becomes obvious, sapping your marketing budget in the process.

Make sure you know your audience, understand their needs and tailor your site and marketing for them. Don't make simple mistakes like having your site design and content look too luxurious when it’s aimed at the general public or conversely looking cheap and simple when it’s a luxury brand for example.

Reason 3 -  Your website is not providing visitors with the information they need.

This is a pet peeve of mine! Living in York, which has more than its fair share of restaurants, coffee shops and bars, I am often baffled by how bad websites are for a lot of these places.

The first mistake is that some of them don’t even have a website and choose to have a rarely updated Facebook page instead, crazy idea but I’ll leave that for another blog post.

It’s amazing how many restaurants, coffee shops and bars make big mistakes, while most of them are pleasing to the eye, with nice generic photos and a third-party booking system link… The problem is that many of them don’t have the information that potential customers want… Namely Opening Times, menus and prices… There’s lots of competition in this sector, if this information doesn’t exist then they will rarely just book or turn up on the off chance that they’ll be something nice that they can afford… No… They’ll just move to the next restaurant website that DOES have this simple information.

Now I understand that there are reasons why some places don’t want to display this information, and I will go into this in-depth in another article, but these are mainly naïve and unfounded. Have a menu up front, with prices, have opening hours, have photos of your actual place and your actual food, if I see another stock hero image of a couple in love clinking glasses I think I’ll vomit before I even eat there!

Think about how you visit sites. If you need your car servicing would you just choose the garage because it has nice pictures of cars, but no prices and no understanding of what you get with your service? Of course, you wouldn’t… You’d move on to the next garage website which does have this information easy to find and it’s within your budget.

The key is to give your customers what they want, most of the time for small to medium businesses it is opening hours, details about your product or services and how much it is going to cost. If they have the information they need and are happy with it then there’s no need to move on at all, they’ll become your customer and you’ll all be happy!

Reason 4 - Your website is not easy to use.

A local council who was a client had a problem. As a public service, there was a legal requirement to make sure that their website (and other services they provide) were accessible. The site was relatively new but they hadn’t scoped or managed it very well in the first place and it was scoring really low on the accessibility checkers.

We took a look at the site and found so many issues with HTML standards, interactive interfaces designed and built by programmers without any thought of the user and we found errors all over the site.

Not only was the site turning away people with disabilities, it was turning away most people and as a result, they would spend a lot of money on council staff answering phones and emails.

I won’t pick on specific issues, but important information was hidden away in PDF files along with processes and application forms and when there were online forms they were too long, finicky and disjointed (often taking you to third-party form processors).

The only solution was to go back to the drawing board, analyse the analytics and talk to the stakeholders and users.

Doing this allowed us to understand where the pinch points were (the areas that the council and users had most problems with and costing the most money) and knowing this we could make information easy to find and understand.

This included making the homepage one big triage, an easy way to find out where the customer wanted to be. In addition, all forms collected ONLY the information that was needed (A must to stop the user from getting frustrated and staying on the right side of GDPR). All forms were accessible, with each field having standard browser-side validation and server-side validation, and named and tagged correctly for screen readers etc.

By making the site work for people with disabilities, it also made sure that the site was easy to use for everybody else. With the addition of email automation keeping the user informed that their submissions had reached the correct departments etc, the whole website had become much easier to use and trust.

As a result, nearly 80% of orders for bulky item collection were taken online when previously 80% had been phoned through. And the equivalent of half of all households in the district using the website every month!

So how do you know if your website is not easy to use? That’s actually really easy. Find a friend or family member and ask them to try it, watch them, and see where they have problems. Write down five tasks such as “Find out what time I’m open on Tuesday” or “Purchase a 3-month membership” for example. Be there when they are doing it but do not give them any help unless they become too frustrated. You’ll be amazed at what you learn about your site.

The 4 Reasons

So, if you’re not sure why your website is not converting visitors into customers, it’s likely to be one of the reasons above. Sometimes it is obvious, sometimes it is subtle. If you have come this far (sorry it’s a long one) and you still don’t think that any of these reasons affect you, then you need a professional who will analyse the logs and analytics, test your site with various tools and look at whether your site works on all devices and platforms. They will also look at your tone of voice, selling style, pay per click and ads etc…

If you need help then please get in touch for a chat. I have helped many companies (big and small) as you can see from my case studies, and I can do the same for you!

You may think it's a cost you can't afford, but imagine if you could make changes to turn 30% more people into customers, how much extra revenue that would bring in.  

Good luck