HOW TO INCREASE WEBSITE SALES PART 1
“People are looking at my website, but I’m not making sales”.
Business owners of all markets and all demographics recite this same slogan over and over again. We, at Osprey, look at their websites and often find them to be lackluster; but some of the sites are well-designed. Why aren’t they driving conversion?
Businesses are not strictly built on profit.
To answer the previous questions, you first have to look at what propels consumerism. The concept itself if rather simple, yet it evades notice for many: Make the customer happy, and they will reward you. There are three criteria which can help you easily set goals as a business: Revenue, Reviews, and Referrals. Let’s quickly dissect what these three are.
Revenue: We all are familiar with the ultimate goal of every business in existence, and that is to earn money. It’s extremely easy to get caught up mentally in the earning, however, and it causes many business owners to make mistakes without realizing they’re destroying revenue opportunities by obsessing with making a few extra dollars. This mind train has single handedly caused the death of thousands of businesses. To create recurring revenue through your website, you’ll need to aim for more than a one-time transaction by creating a demand for the next two R’s.
Reviews: Possibly the most undervalued concept to those unfamiliar with online marketing, reviews are becoming one of the single most impactful tools for your business. Reviews are easily accessible at any time, which drives the importance of maintaining a high review average. You’re going to receive both positive and negative reviews, so your job is to make the majority of your customers happy enough to at the least not leave a negative review. There’s an importance in the quantity of reviews you receive, but drastically more meaningful is the quality of your average.
Referrals: When your business is referred by one customer to another, you are knocking it out of the park. Customers who are happy enough to refer you to one person are likely to begin referring you to everyone with even a mild interest in your market. This means you have accomplished both recurring revenue and reaching a broader market.
Back to the original statement, “People are looking at my website, but I’m not making sales”. We’ve looked at the three criteria to pursue, and the recurring theme is that you want to make your customers happy with their experience. Your website should reflect the passion of your product as the best possible solution for your customers. As an example which everyone’s familiar with, observe Amazon’s website. It employs intuitive navigation, clean and simple design, and a streamlined sales funnel. If you know what you want from them, you can be purchasing a product within a two minute period at most. So what did Amazon do to cause such a strong name for themselves?