7 Reasons Why People are Looking But Not Buying
When I launched my first ecommerce business many years ago, I had heaps of people visit the website, but the sales were few and far between.
I’d poured everything into creating this business from scratch, and it hurt to get such a lack of interest.
If only I could go back with everything I know now. I would tell myself your business has not failed just because you don’t have as many sales as you had hoped for.
There are so many causes for a poor conversion rate on your website, but some simple tweaks can easily fix this and get your online store converting so much better.
Here are 7 reasons why people are looking but not buying – and how to fix it!
1. Overwhelming Homepage
The homepage of your website is a crucial first impression. You don’t have long to capture the attention of your potential customer, in fact, it’s less than 7 seconds!
It’s a common mistake to try and increase your chances of capturing their attention by featuring more of your products, you’re actually doing the opposite and could be turning them off.
If your homepage is cluttered with too many products, or too much information, it’s going to overwhelm and cause people to exit your site pretty quickly.
Organise your homepage content, and try not to feature every product you sell in one go. I recommend sticking with one featured collection, and showcasing categories instead. Include some content about your brand, what you offer, and who you service, as well as some nice clear big images.
Try and think of your homepage as your launch pad, where you can easily guide the user to relevant sections of your site.
2. Confusing Categorisation
Just like the idea of keeping your homepage clear and simple, this is a theme to try and carry through the rest of your website. It will help to keep the customer in mind, and from their point of view make it as easy as possible to find the products they might be looking for.
Especially when it comes to your main menu, and categorising your products. Try to make it logical, so users can quickly find what they are interested in and understand how to get around your website.
3. Lack of Content
Whilst I’m all for a beautiful website full of gorgeous images, it’s best to make sure this is balanced with informative content that gives your potential customers all of the information they need to build trust with you and your brand, and make an informed purchase.
Too much inspiration and not enough transparency with the detail might make your customers hesitant to purchase. Try to include some customer reviews, technical specifications or clear details about your processes to help sway your customers to make the decision to ‘buy’.
4. No personality
If your website is too product heavy, it can lack a real sense of personality. It will begin to feel more like a catalogue than your business. Showcase your voice, your tone, your why, your passion throughout your content and this will connect your customers to you and your products.
People buy from people. So let yourself shine through and you will find visitors connect with you more, and will be more inclined to purchase.
5. Slow pages
Funnelling a lot of traffic but find it’s not going anywhere? It could be as simple as your website running too slowly. The best thing to do is run a page speed test to make sure that there isn’t any unnecessary code or large images causing your site to slow down significantly. Here’s a great website to test your site:
Remember, you have a really limited amount of time to capture your customer’s attention, if you take even a few seconds to load your page then you risk losing a significant amount of your potential customers, before they’ve even seen what you have to offer!
6. Poor Images
Images are one of the strongest ways you can sway potential customers to make a purchase. They hold a lot of power by inspiring a certain look, or lifestyle that your customer just needs to have now. Invest in your product photography, and take the time to get it right, because it can make the difference between a ‘must have’ to a ‘might not’.
7. Can’t Find Important Information
For small businesses, one of the trickiest obstacles to overcome is building trust with your potential customers. Brands from Mecca to Miele have the luxury of automatic trust with their customers – but for small businesses to build this they need to have transparency.
Ensure the important information such as Shipping & Refund Policies are crystal clear, and easy to find in your Footer so that potential customers feel at ease making a purchase with you.
Not sure how best to optimise your site to please Google, and improve your conversions? Learn about my Website Audit where I deep dive into all aspects of your website and analytics, and provide you with tailored recommendations to transform your website and turn visitors into customers.
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