There are a lot of small businesses that have taken a big hit in the last couple of years (thanks Covid), so it makes sense to look at any possible way to improve your bottom line. 

People sometimes assume that paying for Facebook Ads, Google Ads or paying for any exposure, will result in a big boost to your sales. More exposure automatically means more traffic, and therefore – ultimately – more sales…right? Unfortunately, most of the time this just isn’t the case. 

Here’s the thing – ads are not a problem fixer, they can just be a very, very expensive band-aid. 

Let’s take a little side-step..imagine a street performer busting out a tune, jamming on his guitar, with a small crowd throwing a few dollars into his case. He’s giving a good performance and the audience are loving it, happy to part with their money. Now let’s give him a microphone, and he’s going to reach a lot more people, attract more of a crowd – and you could assume – have many more people throwing in money, enjoying what they hear! Makes sense, right? 

Paid Ads are your microphone. They make everything louder, so more people can hear you. 

But what if our street performer is playing a guitar that’s out of tune…if you’ve amplified yourself but forgot to tune your guitar, you’re definitely going to reach more people but probably won’t make much money. And if you’ve spent $1,000 on that microphone, chances are you’ll be going home feeling pretty defeated. 

So let’s go back a step. Ads are an excellent tool to boost your business, but you need to remember that you are going to be amplifying current performance, not improving it. If your website is converting 2-4% of traffic, this is a solid result so you could confidently expect to convert a similar amount (if not, more) by paying for ads, which means more visitors and more sales. Great!

However, if you’re currently not making any sales with the traffic that you do have, most likely this will not be fixed by paying money on ads to increase the traffic to your site. Yes you will see an increase in traffic to your website, but the base problem will not be solved.

So what should you do? You need to address the why. Find out why visitors to your website are not turning into customers. Here are my top 3 causes, and how to fix them.

Research Your Competitors

If you’re confident in your business idea, and know that there is an appetite for it, then I highly recommend doing some competitive research to make sure your prices are not out of scope, and the value you are offering is comparable (if not better!). You don’t have to be the cheapest – in fact I recommend you’re not – but that’s a chat for another day. The idea is to find out where you sit in the market, and to make sure your inclusions, quality, and most importantly value for money, is in the ballpark. 

Optimise Your Website

Once you’re comfortable with both of the above – then we can deal with the biggest reason your customers are not converting. Your website is the greatest tool in your tool belt, but just having one is not enough. There’s a lot of noise out there, and you don’t want to add to it. Your website should be clear, high quality, informative and an authority in your market. Ideally, your visitors are coming to your website and instantly getting a feeling that you are selling something that can be trusted, and is of quality. It doesn’t matter if you are sending mountains of traffic to your website – if it’s not a great user experience, they will not convert. 

There are a multitude of reasons as to why your website is not converting, but the good news is that most of the time they are issues that are easy to fix without the help of a developer – no coding or confusing back-end jargon. It can be a matter of moving things around, fixing up some images, categorising your products correctly, improving your navigation and optimising your content. If you are confident using your website builder, most of the time they are all things you’re able to do yourself without stepping foot into the code of your website. 

The best way to get started is to put yourself into the mindset of your customers – or better yet, enlist the help of some family or friends to give you some hard honest feedback. Here are some great questions to get you started:

• Did you come across any technical issues?
• Were you able to easily find what you were looking for?
• If you didn’t know what your business offered, would it be clear through the content and images? 
• Can you navigate easily and feel confident moving throughout without getting lost?
• Was the website running slowly?
• Did you notice any difference between desktop vs mobile?

Once you have the above feedback, start to make some adjustments to improve any areas that are falling down, and you will start to see an improvement in your conversion rate. Once comfortable that your performance and website have improved, you can look into amplifying those results with some ads. 

How Can I Help?

Need a hand with optimising your Website or your Google Ads? My Website Audit will provide you with tailored recommendations on how to optimise your site, and turn more visitors into customers. My Google Ads Audit will ensure you are setup correctly, and know how to optimise and manage your Campaigns to get the most out of every Advertising cent.

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