Why are customers not going beyond my front page?

[Adorableattire]

Hi all, I’ve had my shop up and running for about 4 weeks and I’m now getting around 130/140 visitors a day (mostly through instagram) but I’m noticing they aren’t going past my front page. I’ve only had 2 sales and a couple have added to basket and not continued. I’ve no idea why they aren’t going past the front page. Any help/advice would be greatly appreciated. Will post my shop if anyone can look at my front page please and tell me what I’ve done wrong. 
thank you 🙂

HTTPS://adorable-attire.co.uk

[StephensWorld]

Traffic through social media is often times bots -- and there's not much you can do to prevent bots from going to your site. With that said, if any real people are clicking into your site, they may be ditching without navigating because the site looks unprofessional. You're using a free theme (which is grossly overused), that's barely been customized, with products that look like they've been imported from AliExpress (product images aren't consistent in terms of their look/style, and also their sizing/alignment). The homepage is arguably the most important part of the site, as it's the first impression that your customers will see/have of the site -- and it doesn't look like you've put a lot of effort into making it unique and marketable. 

I'd recommend purchasing a premium Shopify theme (https://themes.shopify.com/themes?price%5B%5D=paid&sort_by=most_relevant), and then spend some more time on adding different sections/blocks to the homepage, as well as cleaning up your navigation menus, and giving your site some personality (I mean you don't even have an 'about us' page right now). Get a professional logo made, as well as some banner/slideshow graphics, and then customize the site's colours and typography + add some more 'personalized' content to the site.

If you need help revamping your site, I'd recommend hiring an official Shopify Partner from this category: https://www.shopify.com/partners/directory/services/store-setup/customize-design 

I apologize if the above sounds very harsh.

[Adorableattire]

Hi well you certainly just made me feel like a failure haha I am very new to this so still learning, I have put a LOT of effort into it (every day for the past few weeks from 6am until 6pm) and thought I’d done a good job haha. I really appreciate your advice, would explain why people aren’t going past the homepage and will definitely look into changing some of the things you mentioned. Thanks again

[StephensWorld · Accepted solution]

Hey @Adorableattire 

You're definitely on the right track. The products themselves are great -- it's just the website that could use some TLC. 

Buying and using a premium theme is half the battle here. In my opinion, it's a necessity for success.

The other half is graphics & content. What sets stores apart, aside from their general layout and functionality, is the graphics and content being used. For the logo, it's better if you use something that's more rectangular in shape, rather than square/circle. You want the logo to be wider than it is tall, and for the background of the image to be transparent (so that it's not outlined in a square). This will help with keeping your header shorter (not being so bulky). 

For the homepage, you should have a layout that's roughly similar to this:

• Slideshow/Banner Image (that really represents what your store is or what you're selling) ... this is the first thing people will see when loading your site, so it's important to have the best quality graphic here possible. 
• "Collections List" (usually in the form of a grid) ... showcase your best-selling (or favourite) 4-6 collections ... directly link into the collections (with unique images for each collection).
• Featured Collection 1 (usually a grid or slider, that shows a handful of products within a specific collection) ... usually a 'best sellers' / 'on sale' / or your most popular collection. 
• Featured Collection 2 (optional)
• Featured Collection 3 (optional)
• "About Us" section (usually an image on one side and then text on the other side) ... use an image of either yourself (store owner) or something that really represents your business, and then for the text, do 2-3 sentences with a button at the bottom that links to an 'about us' page, which should have 2-3 images + 4-5 paragraphs of text. 
• Some kind of help section (either FAQs, or a bit of text with a button that links to your contact page). 
• Featured Reviews/Testimonials section (optional)
• Social media section (if you're on Instagram, then I highly recommend using the Instafeed app (https://apps.shopify.com/instafeed) to showcase your latest posts on your homepage directly. 

Basically, you're going to want a handful of sections, with different content, products, and information for your potential customers. 

For your navigation menu, you should try not to have columns with nothing under them. For example, your "girls clothing" section doesn't have anything under it, so there's just a bunch of blank space. So I would recommend either making some more collections to show under this link, or else boil down all of the columns, so it's only the main header/link/collection for each, and then do filtering directly on collection pages for each of the sub-options. You want your navigation menu to look at clean and professional as possible (it's the 2nd most important part of the site, after the homepage). 

For your product pages, make sure you don't put any images in the 'description' of the product. If you have product photos to showcase, they should all be in the 'media' section. For example, this product (https://adorable-attire.co.uk/products/womens-fashion-casual-solid-color-dresses) ... all those images in the description, should be moved to the media section (and then check that there's no duplicates). I also recommend not having sizing tables (HTML) in the descriptions (like this product: https://adorable-attire.co.uk/products/1-6y-baby-girl-spring-dress-with-ruffled-children). Instead of having an HTML-based table, you should make an image of the table. By using images for the sizing tables, instead of HTML tables, things will load better on smaller devices (ie. phones & tablets). Lastly, you have a bunch of 'badges' above your product descriptions ... that's too many badges ... and they're looking very small, so I can't actually read what each one says on it. I'd pick maybe 2-3 of those badges, and then make them larger, so that they're easier to read. 

The 'policy' page links that are in your header/main-navigation, should be moved to a separate menu in the footer of your site (bottom of the site). They don't need to be in the main menu. I would also recommend removing the link for "all collections" (but that's a personal choice on my end). 

On your 'contact' page, you should include some more details about your store. Ex. address (if you have one, or else get a PO box), email address, phone number, business hours. At the very least, you could add a sentence or two about how you're "here to help". Just personalize it a bit, so that you look more like a real store. 

I hope the above helps, and again, I apologize for the tone of my original post. I'm just trying to be honest and not 'beat around the bush' or sugar-coat things. 

Cheers,

Stephen

[Adorableattire]

Thank you so much, this really helped, I did change a few things yesterday and think it’s looking a lot better (unfortunately can’t buy a new theme at the minute but will eventually) I’ll do the things you mentioned over the next few days. It’s definitely a lot harder than you would think setting up your own store and definitely a lot to learn but I’m sure I’ll get there. Again thank you for all of your advice 

[grandsusdesigns]

I had the same issue when I started. Went to Facebook groups and it was brutal. Cold hard truth. Premium builds add more bling and spice up the site. You have to be a html expert in my opinion to stand out. I just paid someone to work on it and they trained us on all the features and we took the ball and ran with it.