Hi Annie,
I understand how tricky this can be. Most ecommerce owners have faced this scenario at least once. You find your traffic is good, but sales aren’t improving. Even when visitors stay, they don’t purchase.
The truth is – good traffic doesn’t necessarily convert to sales.
Chances are you’re collecting data already and that you know who your buyer persona is, but are you really making the most of your insights from data?
Here are three main things you should take a look at first: your data, checkout experience, and site speed.
## Understand your data
If you know why you’re not getting conversions, you can easily know what to solve. Data gives you access to the why. Understanding your data first is crucial in converting your traffic to sales. Without this, you’ll just end up making changes on your site based on assumptions.
### Your site traffic
Sometimes, your traffic might not be targeted towards your core customer. If you don’t know where your visitors come from, you’re losing the most important part of the equation.
### Bounce rate and exit pages
High bounce pages might not be a problem in itself but could indicate usability issues.
Similarly, high exit pages might indicate that users found the information they needed and left, but if they leave after staying on your home page, maybe they couldn’t find what they were looking for.
### Conduct a website analysis
Now that you know more about your traffic, you need to focus on your website. You need to look into your user experience (UX), user interface (UI), and website speed (desktop and mobile).
## Make it easy for your customers to checkout
Now that you know where your traffic is coming from, it’s time to take a look at how easy it is for your shoppers to actually make a purchase from your store.
The goal here is to inform the shopper and show them all they need to know to make a confident decision.
Picture this scene: you’re browsing an online store and once you’re ready to checkout, a popup form asking you to sign up appears out of thin air. Chances are you’ll just leave.
## Optimize your site for speed
Alright, let’s say you already ran the test and your results came in. What does it mean if you have a slow site?
Page speed refers to the total amount of time it takes your content to load. If your content takes too long to load, users might lose their patience and shop elsewhere.
## Last words
Getting traffic is only one part of the equation. If you’re not converting your customers, you’re not making money. Once you start understanding how your online store works, you will start converting that traffic to sales, especially if you know who your buyer is and how they are interacting with your site.
That being said, your website and its images need to be optimized or you’ll end up causing your shoppers some frustration.
In the end, it all boils down to making it easy for your traffic to purchase from your store, effectively turning them into sales.
As a quick recap, here are some last tips:
- Analyze your website using Google’s tools.
- Decrease the size of your product images and other files throughout your site.
- Reduce your checkout friction by asking for customer feedback and using tools such as HotJar.
- Become a trustworthy vendor by including trust symbols, updating your social media and having an SSL certificate.
- Invest in fast hosting to speed up your site.