Why isn't traffic converting to sales on my new online store?

[edithandivy]

Hello! I just launched my store - and have seen decent traffic. But so far only one purchase, from my sister.

I love the product quality, I think the images look great, And as far as the site goes I am always trying to adjust and tweak to make it easy to navigate.

My friends all say it looks great, but something has to be stopping traffic from hitting that add to cart button. Maybe I am not seeing it and they just arent saying it to try to protect my feelings. 

Any constructive feedback would be so helpful. I am determined to make this work. Does it seem untrustworthy?

the website is edithandivy.com

Thanks!

[LashJubilation]

Hi! I'm not an expert but do you have policies? Do you have terms of service and a refund/return policy?

[edithandivy]

I just realized I had my refund and returns page not connected to anywhere! Thank you for that! 

I dont have terms of service yet - I didnt think about that. I will add that as well.

Thanks!

[namitjindal · Accepted solution]

Hey @edithandivy ,

How many visitors do you have? (Average conversion rate for Shopify Stores is 3%) If you have over 500 monthly visitors, install Google Analytics to see what is happening. Whichever page has the highest bounce rate/traffic drop-off, that page is the problem. Here is my feedback:

HomePage: 
Navigation

1) Remove Home (Logo Should bring people to Home). You don't want people going to your home page after they have entered the collection page and are more willing to buy.

2) Your Dropdowns in Tops should be reformatted. They are hard to read, and the dropdown in accessories is different. For a second, I thought there would be a picture loading. 

 3) Reduce the heads. Remove everything that is not your best product and combine them under the same dropdown. Simplify this to help the user journey

Banners:
Take this above the navigation header to start. Make the Codes Simpler. Make Free shipping mandatory without the code.

Hero Section

Change your Hero Image. The truth is that a random visitor will not value your logo. How does it benefit them? Why should they look at a brand logo they may not have heard of and think - "I should buy from them"? Instead, add a picture of your favorite product or showcase your products.

Title: Change this to a benefit. Related to summer, the designs of your outfits, or the color. Make this in 2nd Person. Don't talk about your brand or your collections. Instead, talk about how it benefits the user.

Title & CTA: Make this bigger & more visible. This needs to stand out. (There is a concept called visual hierarchy. We want these to be on the top of the visual hierarchy to nudge the user to click on them / read them) 

Social Proof: This is mandatory in every Shopify Site. A random person will trust you more when other people talk about your product.

Benefits Section: This could be helpful for you under the Hero Section

Collection Pages:
- Add Social Proof
- Add CTA under every picture or when someone hovers over the picture. It helps with conversions.
- I love your filters. 
- Add tags like "Best Selling" "Recommended" to some things. These should be your best products


Product Page
- Social Proof. Very important
- Add bulleted points of main benefits / features / description. It should be short and easy to read
- Change how you showcase your pictures. I need to scroll all the way down your photos before I can read the description
- Concise  Measurements etc., into dropdowns. Too much text is overwhelming


Make these changes, and build traffic. Consistently analyze your traffic behavior to improve your website.


Hire a professional as soon as you start generating traffic (over 1500 visits/Month) or sooner if you have the budget for it 🙂 


Best,

[edithandivy]

This was SO helpful. Thank you! I was able to start on a lot of this - but can't figure out how to add Add to Cart buttons on product cards so I have more to learn still!

[ErayBarslan]

Hello @edithandivy ,

Congrats on your new store and it's great that traffic is decent already. I would like to make some suggestions so that you can convert visitors to paying customers:

1) Fonts & Colors:

• It is important for text to be clear without visitors needing to focus. The handwritten text adds a uniqueness to the design however I highly suggest to revise them to be more clean.
• Same applies to the "Abril Fatface" font used on most headings and text. You could choose another font with a similar style but more readable.
• Picking color palette and using them strategically is also important. Generally it's better to use the primary or attention grabbing color on CTA as the ultimate goal is to guide visitors to click on them through checkout. You can use lighter background colors for sections and highlight CTA buttons as they fall behind rest of the design:
  

2) Header & Banner:

• Visitors expect mega menu to expand when they hover over instead of clicking. Also, since you have plenty of collections, serving them backed with visuals would look much more appealing. Example:
  
• CTA on the banner isn't visible. You should use a contrast color so it's not lost behind the background. In general, you should always check if text, buttons are have enough contrast with background:
  
• First impression is crucial to hook visitors into the store and reduce the bounce off rate. To achieve this, banner should convey the message clearly and impress visitors. You could use bigger images as the current banner hight is too short. Also if you wish to keep the current approach, I would suggest adding few more images and serving them dynamically transitioning from one to another. The magic happens as the screen elegantly slides to the left, revealing new images from the right side and repeat. This would require some custom code though.

3) Add Content:

It is a must for new stores to have content to both increasing organic traffic and build credibility. Basically, you should talk to visitors convincing them to buy from you answer their questions before they ask.

• You can use hotspot sections talking about the product quality, features by including a CTA to a collection or product.
• Blogs are also really important especially for new stores. You have wide range of collections so topics are endless. After writing some blogs, you can highlight them on homepage like in the example:
  
• Just like the blogs, you can do the same for "about us" page, mentioning about the brand and navigating to the dedicated page with a CTA.
• You can build a FAQ page or section on the homepage and answer the questions the visitors may have before they decide to make a purchase.

4) Reviews & Testimonials:

You should enable reviews for products. This is crucial especially for an apparel shop. Until you have considerable reviews on your products, you can offer discounts to the people you know and ask for reviews and highlight them on homepage like:

5) Chat Widget:

You can add a chat widget where visitors can contact to customer support seamlessly:

6) Collections & Products:

• When you highlight a collection, it's better to specify the reason for customers to know like "Best sellers", "On sale", "Newest arrivals" or just mention the collection name. It is also going to help regarding accessibility which improves SEO:
  
• You have great product images. If you enable showing 2nd image on hover, it would add up to the overall design.
• Suggested pairings is a great idea that many stores doesn't have. However that section is not functional as it is. With the help of metafields and little custom coding, you can dynamically add products to the description where visitors can directly navigate to the product. Alternaivaly, you can use a cross-sell app that shows pairings in a popup after the customers adds item to the cart.
  
• Placing keywords like below could result in a ranking penalty. Make sure to place keywords naturally in the content:
  

7) Email Marketing:

• I'd suggest you to collect customer emails and implement email marketing strategy. Return rate of email marketing is much higher than ads. It'll help a lot to collect emails and build a customer base.
• You can provide discount codes for first customers then include it on announcement bar and place the section above the footer like:
  

8)Loyalty & Reward Program: 

You can implement a loyalty & reward program. Customers are more inclined to buy knowing that they'll be getting discount points on repeating purchases. Also you can build a solid customer base. Example:

9) Shipping Discount:

Customers doesn't like the idea of paying for shipping. To increase AOV (average order value) which is directly related to CRO, you can offer free shipping above a certain amount and provide it in a progress bar:

10) Advanced Analytics:

I have noticed that your store doesn't have analytic tools applied yet like Google Analytics. As they provide more data, I highly suggest you to apply analytics as they will be key point to analyze the traffic & conversion and implement A/B testing to optimize for CRO.

I believe applying these changes will help a lot and good luck! Feel free to reach out to me if you need any further assistance.

Cheers,
Eray Barslan | Shopify Developer & Designer

[storefront]

Hi! Congratulations on opening your store! I agree with a lot of the technical pointers other people have left you -- just try not to get overwhelmed and tackle each one at a time. If you don't already, I would suggest you listen to The Boutique Hub podcast, or Jance Chartae on Youtube- they both provide an incredible wealth of information specific to boutique owners. 

My personal suggestions are the following:

-Improve your visual aesthetics: Take for instance JessaKae's homepage, it is super simple, nothing complicated and it communicates instantly what she is selling. You can take inspiration from that visual aesthetic and come up with something unique for your audience.

-Inventory: Oftentimes new boutique owners feel like they have to stock a little bit of everything. I think this is the case because they look at established websites and they want to offer the same product variety. In your case, I notice you have everything from accessories to different types of garments. My suggestion is to try to specialize and become known for your dresses, or for your separates, for example. You have a nice selection of plus sizes, maybe try to grow that specific niche, that's just an idea. Then scale and grow from there. Also, if you specialize you can use that to start working on your Search Engine Optimization (SEO), meaning, if you specialize in say: "plus size dresses for active moms" you will then have a collection specific to that, write blogs specific to that, and provide social media content specific for that. Soon enough when people search a long tail keyword such as "plus size dresses for active moms", your store will come up first on Google searches. 

-Photography: I know it is very expensive to hire photographers. So that might be out of reach for now. So if possible, try to take your own pictures. The truth is that there are many boutiques out there and all are using the same generic photos from the vendors. Taking your own photos in a specific style will give your boutique more character and uniqueness. 

I hope this helps and again, congrats on opening your store!!