How To Convert Website Traffic Into Sales

If you have an online sales business, you will be aware of the need to ensure that the number of people viewing and accessing your website increases your sales.

Increasing the volume of people checking out your website is not beneficial if all they do is look at the products available to buy and then leave the website without spending any money with you.

How to Convert Traffic into Sales? A Detailed Guide to Increase Conversions

If you are a new business owner or are thinking about beginning an online store, it can be helpful to learn about converting traffic into sales before opening your store online. Below we will give you information about why it is important to convert traffic into sales.

Multiple aspects of your website and store online must be within the right parameters to encourage more sales. We understand that getting all of this right simultaneously can be overwhelming. So, we have broken down the process below to help you convert traffic into sales.

5 Reasons Why You Are Getting Traffic but No Conversions

There could be multiple reasons why your customers are making fewer purchases than you are getting website visitors.

We will explore the five most common reasons you need to get conversions and ways to improve your purchase figures.

Length of Time to Find Products

One of the most common reasons you are not converting visitors into sales is the time it takes to find products on your eCommerce site.

Potential customers who have yet to visit your website will browse if they feel that they are within your target audience or if they appreciate the marketing efforts of your landing pages.

However, suppose a potential customer arrives at your website, either because they are looking for a specific product or because an internet search or advert has directed them to your site. Then they can not find what they need. In that case, this will negatively impact your purchase figures.

If a website visitor arrives because they have seen a specific product advertised on a social media page. However, the advert links only to the landing page, and the customer needs help finding the product that attracted them to your eCommerce site; they will most likely leave without finding something to buy.

Too Many Popups or Ads

If you have too many popups showing up as soon as potential customers arrive at your landing page, you could put many of them off shopping with you. Too many popups or adverts on your landing pages can annoy and overwhelm website visitors.

Many landing pages have an initial popup for a discount code if the customer enters their email address. Although this can be an excellent way of generating leads, it only sometimes ensures user engagement. Many customers who see this popup will close it or navigate away from the website.

We recommend using an alternative method to capture this information, allowing potential customers to browse your website and see your offer first.

Popups can help you convert traffic into sales if used correctly, so it is best to research this before applying or removing popups from your online store.

You Are Attracting the Wrong Traffic

If you notice a high traffic volume but not the corresponding high sales volume, it could be that you need to attract the right type of traffic to your website. You can identify this in multiple ways; we have outlined some below;

1. Review your analytics to see where customers are accessing your website from. If you find that the links are from social media pages or internet searches not linked to your business, it is unlikely the customer is your intended audience.
2. Continue using analytics to see how customers engage with your website when they are there. Use this information to see how long customers are spending viewing your products and services; check if they are interacting with your call-to-action alerts. If customers are staying on your website for a short time or not interacting, you may need to look at the content of your website.
3. Analyze your conversion rate if you are getting website traffic but have yet to get any more sales. You should look at the percentage conversion rate if you receive few direct sales from website visits. If your conversion rate remains low, we recommend you review your marketing plans to ensure that your marketing plans match who you are looking to attract to your website.

Customers Find Your Website Difficult to Use

Your website needs to be set up in a way that works for customers; you will find your site’s visitors abandon your site and products if it is not.

If the website layout and the sales process are logical to customers, it can become easier to navigate, and visitors will leave without purchasing.

Ensure that the layout and design of your website are simple and easy to navigate, with logical links from one page to the next. Ensure that your products are easy to find and that customers can filter them to make them easier to find.

Your Sales Funnel is Not Robust

If you are losing potential customers during the sales funnel process, you should review this process from beginning to end.

Your sales funnel is so important when converting traffic into sales; if you are losing customers at this stage, you should investigate where the holes are that are causing those losses.

Blocking these holes in your sales funnel could mean adjusting your marketing campaign, so it is important to identify the issues as soon as possible.

This will save you from spending more money on a sales campaign that needs to be fixed.

With all of the above reasons for increased website traffic not converting into increased sales, analyzing the problems is the most important thing to do.

Stepping in to analyze the data and make changes to your marketing and sales campaigns can save your eCommerce business a considerable amount of long-term money.

Below we have gathered information on how to improve your conversion rate.

Build Authority with Helpful Blog Posts

If potential customers have not seen your company name linked to the products or services you offer, they will be less likely to shop with you. One way to link your company name with those products is to increase your blog posts.

Each blog post highlighting your company and the products and services you offer will begin to improve your authority as a business.

Google Analytics will pick up each blog post, and you can also use them to improve your website SEO.

Attract the Right Kind of Customers (Those Who Are Looking to Buy)

You can attract the right customers to your website in several ways to improve your sales figures.

The first is to improve your SEO strategy; you must use the right keywords throughout your website to have this picked up by search engines directing traffic to your website.

You should concentrate the keywords on each web page as ones that relate to the products and services you offer. When reviewing the keywords on your web pages and your URLs, you should also ensure they are specific enough.

Keywords that are too general will be just as harmful as keywords that do not relate to your products.

You may need to change your sales copy to ensure that you are not using the wrong keywords and your website ranking is effective with your keywords.

There are online programs that can assist you in optimizing your sales copy if you need help with how best to do this yourself.

Additionally, advertising your products and promoting your business on the right social media platforms is a very effective way to attract the right customers.

While it can be tempting to put out the same adverts across all social media platforms, there are better marketing strategies than this.

Ensuring that you advertise on the right platform for your products or services will minimize the chance of attracting the wrong customers who will leave without buying anything.

Make Your Site Trustworthy

Recent surveys suggest that over 80% of consumers will not purchase from a website they do not trust first. So, one of the first considerations, if you need to convert traffic into purchases, is to ensure that your website looks authentic and trustworthy to your site’s visitors.

10 Ways to Make Your Website Look More Trustworthy

1. Checking spelling and grammar on each page is easy with the correct spelling and grammar program, but one that will make a big difference to your customers.
2. Ensure a current design – if your website looks old, customers could assume that it is either old and therefore inactive or that the website is just a landing page and, therefore, not to be trusted.
3. Ensure shipping details are current and clear – out-of-date shipping information will make your website look dated and uncared for.
4. Use a secured connection – using HTTPs rather than HTTP makes your site more secure, and that security will in turn look more trustworthy to visitors.
5. Have genuine and verified customer testimonials shown – dedicate some space to testimonials on your site for new customers to see; however, ensure they are genuine.
6. Include a returns policy – not having a returns policy on your website will mean customers are taking more risk shopping with you as they cannot return unsuitable items.
7. Have a money-back guarantee – similar to the above, having a money-back guarantee will reduce the risk for new customers when shopping with you. A money-back guarantee also shows your customers that you trust the products you sell enough to think they will like them.
8. Have an active, linked social media account – customers who can see you active on social media will be more likely to trust your business.
9. Do not use stock images – stock images are a reason many customers will not trust your website. If they have seen that image before, or worse, they can see a watermark on it, then customers will know that you have not taken it.
10. Ensure you feature reviews on your website – having reviews and testimonials on your site will go a long way to showing customers they can trust you. They will see that other customers have shopped with you and found your products reliable and good quality.

There are other ways to make your website look more professional and trustworthy; the above is the quickest and most effective we have identified.

We recommend that you utilize as many as you need to as quickly as possible to see the best results.

Display Customer Reviews and Testimonials

As mentioned above, customer reviews and testimonials can make a big difference to your business, showing your company as more trustworthy and your products as desirable.

It is important to know that there is a distinct difference between the two; both are equally important to convert traffic into sales, but paying customers will look at both for different reasons.

Reviews are generally of the products and services available on your website; if you sell clothes, customers will leave a review of the individual items of clothing they have purchased.

This could include the sizing, color, fit, quality, and more. This will then show other customers the product and encourage them to buy it.

Testimonials are generally about the company itself; a testimonial would include information about the customer service experience, contact the customer has made with your company, shipping, and any updates received during the order process.

Both of these are important for any business that is trying to convert traffic into sales. However, customer testimonials can be more important if a new customer is unsure about shopping with you.

The ability to see that others recommend your business will be beneficial when attracting new customers. You can also use testimonials if you follow up on an abandoned shopping cart with an email.

Include one or two short testimonials in the email to prompt users to return to your site to continue their shopping experience. Alternatively, have the email link to a custom landing page that enables you to display testimonials as further evidence of your users’ experience.

Leverage Push Notifications

Push notifications are a very effective way of retaining customers who have previously viewed your site or shopped with you. When reviewing your business processes, you may have identified that it is considerably more expensive to attract new customers to your website.

Attracting more visitors or working to boost conversions does not always have to mean getting new customers for your website visits. Utilizing push notifications to achieve more conversions can be just as effective and significantly cheaper.

You can send push notifications to mobile and desktop browsers without needing a customer to give you their email address.

The best way to enable push notifications is to make the signup process as simple as possible. Multiple steps in the process are likely to have customers abandoning the process.

Push notifications can notify customers of offers or flash sales, show customized content for returning customers, and make your visitors feel wanted.

15 Steps to Convert Your Traffic into Leads and Sales

Below we have 15 ways that you can drive sales by offering your potential buyer the best possible experience on your site. If you have a customer leave, money you could have earned is lost, so converting traffic into sales with the most value for money is the best option.

Whether through a compelling offer or a unique selling proposition, there are numerous ways to increase purchases and generate more revenue for your business. We have highlighted some of the most effective, though there are others that you can utilize too.

What Makes You Better Than Competitors?

Do not be afraid to show your best offers when designing your landing pages; if you do not have the technical skills to make this effective, this may be something you hire someone to do.

The average customer will visit a minimum of three websites when purchasing a new product or looking for a new brand.

Considering the law of averages, your site will not be the first they access each time. Therefore, you have an excellent opportunity to sell your company and show that you are better than all of the other sites they have viewed that day.

Whether you offer a better deal, a lower price in exchange for a subscription, or any other offer, make it known quickly.

You will retain visitors based on what they see when they first access your site. Even if you have attracted the wrong traffic, with the right deal, you may still get a sale.

However, if your visitors have to scroll through several web pages to find out that you have the best offers, it is more than likely you will have lost them to a competitor before they find the offer.

Keep Your Website Design Simple

Your site does not need to be complicated to be effective; in fact, the opposite could actually be true.

If your website design is cluttered and difficult to navigate, you could find that customers actually navigate away rather than stay to browse.

Keeping your customers engaged with your site is the first step to converting traffic into sales. If your landing pages make customers close their browsers, you will not make any money from that visit.

Your site design being simple does not mean it has to be bland; you can create an elegant design without it becoming too busy.

If you are unsure of what the design should be, try looking at a variety of websites that sell similar products to you and see which you find most attractive.

Take Reviews Seriously

Reviews are a really important part of most shoppers’ decision-making process. If a product has a high volume of positive, they are much more likely to purchase it.

It only takes a couple of negative reviews to completely turn away a customer, especially if they are new to your site.

So, it is important that you look at the reviews you are receiving to eliminate any issues that arise from products sold.

Similarly, if you need more customers leaving reviews directly on your site, it might be time to import the ones left elsewhere online.

You can import reviews from your Google My Business page, and you do not need to have coding experience to do so.

You can visit the WordPress website and install plugins that can do this for you. The more genuine and verified reviews you have, the more likely you are to increase sales.

Check your Website’s Analytics to See Where your Visitors are Coming From

Knowing where your customers are coming from will enable you to focus your marketing better.

You may be advertising across multiple channels but only receiving conversions from one source; you, therefore, know to concentrate your marketing and conversion techniques on the channels that you need to convert into business.

Similarly, if your traffic is coming from a specific site, you can use lead magnets to encourage customers to buy.

Lead magnets like offering a specific product in exchange for a mailing list sign-up or a free product with their first order can be an excellent way to encourage customers to buy.

Optimize Your Sales Funnel

The best way to optimize your sales funnel is to set up a conversion goal funnel in Google Analytics to enable you to track your conversion rate. Ensure that you have a custom landing page for all of your offers.

We also recommend that you perform split testing on the various options you are considering for your site design to see which gives you the most conversions.

Finally, ensure that your CTA (call-to-action) buttons are noticeable and easy to click.

If you wish to learn more about sales funnels, we recommend reading up on this before you begin making changes to your site.

Stop Directing Visitors to Your Homepage

Directing customers to your homepage can often be counterintuitive if they click on a specific advert. Following an organic search for a company like yours, landing on the homepage is not an issue.

However, if a customer clicks a link on social media for a specific item and then lands at a homepage, they may wish to avoid spending additional time searching for the product they are interested in.

Having each advert link directly to the product the customer is interested in is the best way to increase conversion.

Don’t Lose Conversions on Mobile Website

Optimizing your mobile site is extremely important; if your site cannot be viewed correctly on a mobile phone, you will lose customers, especially when directed from social media platforms consumers generally use on the go. If they can view your products, they will not buy.

You can also use exit intent popups if you find you are losing mobile customers to find out what they are planning to do next and why they are exiting without making a purchase. This can be in the form of a short survey to analyze.

Segment Your Audience

Not all of your visitors will have the same needs or interests; single offers for all customers can be one of the main pain points when trying to give offers to customers, which is why we recommend segmenting your audience.

This means using a segmentation engine that will analyze the details of your customers to provide them with relevant information. This would be a new customer offer that does not show for returning customers.

Make Your CTA Buttons Shine and Be Strategic with Your CTA Placement

Before placing any CTA buttons on your site, it is important to ensure that you place the correct buttons.

To do this, you need to first establish the most important thing you want your customers to do while on your site.

If this is to sign up to push notifications or a mailing list, then this is what you would feature. If it is more necessary that they contact you for more information, this would be your most prominent CTA button.

Just as important as getting the correct CTA buttons are getting the right placement on each page they feature. If your CTA buttons are placed so that customers can miss them, they will be of no benefit to your business.

There are several places where you can add a CTA button, so review each page before you decide on the placement.

Write Better Sales Copies

Convincing sales copy is an important part of selling your products and services. If you are not marketing the items well, you will not encourage customers to buy from you.

If you are not sure about how to approach your sales copy, we recommend looking at products that catch your interest and see how they are marketed.

The basics of improving your sales copy include; personalization and writing as if you are speaking to someone you know rather than in a clinical way.

Review the wording of your copy. Are you using words that encourage customers to buy from you? Highlight the benefits of your products and offers rather than specifications.

Provide Answers ASAP

A live chat function on your site allowing customers to ask and receive an immediate answer regarding a product will help to keep them engaged in buying from you.

If a customer is unsure of what they are buying and has to wait 3-5 days for an email response about a product, it is unlikely they will return to your site to buy from you.

Gamify Your Visitors’ Experience

Adding a game element to your customer’s shopping experience can help to keep them engaged.

A wheel spin pop-up when a customer lands on your site with different offers is an excellent way to boost conversions.

Adding a game to your site does not have to be complicated or expensive. With templates available online that can be added to any page you wish, you do not need high levels of technical skills to make this a reality.

Product Recommendation Is a Must

You can use tools to automate your site to show customers other products that you offer that would be of interest to them based on their browsing history.

You can also show your bestselling products, products that have been bought at the same time, or products at random.

A recommendation tool has a good success rate at increasing the items bought from a store. It is beneficial that once in place, the algorithm will update the offers as needed.

How Do Falling Gifts Games Work?

A falling gifts game is another easy way to engage your customers; a pop-up will show within a few seconds of your customer navigating to a page, or you can set your own custom trigger event for the pop-up to show.

On the pop-up page will be a request for an email address with gift boxes falling in the background. The email address will be used to send the offer once won, but it also allows you to gather contact info for new and returning customers.

Once the customer has entered their email address, they will click on whichever gift box they want to choose. Currently, they can choose up to five times, and the gift won is usually a coupon code to give a discount on your store.

Track Your Conversion

Google Analytics is an excellent tool for conversion tracking; Google also has a brilliant tutorial to give you more information and advice regarding making conversions.

Using Google to track your conversions means you can get a report of all of the relevant data to make decisions about your marketing strategy.

From there, you can make the necessary changes to increase the revenue of your business.

What is Good Traffic to Lead Ratio?

A good traffic-to-lead ratio means that you are generating leads for every one of your website visitors. A good traffic-to-lead ratio would be getting multiple leads from each visit. Optimizing your content in all the ways we have highlighted above will help your business to achieve the best possible ratio.