Tons of traffic, Few Sales.

[SteveAZ]

I have been getting enough hits, visits and page views to generate sales but they just arent happening.

Here are some basic stats to give you an idea.

March
hits = 164429
visits = 13790
page views = 58090
sales = 3

April
hits = 184842
visits = 12378
page views = 54522
sales = 2

other months average about the same. what am I doing wrong?

[earlyimpact]

Steve, see if you can get some more information from your Web stats. For example:

- Check whether visitors are staying on your Web site or leaving right away.
- Check the most viewed pages and see if there are product pages among them. If not, then this should be a warning sign.
- Check the referrer URLs to see what keyword phrases on search engines are getting people to your site. Are they relevant to your products?

I don't know if you have access to this kind of data. What I am getting at is that you might have a lot of visitors that land on your web site but were not actually looking for your kind of products.

As for improving the conversion rate on visitors that are interested in what you are offering, consider the following:

- Remove the ads that you have at the bottom of many of your pages: you don't want to give visitors more reasons to leave your Web store. Focus on generating revenues from your store sales, not those ads.

- Consider redesigning the store, especially the navigation on the left side. Reduce the number of top-level categories. Make the store easier to browse. Upgrade the overall design so that it's a bit more professional looking (you may want to ask a Web designer for help).

- Consider special promotions such as free ground shipping to try to isolate the reason why people are not shopping.

[jestep]

What methods are you using to advertise with?

If you are using general banner ads or something similar on websites that aren't related to your business or industry, then you will probably have very few sales.

[SteveAZ]

Originally Posted by earlyimpact

Check whether visitors are staying on your Web site or leaving right away.

I may be wrong but I thought that was the difference between a visitor and a hit. Visitors stick around a few minutes.

Originally Posted by earlyimpact

Check the most viewed pages and see if there are product pages among them. If not, then this should be a warning sign.

Thanks, I will see if there is a way to check that.

Originally Posted by earlyimpact

Check the referrer URLs to see what keyword phrases on search engines are getting people to your site. Are they relevant to your products?

I keep an eye on that and they ARE relevant with a few random exceptions which is to be expected.

Originally Posted by earlyimpact

What I am getting at is that you might have a lot of visitors that land on your web site but were not actually looking for your kind of products.

I try not to advertise in unrelated areas but once in a while a few banners get on unrelated sites. This isn't happening that often so I am not too worried.

Originally Posted by earlyimpact

As for improving the conversion rate on visitors that are interested in what you are offering, consider the following:

- Remove the ads that you have at the bottom of many of your pages: you don't want to give visitors more reasons to leave your Web store. Focus on generating revenues from your store sales, not those ads.

- Consider redesigning the store, especially the navigation on the left side. Reduce the number of top-level categories. Make the store easier to browse. Upgrade the overall design so that it's a bit more professional looking (you may want to ask a Web designer for help).

- Consider special promotions such as free ground shipping to try to isolate the reason why people are not shopping.

Thank you, I was getting rid of the ads anyway.

What do you mean by more professional? I thought it looked okay. The catagories can be reduced to a scroll box to save space or maybe a mouse over to display subcatagories. I will check into some options.

I can't really afford a web disigner unless I can use the barter system. :)

The only way I can do special promos is to up my prices and I dont want to do that.

Thanks for your input.

[SteveAZ]

Originally Posted by jestep

What methods are you using to advertise with?

If you are using general banner ads or something similar on websites that aren't related to your business or industry, then you will probably have very few sales.

I am currently using link exchanges, banner exchanges, listings in relevant directories, Google Adsense, Overture and I just started using affiliate marketing.

[cyanide]

I don't understand why you would want to serve up advertising banners?
They just make your site look amateurish and take away from the main purpose of your site, which is selling product.

If you have to do website exchanges, atleast stick with text links and put them in a separate section.
At the very top of your site, you have
Policies
About Us
Links
Contact Us
Suggestions
Seems to me, your product categories would have more importance.

There's really nothing on your site that inspires me, no specials, no pizzazz, no reason why I should buy from you than another site.

Also, your category navbar is just too long. I couldn't be bothered to read it all, and neither will potential customers.

[MarcieZoob]

How are your prices compared to that of your competitor? People tend to use the website as a giant shopping mall to compare prices and vendors so they might be visiting to see your prices.

I don't always buy the cheapest, however - I also take into account the credibility of the store and the feedback from buyers. Make sure you're allowing your buyers to leave feedback.

[internetguy]

Hi, you have a lot of interesting products... they should sell a lot more than what you are getting.

I don't think your front page gets people in the mood to shop. You have a wide variety of products. I would suggest that you pick a catagory to target and design the front page accordingly. Like if you want to focus on house decorations, then put a bunch of those products on your front page.

ALSO, the most important part of design... look at your competitor's sites. Check out http://www.bedbathandbeyond.com/

That's a nice looking design that a lot of money and research went into and it was done by pros. So why not take that core design and model your site after it? I'm not saying rip them off, but take ideas from several professional designs and combine them into your own design. Visit all the sites you can think of and take ideas from each. Pay attention to the layouts and the navagation.