Any advice for how to convert visitors to sales?

[vitamark]

Hi,

We have an online store (and a high street shop) selling vitamins and supplements. I've read a lot of books and articles and we're getting a reasonable number of vistors each day (50-70 most days) but almost no sales. I'd be really grateful for any advice on where we're going wrong. I get feedback that the site design is good etc. which is all nice to hear but what I really want is some sales!!!

The site is vitsnpieces.com in case anyone wants to see if I've made any obvious errors!

Many thanks in advance for any assistance

Mark

[sysops]

we're getting a reasonable number of vistors each day (50-70 most days) but almost no sales.

Hi Mark,

Over the past month, how many visitors and how many sales?

[vitamark]

Last month we had an average of 51 visitors per day (so that's around 1500) according to our Google analytics. We did one sale but that was a repeat sale to someone I know socially(!). I guess that's effectively a 0% conversion rate :(

[sysops]

Ouch!

To be quite frank, your website is not good. It doesn't display the products to good effect, and it doesn't inspire confidence.

Even worse is your site homepage - I'm willing to bet the bounce rate from that page is very high.

You have to look at this from a shopper's point of view. Given the choice, would you buy from your site, or somewhere like naturesbest or boots?

If you are serious about pursuing web sales, you need to do 2 things:

1. Redesign the website to achieve a reasonable conversion rate. You should be able to achieve 1.5% with a reasonable site.

2. Get a lot more traffic. If you want 10 sales a day, you need to get 660 visits a day. Consider how much work it's taken to reach 50 visits a day, then extrapolate for an idea of what you need to reach 660.

HTH

[J-Wholesale]

I think you need to decide what your website is really about. Is it to promote your offline shop in Brighton? Or is it to sell your products online? It can't be both, not if you want it to be successful.

If it's about selling products online, then you need to focus on products, and leave the Therapy Centre to one side (maybe have a separate domain name for this side of the business). Your homepage is a nightmare (sorry to be so blunt, but it is...) - it's cluttered; it's full or irrelevant information; and it's simply impossible to navigate.

You need a redesign, and you need to push your products to the front. Switch off all the 'extra' options in your eCommerce platform, and go right back to basics. Products, pictures, and prices - nothing else.

The rest is just fluff around the edges that you should only consider adding after you're making sales - and probably not even then. Your address on the homepage, shopping in Brighton, bestsellers, therapies, FreeIndex, tips on boosting your immune system, new products, reviews, specials, PayPal logos: get rid of ALL this crap, and just show us your products.

That's where you start from.

[vitamark]

Thank you for you feedback - it is useful and really appreciated. What I need is a better understanding about what's not good on the site, rather than the feedback I've managed to get so far which has been fairly vague or told me about stuff that people do like. I need to fix the stuff that's bad if I'm going to get to 1.5%. If I can get to an acceptable conversion rate, I'll start ramping up the effort to get visitors but until I do it will be wasted effort.

Any more suggestions or observations gratefully received!! :)

[ServWise]

Just repeating what other have said, your site homepage design is pretty bad.

A few bad things that stand out.


Inconsistent layout between pages.
Homepage does not resize well (Try the site at different widths to see what I mean)
Underlined links on homepage look amateurish especially when you have LOTS of them.
Store pages are okay, standard recoloured Oscommerce template, a little lacking in visual appeal (But I'm doubting many people are getting that far).
Some areas have dark purple text on a light purple background that is hard to see.
As mentioned your main problem is the homepage, it looks like an amateur site and as such people are simply not going to want to buy from you, (it's a trust thing).

[deniser]

My suggestions:

1. The page which comes up when you click on Online Store should be the home page - you can get rid of the existing home page altogether.

2. Get rid of "Your basket is empty. Quickly! Buy something!"

3. You say not all your products are on the site - get them all onto the site as soon as you can and remove the message which says they aren't as it gives a poor impression

4. I would dispense with the section entitled "New products for August" as people are more likely to want a specific product than be browsing and buying on a whim (I could be wrong - I don't know your market). I would replace this with your main product categories so that they are as easy as possible to find.

5. You need the Business Names Act information somewhere.

6. I know others don't like it but when dealing with a new website I always got the "About Us" section first . I appreciate that this is on the home page but you could move all the stuff about the shop to a link off the second page which would act much better as the home page.

Hope this helps.

[sysops]

Thank you for you feedback - it is useful and really appreciated. What I need is a better understanding about what's not good on the site, rather than the feedback I've managed to get so far which has been fairly vague or told me about stuff that people do like.

People often ask this, but you have to ask why - either you are able to do graphic design for the web, in which case you will immediately see that the site presentation is poor, or you are not, in which case you really should pay someone to do the work for you.

You can't learn good web design and presentation on the fly, it takes a lot of work.

May I ask - did you build the current site? I know it's OSC, but did you put it together, or pay to have it done?

[boho]

Definitely agree with other comments, the landing page was an immediate turn off, which was a shame because when I went to your actual online shop page http://www.vitsnpieces.com/webshop/index.php it wasn't as bad, a bit lacking in anything that really made me want to stay on it, I'm not keen on left and right navigation being filled up with things myself as I find it very cluttered, I like nice clean simple easy on the eye sites, so I would reduce the clutter.

The biggest thing for me though was a lack of personality to your site, no about us page, nothing which gave me an insight into the people behind the shop, yet you are clearly dedicated to your interest and industry and the review of the one product http://www.vitsnpieces.com/webshop/product_reviews_info.php/products_id/31/reviews_id/2 clearly demonstrates there are some real and friendly people behind the site, so let that show through!

I think the all lilac is a bit to washed out, even for a spiritual/health type shop, natural earthy colours work well and the purples would be fine if there was a mixture of other warmer tones, blues and purples on their own look a bit cold generally.

[Dymo King]

1. The page which comes up when you click on Online Store should be the home page - you can get rid of the existing home page altogether.I agree, this is one of the quickest and simplest change to your website - if you make one change to your site today, this should be it. Then you can concentrate on improving the 'look' of the site, and the 'trust' issues that have already been mentioned.

[bizman99]

Definately ditch the homepage.. make the store you homepage.
I agree with other comments that you need to have clear focus on what your website is about.If the primary goal is to make money, just make the details of your offline store, somewhere in an about us section.

Confidence is the key to online sales. If people think the design looks a bit shabby, or unprofessional they are a lot less likely to buy, let alone browse around the site.

Traffic is definately an issue, but agree, get the site sorted before you start pushing people there, or you will never get them back again.

Here are my tips, and i'll try make them as practical as possible.

1. Ditch current homepage, and go directly to store homepage
2. Pay a professional web Designer to give a temporary facelift to keypages/areas (e.g. homepage, products page). untill you can afford to pay for a proper overhaul. Ad some variety to the colours, all the purple makes it hard to distinguish/seperate the indivdual areas of the page. Use subtle colour changes to accent areas you want to draw attention to, and to demphasise areas that are less important.

2. On Store homepage, too much text.. reduce to one or two lines, and add a featured product/promo area where you can showcase featured products on a weekly basis to keep it fresh. Keep any text bulleted..if you need to expand on anything, link to another page.

3. Highlite your returns policy, guarantees etc.. infuse confidence.. offer a money back guarantee.

4. Abous page, Security/encryption information (SSL)..

5. Remove your own review... looks a little desperate... if you want to review your own products, add an articles section or featured product and review it from that perspective as an expert. You could even do this as basis for email newsletters to drive extra traffic, and get repeat business.

6. Product imaery is a bit small,Price is hidden, seperate price away from the headline and emphasis it near product image, larger and different colour, and you add to basket is very very small. which leads me on to next point.

7. Create strong call to action.. so instead of small 'add to basket', add a nice big 'BUY NOW' button. This is what you want them to do, so make it clear how.

8. Make sure you capture email address, with permission to email customers, then you can start a email marketing program to retain customers, and get repeat business.

9. Conversion of 1.5% should be easy, but traffic is your problem. For some quick tips to get traffic..
- optimise your site better for search engine.. e.g. page titles (blue bar in browser window) could move your company name to end, and emphasise key phrases that your market search for. Get other health sites to link to your website...
- Add your products to shopping feed comparisson sites, like kelkoo, or even google base.
- Pay for advertising on google adwords - (work with an expert or you could end up spending too much on bad quality traffic, or not routing it correctly to your website)
- Look at getting signed up with affililate networks, try webgains.co.uk or other similar sites.

But you do need to get numbers up, if you think about it 100 visitors, may get you just 1 sale.

When you get things going, you can add things like, cross sells and up sells, so you can get your customers to buy more when they do buy.

Good luck!

[bizman99]

I agree, this is one of the quickest and simplest change to your website - if you make one change to your site today, this should be it. Then you can concentrate on improving the 'look' of the site, and the 'trust' issues that have already been mentioned.


100% agree

[webworxindia]

Hi Mark,

I will suggest that you should go for revamping of your website and further more you can opt for micro site. Also hire the SEO to work on your website. While revamping make sure that you will display all of your products and services in an attractive way and also display the description or recommendation for that particular product if you have.

Your website should make fell all the visitors that You care as you are mainly trading in medicines and therapies which are related to the health.

I hope this will help you.

Cheers,

[vitamark]

Thanks to everyone for their thoughts on this. I've made some of the quicker changes mentioned which will hopefully improve things, pending a more complete redesign.

Thanks again to all for taking the time to look at the site.

Mark

[vitamark]

The page which comes up when you click on Online Store should be the home page - you can get rid of the existing home page altogether.


This change has dropped my homepage bounce rate from 59.45% (averaged over the preceeding 2 weeks - but on a very stable trend) to 22.92% (averaged since I made the change on 14th August) against approximately stable visitor volumes.

Too early to detect any change in conversions yet but my thanks to all who contributed to this thread.

[Red Eye Media]

Hi Mark,
I see you have made a few changes which are for the better.
I still don't think you have it right though.

I think you need a complete re-design as the current site does not inspire confidence. New logo and colour scheme a must. These are the starting point for any successful website. It it looks amateur, you simply won't generate any orders. That's a fact.

You also need to address SEO as currently, your site isn't search engine friendly. Sort this and you are on the right track.

Once you have these things settled, I would suggest getting some swanky business cards printed and dish them out to everyone who comes in the shop. I don't think you have a chance of competing online with the big players, so you should concentrate on the people that visit your shop.
Keep banging it home that you have an online shop which they can order from. Give out the cards with the receipts and make sure your teller, or you, tells every customer that they can order online too.

I would suggest you find a company that can handle all of this for you. We are able to help and I know there are lots of other people in this forum that can help too.

PM me if required.

Regards
Richard