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Help me with my conversions! Big traffic, no sales

JAMES-L67

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Hey guys,

So I've been running my e-com store for the last 3 years, and although it has had mild success (roughly 8-10k profit per annum as a VERY side gig), my conversions on my Shopify store lately have left a lot to be desired.

My site sees roughly 1,000 visitors per month, 100% organic, however my conversions are currently at 0.1%. Most of my sales come through eBay. My question then is how can I take the great traffic I get and offer them something they value? Some suggestions I've thought of:

  • update product line
  • private lable products
  • more aggressive mailing list
Thanks all!

James

edit: if anyone would like to check it out, my site is www.tougegarage.com.au
 
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SLOJack

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Hey, let me give you my opinion.

1. I think in the first line you need a UX rework. A good source oh know for you would be Ezra Firestone.
  • Add to cart buttons
  • A milder background and improvement on focusing users to the products
  • All product images should be the same size
  • No social proof on the website
  • No "safe buy" badges and other accessories that help users decide
  • etc.
2. Never rely on only organic traffic (If the algo changes you are scre...). You should invest some money and start to advertise your website (After UX rework). FB would be a good option (If you cant scale on FB you cent anywhere else :) )

3. Increase product assortment.

4. Email is a good sales channel. Try setting up marketing automation schemes that will sell for you.

If you need any more help. let me know :)
 
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NMdad

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You might consider higher-quality photos of the products.

Also, how does your 0.1% conversion rate compare to similar sites? That conversion rate is only 1 sale per month, since you're getting 1,000 visitors/month.
  • What do your current visitors look at (products, pages, articles, etc.)? Can you give them more of what they're already interested in?
  • Have you surveyed or talked to them to find out who they are, what their goals/hopes/dreams/desires are?
  • How & what can you cross-sell & up-sell?
 

Andy Black

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JAMES-L67

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Hey, let me give you my opinion.

1. I think in the first line you need a UX rework. A good source oh know for you would be Ezra Firestone.
  • Add to cart buttons
  • A milder background and improvement on focusing users to the products
  • All product images should be the same size
  • No social proof on the website
  • No "safe buy" badges and other accessories that help users decide
  • etc.
2. Never rely on only organic traffic (If the algo changes you are scre...). You should invest some money and start to advertise your website (After UX rework). FB would be a good option (If you cant scale on FB you cent anywhere else :) )

3. Increase product assortment.

4. Email is a good sales channel. Try setting up marketing automation schemes that will sell for you.

If you need any more help. let me know :)

Great suggestions! I'll have to go through the list and see what I can improve on :)

You might consider higher-quality photos of the products.

Also, how does your 0.1% conversion rate compare to similar sites? That conversion rate is only 1 sale per month, since you're getting 1,000 visitors/month.
  • What do your current visitors look at (products, pages, articles, etc.)? Can you give them more of what they're already interested in?
  • Have you surveyed or talked to them to find out who they are, what their goals/hopes/dreams/desires are?
  • How & what can you cross-sell & up-sell?

Haven't done much research into other sites to be honest. But I have thought the photos need work. A lot of them are manufacturer supplied, so my own photos would look much nicer.

I have 2 or 3 articles my customers go to most, so I could potentially look at the info on those articles and how I can cross/upsell given that metric!


Great article as always Andy! I should say, most of my traffic goes to 2 or 3 articles from my blog (informative rather than sales based) so definitely relevant.

Thanks all :)
 

Andy Black

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Great article as always Andy! I should say, most of my traffic goes to 2 or 3 articles from my blog (informative rather than sales based) so definitely relevant.
Keep reading that thread. It’s not “traffic”... ; )
 

rogue synthetic

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Know your audience, figure out what they want, and give it to them. And don't look like a sleazebag when you're doing it.

If your offers aren't "converting" you're missing at least one of these.
 
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NewManRising

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If you would like to set up some emails for an email marketing campaign I can help you. And I will do it all for free in exchange for a testimonial.
 

GrandRub

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first thougt.

your product pages arent looking very good.

1.images are too small
2.images look bad. did you make them yourself or are they from the manufacturer?
3.image sizes on the product page is changing and it all seems very cluttered.
4. the text on the tiles (Collections) is very hard to read.

4. your header isnt looking very good.


your whole site looks boring and cluttered.

something like that isnt very good for your conversions:
Genuine Braith JDM Hang Ring - Tsurikawa


images and design isnt for looking fancy and cool - but it builds trust if a shop seems well designed and follows a concept. dont overdo it but resize your images to one size. do proper product photography.

you have a blog thats great - why not write some in depth buy guides about your articles?
 

Xeon

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Not sure if you're already doing this, but.....

Before you start making any changes to your site, setup Hotjar on Shopify if you haven't already.

Set up heatmaps for the home page, products page, cart and checkout pages.
Also setup recordings for the above-mentioned pages.

Then, send all the traffic to your site as usual and study the heatmaps and watch the recordings of what the visitors are doing on your site, so your know what's the main issues they're not converting.

There's no point trying to edit the website or other stuff if you don't know what's wrong in the first place. Find out the issue and then develop the solutions to fix that.
 
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JAMES-L67

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Keep reading that thread. It’s not “traffic”... ; )

I'll keep reading ;)

Know your audience, figure out what they want, and give it to them. And don't look like a sleazebag when you're doing it.

If your offers aren't "converting" you're missing at least one of these.

Wise words indeed :)

first thougt.

your product pages arent looking very good.

1.images are too small
2.images look bad. did you make them yourself or are they from the manufacturer?
3.image sizes on the product page is changing and it all seems very cluttered.
4. the text on the tiles (Collections) is very hard to read.

4. your header isnt looking very good.


your whole site looks boring and cluttered.

something like that isnt very good for your conversions:
Genuine Braith JDM Hang Ring - Tsurikawa


images and design isnt for looking fancy and cool - but it builds trust if a shop seems well designed and follows a concept. dont overdo it but resize your images to one size. do proper product photography.

you have a blog thats great - why not write some in depth buy guides about your articles?

Yeah I think pictures will be one of the things I do first, won't take too long and I have much better camera gear now that what I had back when I did the photos

Not sure if you're already doing this, but.....

Before you start making any changes to your site, setup Hotjar on Shopify if you haven't already.

Set up heatmaps for the home page, products page, cart and checkout pages.
Also setup recordings for the above-mentioned pages.

Then, send all the traffic to your site as usual and study the heatmaps and watch the recordings of what the visitors are doing on your site, so your know what's the main issues they're not converting.

There's no point trying to edit the website or other stuff if you don't know what's wrong in the first place. Find out the issue and then develop the solutions to fix that.

Hmm haven't heard of that before but sounds perfect! Best way to find a solution is to know the problem!
 

Andy Black

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Ah yes. We use Hotjar. It doesn’t take many recordings to show you where people are getting lost...
 

ideasunlimited1

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If your biggest obstacle is updating presentation..you are way ahead of the pack, pal. You have great products you believe in. Now convince the public about their quality. Take the time to invest in a really great online store or even network with someone willing to help you design an ace one for pay. It may seem like a lot of work, but the payoff will be good. Maybe direct your marketing focus into a more visual vessel. You are drawing customers in with your words, so they seem to like you..now you just need to draw in the trust with some evidence.
 
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AdamMaxum

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The biggest thing to consider is the traffic itself. You might be getting organic search traffic to the website but if it's for non-buying keywords, you're not going to convert regardless of what your website looks like. So my advice would be to look at the source of the traffic, what keywords are driving visits and see if that could be why conversions are low.

If it's not that..then try improving the website in various ways.

I would also probably spend a few hundred in Adwords and test to see if that traffic converts any better or less....at least that way you can test specific keywords and see if it's problem #1.
 

Valhalla

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Your blog articles are interesting, a good read but you're not a blogger. So there's gotta be a call to action in there somewhere with relevancy. Maybe a post on installing a boost gauge that you sell and some action shots with benefits in there? Your skyline seat install was a good start, but as a customer, I'd like to see a step by step or a video. There's also no links (do you sell the bracket?)or a better yet a buy now to conclude the article. People have enough interest to read the articles and you rank high enough for people to find them, so let them know you want their business. Don't worry about a "shameless plug", people love spending money more than they love their own children. It's an interesting site and looks like great potential, all the best.
 

JAMES-L67

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If your biggest obstacle is updating presentation..you are way ahead of the pack, pal. You have great products you believe in. Now convince the public about their quality. Take the time to invest in a really great online store or even network with someone willing to help you design an ace one for pay. It may seem like a lot of work, but the payoff will be good. Maybe direct your marketing focus into a more visual vessel. You are drawing customers in with your words, so they seem to like you..now you just need to draw in the trust with some evidence.

I guess it's not a bad problem to have in the grand scheme of things :)

The biggest thing to consider is the traffic itself. You might be getting organic search traffic to the website but if it's for non-buying keywords, you're not going to convert regardless of what your website looks like. So my advice would be to look at the source of the traffic, what keywords are driving visits and see if that could be why conversions are low.

If it's not that..then try improving the website in various ways.

I would also probably spend a few hundred in Adwords and test to see if that traffic converts any better or less....at least that way you can test specific keywords and see if it's problem #1.

Yeah this really hits the nail on the head. I feel most of my traffic comes not to buy but to learn, so I might need to find a way to change the narrative or change the traffic driver

Your blog articles are interesting, a good read but you're not a blogger. So there's gotta be a call to action in there somewhere with relevancy. Maybe a post on installing a boost gauge that you sell and some action shots with benefits in there? Your skyline seat install was a good start, but as a customer, I'd like to see a step by step or a video. There's also no links (do you sell the bracket?)or a better yet a buy now to conclude the article. People have enough interest to read the articles and you rank high enough for people to find them, so let them know you want their business. Don't worry about a "shameless plug", people love spending money more than they love their own children. It's an interesting site and looks like great potential, all the best.

Yeah great idea! It wouldn't hurt to be a little more forward with my message.

Thanks for the replies as always team. Currently installing Hotjar and updating my product pictures. Next up will be some new articles with call to action buttons :)
 
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JAMES-L67

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Update:

For anyone following along at home, I have installed Hotjar and recorded a decent amount of heat maps. After watching some recordings and going through the data, I've discovered that the overwhelming majority of my traffic come to my site for its information rather than its products, which has lead me to invest some time in developing an information product for them.

I will sitll go through with the other suggestions (new photos, descriptions etc.), but I feel this will be a good place to move to next.

The market asks for what the market wants :)

James
 

Andy Black

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The market asks for what the market wants
Yeah... except for when they don’t know what to ask for but you can observe them getting confused, frustrated, and lost! Hotjar is such a great tool.

We divide our paid search campaigns into “Info-Seeker” and “Buyer” campaigns.

Are they searching with a cup of coffee in hand, or a credit card? If a cup of coffee, then give them the info they seek.


You may want to check out threads “The Online Buying Lifecycle”, and “The Biggest Landing Page Mistake”.
 

Xeon

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I have installed Hotjar and recorded a decent amount of heat maps. After watching some recordings and going through the data, I've discovered that the overwhelming majority of my traffic come to my site for its information rather than its products, which has lead me to invest some time in developing an information product for them.

BINGO!
 
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