WHY YOUR WEBSITE ISN'T CONVERTING VISITORS INTO SALES

Quite often people believe that if they start a website the floodgates will automatically open and visitors will come flowing in. That's seldom the case. The owner of a new website needs to be proactive and work for traffic. That's the topic of our WHY YOUR NEW WEBSITE BUSINESS IS GOING TO FAIL article.

While getting traffic is vital to your site's success, so is converting those visitors into sales. Whether your site gets a little or a lot of traffic, those visitors don't matter if they aren't converting from visitors to paying customers. If you work at it, you will get traffic to your site — but unless your site converts them to customers, this traffic is wasted. Many sites have a problem with conversions. Fortunately there are a few free, easy steps you can take to turn lookers into buyers.

Set a Realistic Price

Overpricing products is a common and seemingly obvious issue. People aren't buying products at a website because the products cost too much. The problem is obvious to visitors. And it should be obvious to the site owner as well — but often it's not. That's because visitors view a product and its price in a cold, logical manner, while the site owner may set pricing based partially on emotion.

If the product is one that the site owner personally had a hand in creating, such as an eBook, a song, a sewing pattern or a craft, the site owner is going to think of the product as more than just the end result. He or she is going to think of the time, effort, fun, and struggles that were all a part of the process of creating something new. That can cause the site owner to assign a monetary value to the item that is simply above the item's worth as determined by impartial site visitors.

When you're determining a price for your product, take some time to search for, and visit, competitor websites. Unless your product has some compelling advantages or features compared to competing products, you need to keep your pricing in line with those of your competition.

Make The Sale On Your Home Page

A first-time visitor to your website usually arrives at your site's home page. Now consider that the average time spent on a website is about 15 seconds. You need to catch the attention of visitors quickly and give them the sense that you may well be able to provide them with whatever it is they are hoping to find. You need to give visitors a reason to stick around longer than several seconds so you have a chance of closing the deal.

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Keep It Clear and Concise

The more the merrier is not always the case. Especially on your site's home page. Keep it clean and uncluttered. Have a catchy heading. Include some introductory text that isn't a rambling story, but rather right off the bat gives visitors the impression that they're at the right place to get their needs met. What unique selling point does your product have? What differentiates your product from the competition? You need to know that and convey that information to visitors — right away.

If you aren't converting visitors to buyers, it could be because you don't make it clear to your visitors what your product or service can do for them. Descriptive words for what you sell, such as "amazing" and "powerful" and "the best" are okay, but they don't tell visitors why they need what you sell. To be frank, visitors don't care about you. They care about themselves, and their own problems they're trying to solve. Be clear and concise regarding the specific solutions your product provides or what benefits it offers, and point out your product's main features.

A visitor is asking himself "What's in it for me?," and you need to answer that question.

Determine in advance the reasons a person might be willing to open their wallet and give you their hard-earned money in exchange for what you're offering. Then jump right in and describe your product in such a way as to address the questions and concerns going through the mind of a visitor. Stay on point here. Focus on the most valuable, useful information — don't get sidelined with unimportant trivial details that will only serve to distract or annoy a visitor.

You can find many low-cost, instantly downloadable eBook and video tutorials aimed at site owners looking to improve their bottom line at our Money directory at money.madbeetech.com.

Give Something Away For Free

People love getting something for free. If you don't do so already, consider giving visitors the option of freely downloading one or more files.

Site owners are often, understandably, very protective of the content they sell on their site — they don't want to give away any part of their work. You don't have to give away an entire digital product — just enough of one to convince a skeptical visitor that your file is worth purchasing. If you're selling an eBook, for example, pick out one chapter (or a few pages if your book isn't organized into chapters), save that as a new PDF file, and make that new file available as a free download on your site. Choose what you consider the best, or most interesting, part of your eBook as the free content. Freely downloading and reading this material could turn a fence-sitter into a buyer.

Give away enough that people will feel good about what they got for free. But don't give away so much that people who gets the free stuff feel like they have so much they don't need to bother purchasing the full product.

If you host with MadBeeTech you'll notice that your administration area includes a "Free Stuff" page that you can optionally turn on. Upload any file here and instead of an Add To Cart button automatically appearing by the item (as is the case for files uploaded to your "Downloads" page) there will be a Download button by the title you've given this item. A visitor clicks on this button and by-passes your site's shopping cart — the file will download directly to the user's PC.

Offer File Bundles For Sale

Just like people like getting something for free, people also love good deals — it's why "sale" is probably the most commonly used word in marketing. Sales and special offers work to convince visitors to make a purchase.

If you sell digital files for download, and you offer more than one file for sale, list each file for sale individually, but also consider bundling some or all files together in an archive (.zip) file and selling that bundle of files as a single download. And offer this bundle at a price point less than the cost of purchasing the bundled files individually. That bundle acts similar to a permanent sale.

Similar to a reluctance to offer free content, many site owners are hesitant to offer visitors a discount on a multi-file sale. They think of it as a money losing proposition. It is — if a visitor had every intention of buying all the files in the bundle individually. But that's seldom the case. Buyers are a pretty frugal lot, in general, and often are content to look over multiple offerings and select only the one that's closest to what they want.

If you price your multi-file package low enough, it may entice many visitors to take the leap and buy the package — even though they fully intended to spend much less money on just one or two files. If you offer five files for sale (as an example), each priced at $10, a visitor might consider buying one $10 file, and debate adding a second $10 to your shopping cart. For a $10 or $20 total sale. If you offer all five files in a single bundle, priced at, say, $35, the visitor might not be able to resist the temptation to get everything for $35. The price difference from $50 down to $35 for everything may seem like a deal too good to pass up. Now you have a person who was planning on spending $10 or, perhaps $20, moving up to spending $35. Something he may never have considered, or done, if there was no "specially priced" bundle.

Bundling files doesn't make sense for every site. If you offer multiple files for sale, but they're unrelated, it's unlikely that anyone will buy the package — even at a savings. They won't spend extra money for material that isn't of interest to them. If instead you offer products that have some kind of relationship between them, offering a bundled option is a smart move. And you don't have to offer only a single bundle. If you have many files for sale you could offer a 3-pack bundle, a 6-pack bundle and a 10-pack bundle (for example), each priced at a greater discount than the previous one. Some examples of where bundling makes perfect sense and can be effective include:

• Courseware or "How To" files: such as separate Beginner, Intermediate and Advanced eBooks or videos
• Music files: selling individual songs and then bundling all the songs into an "album" makes perfect sense to people
• Sewing pattern files: are often sold individually, but grouped together in category listings for display — offer a separate bundle of all the patterns in each category (an example of offering more than one file bundle for sale)
• Ebook novels: it makes sense to offer all the books by one author together in a single download

In Summary

Getting some visitors, but not sealing the deal? Consider implementing these few simple, free steps.

Take a careful, critical look at your pricing. Leave emotion out of the picture and view your products as a visitor unfamiliar with you or your products would. Are the prices of your products in line with your competition?

Keep your site clean and simple — too many colors, endless text to scroll through and no clearly stated reason to purchase a product will quickly annoy or distract visitors, and they'll quickly bail on you.

Hook your visitors on your home page — don't make them visit several pages to get an idea of just what it is you're selling. Don't just tell people that your product is great, clearly explain why it's a must-have.

Give something away. Not the farm, just enough to convince that somewhat skeptical visitor that the version of the product you sell is what they want.

If appropriate for the products you sell (multiple downloadable files that have some connection, or relationship between them), consider selling them both as individual items and as a single bundle of items.