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Is it a Website Problem or a Traffic Problem?
If you've been in business for any length of time, odds are you've thought to yourself at least once...'what on earth is wrong with my website, why isn't anyone buying'.
I know I've done it, and I see other small business owners posting about this weekly in facebook groups.
If you are going through a slow patch, and let's face it for many of us sales are a little down right now the first thing you need to do is some investigating in your website analytics.
You can either jump into google analytics or use the back end of your shopify store/wordpress/wix or whatever platform you use. Your analytics are a gold mine of information and should be one of your business besties.
The very first thing you need to look at is your store conversion rate. This tells you straight away if you have a problem with your website.
Average store conversion rates sit between 1-3%. So if you head into your analytics and your store is sitting under this then yes, you may have a website issue.
If this is you then there are a few things you can check quickly before hitting panic stations. Load speed, poor image quality, unexpected shipping costs etc are all things that can turn a user off buying from you. It could also be worthwhile having someone audit your website as well so you get a big picture idea of areas that need improvement.
If you head into the back end of your site and hey, conversion rates are over 1% then your website probably isn't the problem.
Majority of the time when I have a look in the back end of websites, there just isn't enough traffic coming into the store to generate sales.
Lets go back to the average website conversion rate. 1-3%, this means that for every 100 people who head into your online store 1-3 people will convert into a sale.
I'll let you do the math here. If you want 2-3 (or more) orders each and every day, then you need to have 100-200 site sessions each and every day.
If you are only generating 30-50 site sessions and your conversion rate hovers around that 1% mark, then realistically this is only 1 order every 2 days.
So when people say they only get a few orders each week and they believe their website is the problem once you look at the numbers; the issue at hand is actually a traffic problem.
Generating More Website Traffic
So how do you generate the amount of traffic needed to boost your sales?
Well, there's really only 3 types of traffic you can generate to your website.
1 - Owned Traffic.
This is traffic that comes in directly to your store either through a direct search or your email list. This is great traffic to have as it's usually high intent but in the scheme of things it's usually the lowest traffic driver.
2 - Earned Traffic
This traffic comes from your SEO rankings, via social media and referrals from other websites, news articles etc.
This is high potential traffic which if done correctly can generate high numbers of store sessions.
3 - Paid Traffic
Your Facebook/Google/Pintrest/TikTok Ads. You are paying per click to get people through the door. This is best done once you have a well converting website and a proven offer. Your messaging about your product or service is on point and you have a way of bringing these people back into your world either through email or retargeting ads.
Which one is right for you?
So which one is best? Well technically owned for me is the best sort of traffic but this really comes after points 2 and 3. So you have two choices. You can work hard on your SEO page rankings and your social media strategy to bring traffic in that way. SEO may be worth investing some money into someone to do it for you as it is a specialist field. SEO also takes at least 3-6 months and you will need to keep on top of it regularly.
With paid traffic this can be a huge money suck if not done correctly OR you website isn't ready. Paid traffic also takes time, at least 3 months to test audiences, creatives and offers; so this will result in ad spend where you may not see a big return straight away. On the flipside, paid traffic is great if you want to get word out quickly to your perspective customers or you are ready to grow your business at scale.
So it really depends. If you don't really have a budget then I'd opt for earned and owned traffic via SEO rankings/social media and email marketing. If you have a budget, have a website that converts, great images and video and good copy on your product descriptions and don't have the 3-6 months it takes for SEO to take effect then paid advertising is a good option.
At Ambition Digital Solutions we work with small business owners who are ready to grow their business through paid advertising and email marketing.
If you are ready to invest and grow; you can book a free 30 minute strategy session to discuss how we can work together.
Use the booking link below to set up a time.