Decent Traffic but Zero Sales Conversions

what could be preventing a purchase?

[DXL]

I launched one client site roughly eight months ago, and the site has been averaging about 500 unique visitors for the last few months. The site offers dozens of handcrafted widgets for sale, ranging anywhere from $120-$300. Some of the traffic comes from search engines, some from people who buy the widgets at special events, and later go online to view more.

So far, the client hasn't sold a single widget. How typical is it for a site to have a conversion rate that isn't even half of 1% with that kind of traffic?

Is there a book or some other guide that may shed light on improving traffic or conversion rates for e-commerce sites, particularly those that sell a custom, handcrafted product?

[onlineleben]

Silly question, but did you check if the shoping cart really works?

[dpd1]

Yeah, if they have developed clientele at shows and haven't produced a single sale in 8 months... sounds like something is broke. Either that or it's just the kind of thing you really need to see in person. What's the quality of the photos?

[piatkow]

Get somebody totally non technical to work through the site and make a purchase. Simple things that seem self evident to us can be incomprehensible to the general public.

[MrHard]

Is that 500 visitors a day? or per month?

per month, 17 a day, may not get you anywhere.

[DXL]

The product photos are excellent quality, and the shopping cart system itself works fine. As I mentioned before, 500 unique visitors a month might be a relatively low number for some, but even then I'm surprised that the conversion rate is still 0% as opposed to even 1% of visitors.

[rocknbil]

What kind of tracking are you getting through the add to cart/checkout process? This would give some indication of where they're dropping off. If they're just viewing items and not adding to cart, the problem is not in the cart function or sale, it's something else: "just looking," "Nice, but don't want to spend that much," or product is not viable are just a few possible ideas.

If you do have tracking, and they are adding to the cart, consider: are they only adding to the cart to check shipping, or is there something else they discover after adding to the cart that's turning them away?

Third question to as is out of these 500/mo, how many are actual visitors and not bots?

I can attest to conversions with only +-1000 uniques a month, one of my clients was getting sales at these numbers early in her site's life.

[Asia_Expat]

What steps have you taken to make sure the cart really is working? Have you actually got your own credit card out and made sure it's possible to make a purchase?... I was trying to figure out why no one was signing up on my forum for weeks until I eventually figured out that something was broken in the registration system... <face-palm />

[Digmen1]

With my site with cheap widgets I found that about 75 hits got me a sale.
So there is something seriously woring with your clients webiste or product.
Have they sold any of these widgets in any other way ?
Do people actually want them ?

[dpd1]

500 a month really isn't much. I think it's kind of standard for about 100 per sale. Still, in 8 months there should have been something. Is this art? Because I think art is notoriously hard to sell over the internet. If everything is for sure working right, they need to get involved themselves... Participate in forums, add side content to the site to get people there. Get out there and pound the virtual pavement to make themselves known in the online community. People respond much better when they know it's a real human being, especially when it's artistic things.

[caribguy]

Do you get any other interactions on the site? i.e. send to friend, registrations, newsletter subscriptions? Any emails received from visitors, or contact form submissions that indicate there may be a problem?

Have you been able to discover any patterns in your user's behavior as they navigate through your site?

I agree with what piatkow and others have said about asking an inexperienced person to browse the site and make a purchase.

To get a better idea of visitors' general interest in those products, you could think of adding a feedback mechanism to the product listings, or measuring any response to " % off with your first purchase "

[piatkow]

Another issue could be that people are coming to your site by a route that does not involve a positive desire to purchase. Look at your logs carefully and see what links and search arguements are bringing them in. Are those routes by which which people would come when they are looking to buy?

For example if you were trying to sell hand made quilts are your visitors quilt buyers or quilt makers? The latter would look over all your designs and then go away, buy fabric from elsewhere, and make their own.

[sabrok]

If you see that you do have a good amount of traffic coming to your site, but you cannot seen to increase your conversion rate, you need to look at what you may be doing wrong. It is important to make sure your site is easy to navigate. This includes the checkout process. The word of mouth factor can be an effective way to create traffic. On top of this, the more you learn about your customers, the better you are able to determine what they are looking for.

[edited by: lorax at 8:47 pm (utc) on Oct. 22, 2009]
[edit reason] link removed [/edit]