Your company website is the front door to all of your interactions with visitors. There are sources all over the internet that will tell you the same thing, and that is to make sure your website is as sleek and cutting edge as possible. If your website is still displaying clip art from word art as the only graphics viewable –it really is time to get your internet act together.
A thought that many webmasters have may be that your company website isn’t what’s primarily important or even what needs to be focused on in the grand scheme of things, but rather your face to face communication and customer service. While those human interactions are great, there is less and less attention being put onto it these days. Customers prefer things to be instant and automated, and not having the chance to win a customer over through a human-to-human interaction may end up costing you a sale. That being said, streamlined automated systems should be a priority for your business, and that means making sure your website is ready for the challenge.
Here is why your E-commerce website is doing more harm than good, and how to fix it.
There is No Original Content On Your Website.
A misconception about your website is that it just is a digital placeholder that displays your company’s basic information, or NAP. Your company name, address, phone number and email definitely goes up online, but it should never stop there.
Visitors who stop by your webpages are looking for a reason to stay on your site, and this happens by giving them a unique experience. Having original content is the best way to attract visitors to your website and its many pages, because if your business is the original creator of the content, then that places your business as an authority on the subject rather than just another company among many.
Original content on your website can be as simple as a few blog posts being uploaded and displayed each month to a series of videos on your site that share genuinely useful information for your visitors to learn from. Making your website a real source of information for your visitors increases the likelihood that your visitors will trust your business enough to be converted into lasting customers.
More so than that, keep your business top of mind with your interested visitors by giving them the option to subscribe to you. Having a monthly or even weekly newsletter alerting them that more fresh and original content is available from you is a great way to also promote your products. All of these factors add up to more trust, which in time closes in on more sales through your website.
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Your Website is Way too Slow.
One of the biggest turn off for online visitors is a slow website. You’ve come across them before –you click a link that takes to you a new website that takes an eternity to load. Minutes go by before the first line of readable text becomes visible. All this waiting makes you as the visitor want to do only one thing: move on to someplace else.
The problem experienced here with the buggy website is more than likely a server issue. Servers are where the websites are stored and run through (even though you probably thought that all websites just float around in the sky waiting for you to access them through a computer). A single server tower can give power and access to a vast amount of online visitors…but a single server tower can have its limits.
Let’s say that your website did begin to add some high quality and in-demand original content, and the amount of daily visitors coming to your website spikes upward. The server that you have been running your website on in the past is becoming over loaded, and may eventually breakdown from the excessive overflow of visitors –leading to a total website crash. This can be avoided by adding more server towers, -or- if you have the funds, switching to a cloud hosting server, which spreads the amount of useable power for your website across many servers instead of just a select few. If your website starts seeing some serious boosts in visitors, then it may be an option worth exploring to support the new strain.
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So Why Are My Online Sales Affected?
Your online sales are being affected by the above stated factors because if your website is not running up to optimal speeds, not user friendly and genuinely unhelpful to navigate, then the desire for potential customers to want to make sales will be exponentially lower.
As stated at the top of this article, customers want a smoother automated experience that doesn’t have to necessarily depend on another person. Online visitors want to feel that what they want is available to them at the precise time that they want it, and if all of your businesses commerce happens only within operating hours, then after you close up shop is a lot of possible sales that you are missing out on.
Having your website be optimized to be easier for customers to find and buy products should always be a focus, but having your website offer more than just an online catalog is another goal that should go hand-in-hand with the online catalog. Make your website a destination for more than just shoppers, but for visitors who may just be even remotely interested. The more they learn about what you specialize in, the more they will learn that what you offer may be something that they genuinely need. A converted customer is a happy customer, and a happy customer leads to more and more sales for your business.
