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11 Reasons Why More Web Site Traffic Isn't Always Equal To More Sales!
by Richard D. Bailey ©Copyright 2003

If you are a newcomer to the world of Internet business,
you may have already learned that it's just not that easy
to make a sale, regardless of how many visitors land at
your site. Even with the best search engine marketing and
professional online and print advertising you might be
confounded by the fact that your sales are not getting
anywhere, and for some reason you just can't seem to get
your feet off the ground.

Well, you're  not  alone. There are thousands of web sites
and businesses on the net, some getting thousands of visits
to their web sites every month and many of them have yet to
sell a product or service. Vendors of both physical and
digital products face this problem on a daily basis. The
cause of the problem can be attributed to several possible
reasons - all of which you have to consider when analyzing
your own situation and before launching your next
marketing/advertising campaign or before blaming the
company that sold you that million guaranteed visits.

Any item or combination of items below might be affecting
your chance of sales success.

Here are my top 11 reasons:

1. Your web site can't be found in more ways than one: It
is imperative that you market and promote your web site
both on and off the Internet. Try every ethical technique
available to you: Search engine promotion, banner
advertising, pop-under advertising, newsletters, print and
online magazine ads, word of mouth, etc. Just don't resort
to using SP*AM (unsolicited email). And be sure that your
pages work. It really hurts to spend money on advertising
only to find out that your site was down or your pages were
dead during an important campaign.

2. Your web site looks unprofessional and detracts from
your credibility: Ask yourself, the question, "Would I buy
from a site that looks like mine?" If you hear the words
"liar, liar" continually echoed in your head as you answer
"sure I would!" then it's time to get a second or third
opinion. Web site visitors will often flee from a site
selling great products, simply because of the way it looks.
If you don't want to spend money on web design, try looking
up "web site templates" using search engines and see what
you can find. These templates will allow you to plug in
your content and basically get a professional looking web
site for a lot less than you might imagine.

3. Your product/service has little appeal: If visitors are
not interested in what you're selling, you can pump
hundreds or even thousands of dollars and countless hours
into advertising and it won't make any difference. In other
words, maybe that glow in the dark camouflage suit wasn't
such a great idea.

4. You're targeting the wrong audience: If  your
product/service is ideal for a certain type of person,
region or interest group, don't ignore this fact and waste
time and money promoting outside of this focus area. In
other words, try focusing your advertising on a targeted
audience. If you're selling  automotive products, don't
advertise to computer enthusiasts unless you're selling a
car computer. Instead figure out where automotive customers
shop and what sites they like to visit and then try to
focus your advertising on those destinations instead.

5. Your product/service is too expensive for your target
audience: If visitors can't afford or don't want to afford
what your selling, maybe you need to target a different
audience. Don't try to sell expensive perfumes (Eau De
Mortgage) to an audience looking for discount 99 cent store
products.

6. Your product service is too cheap: Some products/services 
don't cost enough. Think "perceived value" and price your 
products/services for what they are worth. A great product 
can be scarred for life, if visitors perceive it as too cheap 
to be of quality. Try raising your prices/fees and see what 
happens, you might be pleasantly surprised.

7. Your product is free so why should anyone pay for it: 
Many  great downloadable products have been created as free 
trial versions with just one problem, they are full working  
versions with no real incentive to upgrade. Most people ignore 
the so called "nag screens" and continue to use these products 
for years without ever realizing that they are violating the 
developers license. Give the user a reason to upgrade. Maybe 
by disabling features that are critical to the operation of 
your product, but won't prevent the user from experiencing 
your products value. When they upgrade (pay) they get all the
features turned on.

8. Visitors can't figure out how to place an order: It is
surprising how many web sites are-not order friendly.
Some web masters spend time and money developing fancy web
sites with flashy graphics and animation only to forget the
most important reason for their site's existence. They
forget to invite and make it easy for visitors to place
orders. I recently visited a site with great enthusiasm
after getting an email announcement. It was the "must have
product" for Internet Marketing. Problem is that there was
no order button!

9. Your order  buttons, links or contact forms don't work:
Test your order pages and contact forms. Be sure that they
are not broken links and be sure that your contact forms
work by sending yourself a test message and by placing a
test order or two. Believe me, even seasoned marketers make
this mistake.

10. Your order process is too painful: Try to place an
order yourself. Click on one of your order buttons/links
and experience the process. If they (order pages) load too
slowly or the process is too painful, you will lose
potential customers. This sales losing process is called
"abandonment"  by the industry and affects many online
businesses where visitors wanting to become customers
suddenly abandon their order in mid-process to do something
else.

11. You have unrealistic expectations and need to take a
scientific approach to advertising: Don't buy a 100,000 web
site visitors package and then expect 100,000 sales. It
won't happen unless there was no oxygen left on earth and
you just so happen to be selling oxygen. There are proven
formulas that can help you estimate (at best) the amount of
sales that can be achieved by driving a certain amount of
traffic to your site.

Use this simple formula to estimate how many visitors you
need to meet your sales/sign-up goals.

A). Figure out your conversion rate: A conversion is = to a
visitor that becomes a customer or a sign-up. A conversion
rate is defined as the number of actual sales or sign-ups
divided by the number of site visitors in a given period.
For example two sales per 100 visitors = 2% or a .02
conversion rate per 100 visitors.

So take a good look at your recent sales and number of
visits to your product/service web page. This can be done
by taking a look at your web site's statistics. If you make
one sale per 100 visitors to your site, then you have a
conversion rate of 1%. This number, by the way, is
considered by many average marketers to be difficult to
achieve and rightly so. Many web sites, lacking million
dollar budgets, are happy to get a tenth (.001) of a
percent. Still, anything is possible. We are using 1% in
this calculation to make the example easier to understand
(the industry average is said to be 1% to 2%)

B). Figure out how many sales/sign-ups you want
(quantity--not dollar value)

C). Once you have this info, plug your numbers into the 
equation below.

Number  of  Visitors = Desired Number of Sales / Conversion
Rate (in decimal)

So as an example: To sell 200 items at a conversion rate 
of 1%

Number of visitors = 200/.01 (200 divided by .01)

The minimum number of visitors required = 20,000

Therefore, you would need at least 20,000 visitors
(minimum) to get 200 sales, assuming that you can convert
your visitors with a hot offer! The "right words" can
convert the "right visitors" into paid customers. Just as
easily as the wrong words can turn them away. Sometimes a
single word can make a difference. If you can raise your
conversion rate by applying the ideas in this article, you
can also reduce your cost of Customer Acquisition.

The information above is certainly not exhaustive, I'm sure
that  there  are other reasons that I did not list in this
article. Regardless, if taken seriously, the information
contained herein will help boost your sales and sign-ups.
Just remember this final thought. "Sales are never
guaranteed... no one can guarantee that a customer will put
funds into your bank account". You can, however, increase
your probability of success by becoming informed and then
taking positive action.
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Richard Bailey is an Internet marketer and entrepreneur with over 
8 years of Internet selling and marketing experience. His coaching 
and consulting company, Client  By  Design, LLC develops methods 
and technology to attract customers. http://www.clientbydesign.com. 
Phone: 914-206-4477
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