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Increasingly, entrepreneurs are leaning on their websites to sell on behalf of their business. This is advantageous in many ways. It’s automated, it’s easy to make adjustments, and you may not have to pay for a full in-house sales team to handle it.
However, it is important to realize that most websites never reach their full sales potential. They never generate as many sales or as much revenue as they could in different circumstances. This is difficult to prove empirically, as we may never know what the full potential of a website is. That said, we can reasonably assume that websites could probably sell more: most websites are hampered by simple things that can be easily changed.
The deceptive appeal of all potential
It is difficult, if not impossible, to figure out what the true potential of a website is. This is because there is almost always room for subsequent growth, whether it’s reaching new members of the audience, achieving a higher conversion rate, or increasing some other important metric. Somehow, it’s an exercise in futility to try to reach all that potential, because you’ll never get there. But it is also a valuable motivational tool and a basic philosophy to assume that there are always improvements that can help your website achieve higher sales.
Related: Shortcut to the perfect sales call
It’s relatively easy to commit to a small, limited goal, such as increasing your conversion rate by a specific percentage over a specific period of time. It is much harder to commit to a culture of continuous improvement and almost constant change.
Common mistakes that limit sales growth
There are many reasons why your website does not generate sales, or as many sales as you want.
joinconsistent mark. It can be a big problem, a bit generic, such as an inconsistent brand. If it’s not clear what your company does or what it stands for, people won’t be interested in buying from you. The same is true if your branding efforts on the website are no different from the branding efforts you have made in other functions, such as your traditional marketing and advertising campaign.
Unconvincing offers. If you want people to buy something, you have to put a price on it and market it properly. If your offer isn’t compelling, it doesn’t matter how many people visit your website – they won’t buy. Market research is your best tool for finding out if your products are really appealing to your target audience and if they are priced right.
Site functionality issues. Does your site work properly in all browsers and devices? If a person has difficulty viewing your content or is unable to navigate your pages easily, they can leave and return.
Badly written content. Even if you’re not interested in content marketing, you should recognize the value of having content written competently. If the content of your website or your calls to action are carelessly written, it will be discouraging to potential customers.
Problems with targeting the public. You may also be targeting the wrong audience or reaching your target audience in irrelevant ways. Review your audience research to test your hypotheses and make sure you reach your audience as effectively as possible.
Confidence issues. Before you can expect customers to buy into your business, you need them to trust your brand. If your design, your website content, or other particular features of your website make people suspicious of your brand, it will be difficult for people to follow your sales.
Related: The 7 Lucky Steps to Successful Channel Sales
The curse of complacency
Even if you’ve learned from these common mistakes and have a fantastic sales strategy, there’s a chance you’ll never reach your potential because of complacency. Essentially, this means that you achieve a certain sales goal and you feel inclined to maintain the status quo indefinitely. Suppose your website generates $ 100,000 in sales each month; you decide it’s pretty good and even more than you initially expected. Why bother changing the formula if you already see great results?
You could argue that reviewing a strategy at this point would be impractical and detrimental to the business. It’s also a bad idea to simply assume that this is the best thing you can do. Too many entrepreneurs close at a relatively low conversion rate just because they are interested in trying to get more. If you want to maximize your chances of success, you need to keep boosting your website to improve it.
There is another side to the argument. It’s important to realize that you’re not reaching your full potential and that you can boost your website to achieve more with the right research and strategy. But it’s also important to realize that you can’t afford to chase without thinking about moving goal posts. It’s up to you to find the balance and work out the sales strategy you need for your website to succeed.