Why Is No-one Buying From My Website?

Are you, like many other website owners, frustrated at the amount of time, effort and money you've put into your website, only to see few or no sales?

Like most business owners, you probably know your products or services inside out; you know the benefits of them, and what they can give to other businesses or consumers. And you probably paid good money for a website to promote them. You may even be getting hundreds of visitors a day to your website, but if this isn't converting into sales, what's going wrong?

Here are seven tips to help you attract BUYERS to your website, not just visitors.

1) Have a clear purpose

We all visit websites that leave us a little confused about what the business owning them actually "does". Is your website like this?

Statistics show that you have only 10 seconds to impress your potential customer - if they spend those 10 seconds with furrowed brow, trying to work out if you provide the product or service that they need, you'll lose them.

Action point : Make a list of the things you want to sell from your website, from the most important to the least. Does your website show this?

2) Make your home page copy sparkle

It's all very well telling your visitor how great your product or service is, but everyone wants to know What's In It For Me? Use headlines and bullet points to tell your reader how your products will benefit them.

Action point: Rewrite your home page copy to sell your products or services from the visitor's point of view, not yours .

3) Use testimonials

If you've supplied your products or services to happy customers, then include a testimonial on your website. If your business is local, and the person is well known, even better! If you can get multiple testimonials, include them on each page of the site, so your visitors read great things that your clients say every step of the way.

Action point: Email your top 10 clients and ask them for a testimonial - then put it on your website with a link back to theirs.

4) Keep your layout consistent

Make sure every page of your site is laid out in the same way. If the text on one page is centred, when all of the others are right justified, it makes your site look unprofessional.

Action point - check every page of your site has a consistent layout

5) Use colours and fonts for emphasis

Be sure that your site is easy to read - a local business site I visited recently had maroon coloured text on a navy blue background - NOT professional and NOT legible. Use different colours and fonts by all means, but sparingly and for emphasis, not everywhere.

Action point : check your site to see if it is definitely legible - and be honest!

6) Become a BUYER

Use your site as a visitor would - is it easy to find the information you need? Is the path from the front page to the order or enquiry form obvious? Are your contact details obvious? Sometimes it's easy to miss out important things - visiting your site as a buyer, not the owner, helps you to see what's wrong, and then fix it.

Action point : Visit your website once a month and go through the buying or enquiry process.

7) Ask others

At NikkiPilkington.com we have a great service that allows you to have 100 people visit your site and then make comments on it. They'll tell you what they liked about the design, how they rated the content, what put them off, what turned them on, and whether your site would convince them to buy your product or service.

For just £50 we'll send details of your site to 100 people that have an interest in your industry or product, and collate all of the findings into a report after ten days. The report will be delivered to you by email, along with the email addresses of any visitors that wanted to find out more.

Recent comments from our reviewers include: "Would have liked to have ordered, but link to order form didn't work", "Spelling errors make site look amateurish", "Great site, have added to my favourites", "No contact details anywhere on site makes me wary of buying from this company".

Action point: email Nikki at nikki@nikkipilkington.com to request your research campaign or to find out more, then act on the results.

Nikki Pilkington is owner of Milton Keynes based Internet Marketing Company Nikki Pilkington.com, and writes articles, hints and tips to help people looking to promote their website for free, as well as running paid e-marketing campaigns. For more of her articles visit http://www.nikkipilkington.com and sign up to the newsletter.