When it comes to your small business, you want to do everything in your power to ensure that things are going smoothly. But there may be some unexpected factors that could be impacting your customer conversion that doesn’t have to do with your business model or products.
Here are three unexpected things that could be slowing down your new business sales and what you can do to get them back up again.
Unhappy Customers are Customers that Don’t Convert
Using only video marketing on your website
It’s true that video marketing can do wonders for your business. Experts say that using a video on just your landing page can increase conversions by 86% and 70% of marketers say that video increases their conversion rates better than other marketing formats. Movement even gets your consumers’ brains going.
But it’s important to remember that consumers like to get their information fast. It only takes 10 seconds for people to form an impression about your brand and 0.05 seconds to form an opinion about your website.
If your website only provides information about your business through a video and nowhere else, and that video provides the information slowly, consumers will click away from your website fast. Include information in videos and in written formats so your consumers can get their information in a way that works best for them.
What’s more, you want to make sure your video marketing has audio and captions. Non-hearing consumers won’t be able to interact with your website if there aren’t any captions and hearing consumers won’t be able to multitask if they have to watch the screen to know what your business does.
Not having a phone number or address listed on your website
When you’re operating a small business and you’re working from home or your business is completely digital, it can be tempting not to list any phone number or address on your website. After all, putting a personal phone number or listing “101 Storybook Ln Apt #4” on your website may not feel very professional. But not listing a phone number or address on your website can make consumers feel uneasy, like you may not be a real company.
Of course, renting an office space and getting a permanent land line may not be in your budget. So what’s the solution?
We’ve found great success using inexpensive voice-over-internet phone lines (e.g. Google Voice) and virtual addresses (e.g. DaVinci Virtual) to provide that added level of comfort that the customer often need.
For example, in our trampoline dropship business, we saw a near 50% increase in sales by simply adding a phone number to the header and an address to the footer of our website!
Having an Unprofessional or Confusing Checkout Process
The less friction you introduce into the sell, the higher the conversion rate will be. This is common sense, and yet we see business after business injecting unnecessary processes into the checkout process.
This relates to both in-person and digital transactions.
We lived overseas for quite a few years in a country where the checkout process at many stores was ridiculously complicated! I remember going to one of the big local electronics stores to buy an HDMI cable, and spending 20 minutes in the checkout process. To simply buy a cable I had to:
- Tell the store salesperson which cable I wanted.
- The salesperson then personally took the cable to counter where someone would package the item in a bag, and staple the bag shut.
- I was sent to a separate window (and person) to pay.
- Once paid, I had to take the receipt to a second window where I received my “warranty”.
- With the receipt and warranty in hand, I returned to the counter where my cable had been packaged and that individual stapled the receipt and warranty to the bag.
As a customer, the entire process was a huge turnoff that dissuaded me from shopping there ever again. It would have been much easier to grab the item, take it to a self-checkout, and walk out the door 30 seconds after picking up the item!
The same can be true of online checkouts. Does your online store have too many steps? Too many pages from when the customer selects ‘Buy’ until the point when the customer finishes the process? If so, you’re losing sales!