You are a needle in a giant haystack!
Once someone gets to your site, are they faced with another haystack? Your goal is to “convert” visitors to your website into buyers. It’s hard enough to get traffic to your site, but once someone lands on any of your pages, can you keep them around? Can you lead them into a buying mode? And if they do get excited enough to consider a purchase, can they do that in a few clicks? Don’t hide the needle from them! Get rid of that haystack!
If you are reading this because you have little to no sales online or simply want more, take a hard look at this infographic. You may find you are part of the statistics. The statistics are no better today then when most of these figures were gathered. In fact, there is the whole “mobilegeddon” issue that started on April 21st, 2015, that probably makes many of these stats even worse.
Elephant in MY room! My home state of Hawaii ranks highest for percentage of businesses that don’t have websites. Last report was 67% of our businesses do not have internet presence!
The one statistic gathered for this SCORE small business study that had me reeling: 70% of small business websites have no “Call to Action” (CTA). The entire infographic and article published Dec. 2014 can be seen here.
Business websites rarely ask their visitors to do anything. All the content creation, the promotions, the strategies, the planning and the advertising, won’t result in sales on your site if your site is dysfunctional. If you are not pointing people to a place where they can learn details and start their decision processes and ultimately click and buy from you, you are wasting your precious time and money.
Are you missing opportunities?
This is the easiest fix in the world. Just keep it simple and ask for the sale. People who land on your site for the first time need your guidance to navigate your site and get to the stuff that matters! If that first visit is confusing, boring, or impersonal verging on untrustworthy, there won’t be a second visit. So keep it simple and be the guidance counselor they need with solid CTA strategies. Your CTA’s will depend on your business, but here are some basics. Ask visitors to:
- Call you
- Join your email list
- Schedule an appointment
- Go to your shopping cart or otherwise place an order
- Invite them to visit your retail location
- Download a free report or other free content relative to your industry.
- Learn about your services or products, store hours, location, shipping policies, ect.
- Read Testimonials or reviews
- Read your blog and/or engage in your Social Media sites.
Can they call you?
Your phone number needs to be on every single page of your website. No exceptions to this rule! I do website reviews for Peek User Testing and it is astonishing how often people actually use a line like, “Call us for more information” and then there is no phone number next to that line or anywhere on that page and sometimes not anywhere obvious on the entire site.
I go to “contact us” pages all the time and find a contact form with NO other way to reach the site owner. So while that Call to Action is in place (we were driven by the words “contact us”) there is no way for someone to actually call or directly email. It’s likely that person will leave in total frustration and never return. Never, ever.
If all they see is a form to fill out, that is a huge turnoff. We might accept no phone number (or really hard to find phone number) from a giant corporation who might be getting 10,000 visitors a day to their contact us page and couldn’t begin to take that many phone calls, but not from a small business. Use that form if you must, but include your photo, phone number, and email address so visitors feel like they are doing business with a human. (“I am not a number!”)
You do have an email marketing program in place, right?
If not, I have an ax to grind. Admittedly, I am biased since I owe the majority of my income (75%) from my years as an artist and the past several years as a consultant to my email marketing campaigns. But think about it; there’s a good chance that you are reading this because you got an email from me. Email works! Every once in a while, one of you hires me to help you with some specific problem.
And yes, I happen to be in love with Constant Contact and hope you will give me the opportunity to get a 60 day free trial going, but in the end: You must get it together! Get email SIGN-UPS on your site. Collect an email address and a first name from people who are on your site and interested enough to voluntarily give you permission to stay in touch!
SIDE NOTE: If you are using Constant Contact, you have over 90 hours every week of free marketing support from US-based coaches awaiting your phone call to show you how to put a sign-up box on your website. Do this now. Don’t finish reading the rest of this until this is done. Someone may be on your site right now and you want their contact information right now! Don’t let them leave your website without that opportunity to stay in touch!
And yes, I am now officially recommending (depending on YOUR industry) that you consider having a pop-up or “light box” to increase the sign-up rates. Just don’t be spammy!
And I have a bone to pick with the infographic: your email address must be on every single page. The moment that someone wants to get in touch is not the time for them to start looking around for your phone number OR your email address. Make it EASY for them to get in touch if they feel the need. The footer area is a great place to put contact info!
Can they buy from you without you in the mix?
No matter how many places you have your contact information, that is not how you make a sale. People may (when forced) take the extra step to call you or email you to purchase, but that is less likely with each passing day. In today’s quick click environment, someone standing in line for coffee who sees something cool they want to buy, expects to buy it now. Therefore, there is really no excuse for not having a shopping cart. Whatever you have to sell – including a service – you are competing with others who are increasingly making if very easy. If you don’t have a shopping cart or at least a “Buy Now” button with a link to PayPal, you are losing to your competition.
PayPal is not my first choice. A shopping cart is a thing of beauty. A professional level shopping cart is easy for your buyer to understand and use. It makes it easy to click and buy. I use one for my business and it is FREE. Free to set up. Free to use. The only cost is the normal processing fees like all credit cards and PayPal. Mine is sophisticated enough to handle all kinds of situations and gives you the ability to give promotional discount codes, charge or not charge for shipping, automatically add sales tax or not depending on the buyer’s location, and much more. If you want to have something going without investing up front, email me and I will be able to give you the complete details including giving you a code for $1000 of FEE FREE selling if you qualify. It’s a beginning. It’s not perfect, but it is much better than having NO shopping cart at all!
The rest of the list
Here’s the bottom line: You have their attention. They are on your site. I have written in depth in the past that their attention span requires immediate gratification. Why are they on your site? What is important to them? What’s in it for them? Do you think they take time to read six paragraphs about your history? Is your home page full of text-heavy paragraphs about out-of-context information?
If you missed this recommendation before, you need to take the time to get a quick review of your site by the “Peek” people. It’s free, simple, and you will get a short video sent to you that will chronicle the first impressions of your site. I recommend you get the maximum allowed per month which is three free reviews. From those videos, create a list of fixes and get in touch with me for some inspiration and brainstorming.
You are not too busy! Don’t use that excuse!
No one who is struggling to make income for their businesses is allowed to use the excuse that they are too busy to fix things that are keeping them from making more money. That is not a Catch-22, that is just procrastination and poor planning. One foot in front of the other. Pick something that needs fixing that will get you closer to making more money online and do it now or at least put it on a list of things to do marked “high priority”.
Contact me if you need a slap on the back to get started: 808-283-2108 or email me: icanhelp@mygoldenwords.com
Are you getting any sales? What’s working for you? Do you see the need for some improvements?
Add a comment, and I will select a few sites and give a few free reviews.
Good suggestions. I have had difficulty getting people to sign up for my email list.I am looking for ways to make the idea of providing an email attractive to potential customers. I believe more people see my work on social media,than on my website, but that is not leading to sales.
I just took a quick look at your site Susan and you are not using a CALL to ACTION of any kind anywhere on your site that encourages email sign-ups. As for more people seeing your work on Social Media, it’s a fact of life: Emails are 40% more effective than Facebook and Twitter combined at gaining “customers”. You can get all the “likes and follows” in the world, but if you are not using email marketing to it’s full potential, you are losing sales. You have NO control on Facebook unless you start giving them money and even then you don’t control WHO you can reach specifically. Your biggest and best collector may not have been reached by Facebook in weeks or months and you have NO way to know that.
You are very talented and you should be able to move sales through your site, but it’s not a very “sales” oriented site at this point. Read this older post of mine. It might help you see the path more clearly.
Thank you for your reply to my comment. I keep reading about the effectiveness of email marketing. I started a MailChimp account and have struggled a bit getting my list established. I have a sign up on my contact page on my website, but may need to do more with it. I will read the post you suggested. I have created the art, now I need to learn the marketing end!
You got that right! It’s all about driving traffic (to where they can purchase) and keep them in your world forever (or until they unsubscribe). Feel free to set up a free 30 min chat Susan. I would love to give you a tip or two.
I will be contacting you! Thanks!! 🙂
I have a CTA button on my website, but not too many people sign up. Actually that’s not true. I have tons of people signing up from an address ending in .ru
I checked and it’s from Russia. Not sure what to make of it.
I don’t yet have a shopping cart. I receive enquiries but very few follow through online. I would love your feedback. Thanks.
Thanks for sharing, Anu. I am not sure why you have Sign-ups from Russia. I see you are using a free email program – not Constant Contact. I have never had that or any wild sign-up issues using Constant Contact. It could be a setting issue?
As for your site, you are emphasizing things there that are “not about me”. It’s always all about the visitor’s needs. You are clearly just getting started as things are sparse, but I really had a hard time identifying WHAT the purpose of the site was and if you hadn’t asked me to review it, I would have left after a few clicks and not really understood what you were “selling” since you don’t have any strong CTA about sales.
The site “feels” like a travel journal more than a SELLING site. Adding a shopping cart will help, but not much. Even the title of your business is confusing. For several moments I was confused thinking YOU were the rural painter. You need a tag line – desperately. (I can be hired for that task.) You need to have people instantly know that you are giving rural SEA artists access to sell their art online. That is not clear ANYWHERE on your site. And your home page with the emphasis on charity donations is another distraction – it’s not a plus. Consolidate your About page with your My journey page and highlight your donation efforts there and only there.
If you think that people will be moved to buy anything they don’t already LOVE and desire because of a donation program, you are missing the fundamentals of they Buyer’s Journey. We all only care about ourselves and our needs FIRST and then the needs or concerns of others when we are content. De-emphasize your donations project because what it does now is remind people that there are people living in difficulty and then if they don’t like any of the art, you have added a slice of guilt to their journey on your site.
And unless you have a very easy way to get commissions created or are offering prints of the art, you should take down all the sold work. It’s another point of distraction and potential disappointment.
I could go on, but I have a consulting appointment in a short while. Ironically, someone who saw this post and instantly booked a time to review their site!
Hope this was helpful. Feel free to book with me for more details. The offer I made to Susan is open to you too: Free 30 min appointment!
Hi Mckenna,
Thanks for these tips. I’ve been incorporating your advice into a revision of my website since we chatted on skype. I’m also working on a complete re-design which will take a while longer. You’ve had a really big effect on helping me to see my website, email marketing and face to face sales from a potential customer’s perspective. Keep it coming!
Grand! Hooray! I am so excited for you, Rebecca. At this point, I have sent four packages with the E’s of Selling Art Guidebook and Flashcards sets to the UK. Nice to hear that you are getting results. All the feedback so far has been humbling.
Meanwhile, keep me in the loop and let me know if you hit any dead-ends and need a bridge built.
Oh… love your last line: Can I use that for a testimonial?
Yes, please do. I’ve been telling my artist friends about the guide…
Okay! Thanks! Send me a pic and I will find a place to feature your art, too!
I’ve gotten email sign ups pretty regularly but sales of my art thought my website, blog or online store are far and few between. A review would be appreciated.
It’s the very fact that you have SO many places to purchase from that is killing sales. I found it very hard to get to an image, see it clearly, learn about it, find a price, learn what needs to happen to purchase, and really was not sure where I was landing on the internet.
PICK ONE VENUE and sell from that spot. Use a professional shopping cart. REMOVE 80% or more of the words on pages where work is being sold. Give a viewer the art and as few “words” beyond who what when where and how they can buy the art. You have too many links to too many “surprising” landing pages. Look at this artist I set up on Square Market (free shopping cart – free!) https://squareup.com/store/creative-processes
When I land on your home page – the last thing you want to do is send me to AMAZON. OMG… I have a wish list sitting there that will keep me spending AWAY from your site. Why set yourself up for instant buying competition? Set up an appointment anytime and we can fine-tooth comb your site together on Skype.
Thanks I agree with many of your comments and insights. I will go ahead and book a call with you. Look forward to learning more.
Be sure to use my appointment page. It requires you to give me some insights with a short survey so I can be really helpful for our 30 mins together. Looking forward!
Hi McKenna. Great post fill of great tips. I’ve chopped and changed my website so many times I’ve almost given up. I recently took off the mail chimp email sign up. But I’m going to try some of your suggestions. You’ve got me going again. Thanks.
I am glad it was a nudge. I am always trying to be a nudge! 😉 Funny – I had the same thought when I was tweaking my site the other day. Kind of like – is this painting finally done???? LOL!
Hi Mckenna!
BTW, I love your new blog format!!!
Thanks for all your help in the past and new input.
Nadia Louderback
Thanks Nadia! Nice of you to comment here!
Yes, the new blog is exciting for me. I love being able to (separately) address the unique needs for my artist community in the new Artist Only Blog posts. Did you see I have finally published my guidebook, too?
There is a NEW one up right now! http://bit.ly/24iDcfd I will alert my artist only list in the morning!
Thank you very much for your consultation on my website today. Lots of great discussion and I get it now. I made a lot of vhsnges since we talked and look forward to see how my selling results might be affected.
I also loved learning about using google to test my site for mobile friendliness. Now all my gallery pages are rate mobile friendly.
Thank you, thank you, thank you.
You are very welcome, April. A website can be an impenetrable rain forest, but cutting a path to success is one of my favorite things to do for people.