Sales are low and you tell yourself that it is time again to adjust your paid ads campaigns even if there is absolutely nothing wrong with them. The ad copy sounds great and convincing as well as your creatives are on point. They showcase your products in the best way possible.
Sooo WHAT is it ???
Most e-commerce brand owners focus mostly on their ad campaign dashboard and look at numbers such as ROAS and ROI. These numbers are most certainly very important but don't paint the whole picture. If we look at a e-commerce sales funnel as a whole you will see that your paid ads or SEO efforts are at the very top of your sales funnel and your retargeting such as email marketing are at the bottom. But where do your visitors and potential customers actually spend their most time on and where do they actually buy from? What is it thats in between your top and bottom of funnel?
Well of course your actual online store itself!! Thats where all the magic happens and your customer will buy from. It's here where your brand as a whole gets judged. Its your online store that makes someone decide how trustworthy your products are. This is your real estate to really shine and convince your visitors that they need to buy from you instead from that other brand.
1st reason: Wrong perspective about the purpose of an online store
The job of your online store is not to sell the idea of buying for example jewelry or an aesthetic part for your a motorcycle. For that we have the ads. Your storefront needs to sell your brand. Someone that lands on your website let it be from paid ads or organically is already sold on the idea of buying the certain type of product that you are offering. Thats why they clicked on your link!! You need to create the perfect platform to generate trust and value towards your visitor.
Would you buy a jewelry piece from a store where everything just randomly lies around and smells bad? Most likely not unless it's an outlet of a brand you already know. That's why and especially for smaller brands it's so important to stay competitive by proving that they have the same level or higher quality products than their big cooperation counterparts.
2nd reason: Showing the result your product delivers instead of the benefits
For our example product let use our motorcycle part again. Let's say your are in the business of selling carbon fiber parts to make your bike look cooler. Some might say it is very difficult to advertise such a product since it has no practical use case. It does not provide more power neither does it add any safety features. If you only show your visitors how cool your part will look on these bikes then you definitely have an issue selling since you do not stand out from the crowd. Carbon fiber looks the same no matter where you buy it from. So why should I buy from a small store instead of a big and well known brand?
You need to address the fears and doubts a customer might have instead. For example:
- fitment ( our parts will fit perfectly without any adjustments needed )
- quality ( we produce all of our parts in-house )
- guarantees ( if there is any issue we will replace it or repair if possible)
If you take all the fears & doubts away you will get a lot more sales because you give them the right reasons to do so.
3rd reason: Layout issues / responsive design
This happens especially within small & medium sized e-commerce stores because of the lack of a proper web developer and UI/UX designer. Nevertheless this issue can be fixed without any outside help if you don't have the budget for it and are willing to put in the work.
Make sure your online store is fully responsive and I mean fully! If your images get cut or some functions are not available for certain devices you will lose many potential customers. You have to make sure that a visitor will receive the information on mobile & on desktop no matter what. All images have to be clearly visible and attractive even if that means using different images for either device. Consistency is key here since it creates trust.
4th reason: Branding
As tempting as it might be to setup an online store with a plain white background this can be a conversion killer. It definitely depends on your niche. Within the jewelry niche this is actually a good thing. But what I mean by that is your online store has to fully immerse your visitors into the feel of your brand.
Let's have a look at fashion brands: Whenever you walk into one of their stores you immediately get the feeling that you are at the beach because of their surf boards on the wall and chill music.
Same goes for online stores. You need to make sure that every visitor identifies with your brand. You can achieve that by using certain color schemes and fonts. Otherwise you store will look like all the other million websites out there.
5th reason: Not being connected to your products
All of the above often happens often if you cannot relate to your products enough. Unless you have a lot of social proof through influencer marketing you will find it hard to sell without standing out from the crowd. There are many simple stores out there that sell millions but thats because they have done all the selling before people even click on a link. Every big influencer who sells products online have sold their personality instead of their products. Thats why it does not matter if their stores look good or not.
But if that would be the case for you there would be no need to pay for ads right :D
Make sure that you know your products inside out and what value it adds to your potential customer.