6 Mistakes on Your Website That Might Cost You Sales & How to Fix Them

Making these 6 mistakes on your website can be costly for any entrepreneur. The great thing is, they're all fixable with fairly easy solutions.

#1 No Contact Info

When potential customers are wrestling back and forth with whether it's safe to purchase a product they want from your website, one way to put their minds at ease and prove to them you're a legit business, is to give them a way to contact you should something go wrong with their order.

Here's how you fix this problem:

• Get a business email for your custom domain. In other words, instead of [email protected], get an email like [email protected]. You can do this easily through Google Suite for around $6/month.
• Add a Contact Us page on your website with a form for people to fill out.
• Add links to your social media on your website.
• Add a Facebook Messenger chat option to your website.
• Get a Google Voice number and list it on your website. You can get a business number for around $10/month.
• Get a low cost virtual 800 number. At Grasshopper, 800 numbers start at $26/month.

You can do one or more of these. I would suggest using methods that allow your potential customers to reach you quickly and get a quick response.

#2 No Social Proof

Social proof is the concept that people will follow the actions of the masses. You've seen all the crazy challenges on social media. That's an example of social proof, and you can use this phenomena to your advantage as a business owner. When people see that other people are buying your product, they'll want to buy it too.

Here's how you fix this problem:

• Share reviews and testimonials on your website.
• Share pictures of your customers using your product on your website.
• You can give customers the option to add photo reviews directly on your website. If you're using Shopify, you can do this with the Loox app.
• If you don't currently have any of reviews or photos of customers using your product, but you have had customers in the past, reach out to them and ask them for a picture or a review in exchange for a discount on their next purchase.
• If you haven't had any customers yet, be sure to create a process to collect reviews and photos as you get customers in the future. For now, you can try giving your product away in exchange for photos of people using it and in exchange for feedback.

#3 Poor Layout

If your website is hard to navigate, people will leave. That's just facts. So make sure navigating your website is clear and easy.

Here's how you can fix this problem:

• Organize your products into collections or groups of similar items. 
  • For instance, if you sell apparel for adults, you would want to make sure your products are grouped into two main categories - Men & Women. Then from there, you might break your collections down further into tops, pants, shoes, accessories, etc. Under shoes, you might have boots, sandals, sneakers, etc.
• Build your nav bar according to your collections so people can easily move through your website with very few clicks.
• It's also really important to make getting from any page on your site to the checkout page SUPER easy. This should be one click or two clicks, at the most.
• Put all other links for pages like About Us, Contact Us, FAQs, Shipping Policy, Return Policy, etc. in your footer navigation.

#4 No Pixels or Tracking Tags

A pixel or tracking tag is a snippet of code you add to your website that collects data about how your visitors behave when they're on your site.

You need to know where traffic is coming from, what visitors are doing once they get to your site, how long they stay, who's adding products to their cart, and where purchases come from and a pixel or tag is how you do this.

Here's how you fix this problem:

• Create a Google Analytics account and add the Google Site Tag to your website. 
• If you think you might ever even slightly consider running ads on Facebook and/or Instagram, create a Facebook Pixel and add it to your website. You can use your FB Pixel to:
  • Retarget potential buyers, which helps you get people who have fallen out of your funnel back into your funnel.
  • Create audiences that "look like" the people who have engaged with your ads, visited your website, added something to cart, or even purchased from you. This is GOLD!

It's really important that you do both of these ASAP, even if you aren't getting much traffic yet. You want to be collecting data now, because it will make advertising much easier down the line. 

#5 Only One Payment Option

Limiting potential customer's payment options is another mistake that can potentially cost you sales.

For instance, only offering payment via PayPal could turn potential customers away. If a customer gets to checkout and they don't have a PayPal account, they won't bother taking the time to set up an account and they might not know they can check out without a PayPal account.

Here's how you fix this problem:

• Use as many payment options as you have available.
• Focus on the payment options your target audience uses the most. If they use Apple Pay, then you'll want to make sure you have Apple Pay as an option. If they love using Amazon Pay, make sure you have Amazon Pay on your site.

In my experience, having multiple payment options on your site can really help increase conversions because people who aren't very familiar with your brand will trust those payment providers more than they trust you.

#6 Unclear Shipping

Having a clear, easy to find shipping policy will really help boost conversions and increase sales.

One of the top reasons people add a product to their cart and then abandon their carts at checkout is because of unexpected shipping costs.

And when people don't even know how long it will take them to get their purchase, they definitely ain't buying from you.

Here's how you fix this problem:

• Make your shipping policy really clear on your website.
• Make a Shipping Policy page that explains shipping costs and shipping times. Remember to link to this page in your footer navigation.
• Include your shipping times on your product pages.

In Conclusion

If you've made any of these mistakes, now you know how to fix them, and the best part is that they're all pretty easily corrected. 

Take some time to implement what you've learned here and you'll be better positioned to close the sale.

For help building your online business selling a physical product with no inventory or selling a digital product, click here.