9 Reasons why your online store is not selling
Many people, often unfamiliar with the realities of the Internet, are trying to start their own businesses.
Many people, often unfamiliar with the realities of the Internet, are trying to start their own businesses. This number has increased, especially in the last two years, when a large part of the business has had to work remotely. Unfortunately, many of them, after the initial enthusiasm, are now asking themselves: why doesn’t anyone buy from my online store?
There can be several reasons why an online store does not sell.
Online businesses offer considerable opportunities, but opening an online store alone is no guarantee of success. Certain factors can determine the success of an online store and any other e-commerce business. However, virtually any product can be successfully sold on the Internet by taking specific steps to support sales.
So why do a considerable portion of online stores disappear from the market shortly after opening? In most cases, the answer is simple: The owners of these stores do not use Internet marketing tools. Or if they do, they do so ineffectively. There are two types of situations in which the online store does not make money.
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Customers do not visit the store or do not know about it
Many people who are thinking of opening their own store have a wrong perception of how e-commerce works. We are talking mostly about people with no knowledge of e-commerce and marketing. They may consider that a Jeff Bezos-style career is open to them. They have a great product and their friends have told them they will buy their products. That means success is their destiny, right?
No. I’m very sorry, but reality often paints a different scenario. A budding store owner contacts suppliers, creates a store page, puts products in stock and waits for their dream of e-commerce fortune to come true. Unfortunately, this scenario does not come true. There is anger and questions as to why the online store is not selling.
The online store is not a neighborhood greengrocer's shop
They do not fulfill the dream of a profitable business because beginners often perceive an online store as if it were a store of a recognizable retail chain located in the center of the neighborhood. One of the residents will always come here. And yet, the Internet is not a neighborhood. It is impossible to hang a sign over the door with information about your store. On the Internet, digital marketing tools do the job of a billboard and SEO does it as a street.
Without SEO optimization
Search engine optimization is a priority step in the development of an e-commerce business. If you have just opened your store in a very competitive industry, it will be difficult to appear in a good position in Google search results. Big players like Amazon, eBay and OLX occupy the top 5 positions. You can get into the top 10 or top 20 if you are good enough.
A proper SEO strategy will help you attract customers to your store. In the future, of course.
Remember that SEO activities cover several areas that should include, for example, technical optimization of the website, creating a base of backlinks or creating properly optimized content.
It is worth mentioning that you should not expect immediate effects. Optimization is a process whose first effects are not felt for several months. Despite having optimized your website, it is possible that your page is not visible in Google. This happens when SEO is carried out hastily.
No content marketing activities
Although content marketing is often considered one of the tools of SEO, I thought it was worth mentioning this form of promotion as a separate area of digital marketing. After all, the content marketer and the SEO specialist are almost always two different people.
Content marketing is all about creating diverse and valuable content to share with your potential customers. And, more importantly, offering it for free. So, content marketing helps build brand loyalty, but blog posts that support SEO activities are equally popular.
When running a store, you should go for content marketing because the Google search engine is one of the main sources of knowledge gain. And content marketing is a great way to educate a potential customer. By publishing content on a blog or YouTube channel, we can pass on valuable knowledge to customers and thus make them want to make purchases from our store in the future.
When it comes to specific content activities, it is worthwhile to resort to formats such as:
- blog articles,
- infographics,
- video materials,
- podcasts.
An excellent way to distribute content is through social networks; therefore, you should actively use these channels. Of course, you should check beforehand which social channels your potential customers use.
Without advertising campaigns
In contrast to SEO, advertising is a tool that allows you to immediately reach specific target groups, also those who are ready to buy the product. It is worth using one of the paid forms of promotion, such as Google Ads or Facebook Ads. If you implement the campaigns correctly, they will increase sales in the store.
And it may also be worthwhile to look for other channels where you can advertise your store’s products. Online advertising specialists are increasingly looking at platforms such as TikTok, Spotify and Tinder.
Customers go to the store's website, but, for some reason, they don't buy.
There may be situations where potential customers end up on your store’s website, but, for some reason, do not buy. There can be many possible reasons for this. The most popular ones are listed below.
Your online store is not responsive
Slightly more than half of Internet users shop online via a smartphone. You may be a laptop or big-screen enthusiast, but people are diverse. Imagine how much you lose when smartphones have trouble displaying your website. Angry users opt to buy from the competition.
Store takes a long time to load
Today’s Internet user is impatient. Google has investigated the relationship between page load time and the number of users who abandon the page, and the results are clear. The research has shown that 53% of mobile users abandon a page that takes more than 3 seconds to load.
To improve the speed of a website, start by diagnosing the reasons for its slow performance. To do this, you can use Page Speed Insights and Gtmetrix.
The purchasing process is not intuitive
I’m sure you’ve been upset when you saw a product you wanted but couldn’t buy. Maybe it was impossible to buy it because the store was unreadable. It happens often: we want to add a product to the cart or go to the checkout, and the website is so unintuitive that we can’t find the right button. This causes an increase in the cart abandonment rate.
Unattractive product pages
Remember that online customers buy with their eyes. Unfortunately, unlike traditional stores, here the experience with the product is limited. Unfortunately, you can’t touch it, so you have to appeal to their imagination in other ways. Text is not enough. Show him the best photos and graphics you can. You can also include a link to a YouTube video.
Remember to play on the customer’s emotions, problems and desires. Make your product description touching.
The product is lousy
In every industry, some products are more popular than others. In theory, a given store may be full of them. It may be that the quality of the products is low, or the pricing policy is absurd.
Fortunately, you can solve this problem easily. It is enough to analyze the market using the following methods:
- Trend analysis using SEO tools: we can check what phrases users enter in Google;
- Sales analysis tools on popular portals, e.g. eBay and Amazon;
- Review of newsgroups and forums – you can do research of online customers where they are looking for answers.
Too much competition?
According to what I wrote at the beginning of the article, I believe that by skillfully using digital marketing tools, you can sell successfully in any sector. Even in the most competitive one. Of course, due to high competition in the market, sales may be slightly lower and make it necessary to reduce the margin. But competition should not lead to no sales in the store.
Conclusion
As you can see, there can be several reasons for the lack of sales in the online store. It is worth analyzing your situation meticulously to identify the specific reasons for the lack of sales and strive to eliminate them. The tool that will allow you to perform such an analysis will be Google Analytics. It allows a detailed examination of what is happening in your online store.
I am convinced that the analysis of all the above factors will help to answer the question why nobody buys in my online store.
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