Good Traffic But No Sales – What’s Going On?

Boosting traffic to your site may have been the main goal of any major SEO efforts you’ve made so far. But assuming that achieving it will lead to a subsequent increase in sales is just that – an assumption. And in fact many firms will find that even if more people start visiting their site, the sales avalanche they originally anticipated will never materialise.
So what are these companies doing wrong and what can you do if you are not getting sales in spite of a spike in site traffic?

Check the Data & Avert A No Sales Scenario

Working out why you’re not getting sales that reflect your traffic levels doesn’t need to be a guessing game; there should be plenty of data available on landing page performance which should enable you to spot the problem really quickly. And it’s a good idea to find your most successful pages and determine what it is that is making them work where others are failing to secure decent conversion rates.
With this data to hand it should be simpler to identify whether the content on a page actually supports the keywords which are helping to generate the organic traffic for it. More often than not it will be this disconnect which is causing the trouble. If users end up on a site only to find that it is not relevant to the original intent of their search, they will leave and bounce rates will climb, even if inbound traffic looks healthy.

Engage Visitors Directly

You can analyse all the landing page data in the world and make efforts to address the shortcomings of your site at a technical level but still find that those sales increases are not forthcoming, or the improvements are minimal. And in this instance it is important to remember that there may be something you’re missing that the figures simply don’t reflect.
Now here’s a radical idea: why don’t you actually engage with visitors and find out about what they are looking for, how their needs might be met and why your site may or may not be serving them well at this point in time?
This doesn’t have to be a long-term commitment, especially as bombarding every visitor with a request to complete a feedback form or questionnaire can be counter-productive in terms of increasing sales. Who amongst us doesn’t find questionnaires annoying? But running short experiments in which you request feedback from visitors can give you insights that you simply will not find anywhere else.
Some site owners may find, for example, that their landing pages are merely being scanned for product info by visitors, suggesting that those who are intending to buy are not being targeted thoroughly enough. But without asking you may never be able to work out what aspect of your site is failing and what you can do to remedy the situation and ensure that traffic and sales rise in tandem.
If in doubt, ask!