Your online store is not selling: Why your business is struggling to make sales

Having an ecommerce store is a great way to bring in revenue without the high overhead costs that come with selling inventory in a brick-and-mortar store.

However, many new entrepreneurs involved in online commerce find themselves having difficulty with making their first online sale or are unable to earn a decent profit that makes running their business worthwhile. After you put lots of time and effort into your project, it can be frustrating to not have products selling as well as you’d like.

While it’s important that your business offers quality products or services, these items must be paired with the right sales strategies. When you’re able to achieve this, there’s no telling how much you can make in ecommerce!

If sales for your online store are currently low or at least not as high as you’d like them to be, there could be several different explanations for this.

This article reviews 11 of the most common reasons why business might not be booming for an ecommerce entrepreneur.

Traffic but no sales: Why are people visiting your ecommerce site but not buying?

1. Difficult-to-navigate website

One of the most frequent issues that can occur with ecommerce stores is that they’re hard to navigate. Nothing hurts a shopper’s experience more than not being able to reach their intended destination.

If the product pages of your online store aren’t easy to find, your sales won’t be as high as they could be.

When consumers access your website from a tablet or smartphone, it may be especially difficult for them to navigate the website if it's poorly designed. Make sure that it’s free of any small images, small buttons, and cluttered design elements.

Many modern ecommerce sites go with a minimalist approach to their design. This can improve navigation and help give visitors to an online store a more enjoyable experience.

What’s more, a thoughtfully designed online store can help you to better manage your ecommerce site.

Fortunately, creating an online store with a high-quality, professional design is simple when you use the WiziShop platform. We offer a wide range of spectacular templates to help you build a homepage that’s sure to delight you and your customers alike!

2. Low-quality images

Even if your online store is well designed, prospective customers may not show interest in the products you sell because of low-quality images.

One negative of shopping online is that consumers can’t physically hold the product for a closer inspection. As such, the images you use for your ecommerce products must show visitors everything they need to see.

Your product images should help encourage potential buyers to make a purchase.

When showcasing your products, capture images from different angles and in a high resolution. Blurry and hazy images should be avoided at all costs on your ecommerce site.

3. Low-quality product descriptions

Ecommerce customers want to be informed about the product that they’re purchasing. Only a small number of customers will purchase products from an online store based on an image alone.

If you’re having trouble getting customers for your ecommerce business, you may need to take a careful look at how you’re describing what you have for sale. It's important to match your products with detailed descriptions that highlight the product benefits.

The product descriptions on your site should engage visitors and keep them interested in your product. Every product on your online store must include a unique description that only applies to that specific item.

4. A website that’s not mobile friendly

The modern ecommerce customer wants to be able to browse the internet and make purchases from their smartphone or tablet. To accommodate this need, it’s crucial that your ecommerce website is mobile friendly.

If your online store doesn’t accommodate mobile devices, these users will be presented with zoomed-in pages that require extensive scrolling.

According to Pew Research Center, over 50% of online shoppers access storefronts with smartphones and tablet devices. This is a strong indication that if you haven’t yet made your site mobile friendly, now is a great time to start.

It’s an essential step in appealing to a greater number of potential customers and being able to sell more products!

There are two methods you can use to make sure that you provide mobile users with a good experience.

You can either create a separate mobile version of your main website or use a responsive design with your current website. A responsive design allows the website to automatically adjust to the screen resolution of the device that's accessing it.

Good news: when you build your online store with WiziShop, your website will automatically be created in a responsive format! There’s nothing extra that you’ll need to do on your end.

5. Missing or hard-to-find contact info

Potential customers need to be able to reach your business at all times. Owners of new online storefronts sometimes don’t prioritize their contact info in an attempt to let the products speak for themselves.

While contact information might seem like a small detail, it’s important that site visitors are able to ask questions about products that interest them. If ever there’s a problem with your ecommerce website or the purchasing process, people will want to contact you or someone who works with your company.

To bolster trust with consumers and start selling more goods, place your contact info on a separate “Contact” page on your website. You could also consider including these details in the header of the homepage of your online store.

6. Complicated checkout procedure

People want to be able to find a product and purchase it as quickly as possible. To that end, an increasing number of businesses with online storefronts are implementing one-click checkout buttons.

The most important goal when creating a checkout procedure is to make sure that it’s an easy process. If customers need to click through five pages just to purchase a single product, they may become frustrated and leave your website.

To help your business sell more products, it’s best if the checkout process for your online store is very short. It’s also important that customers don't need to create an account before making a purchase.

Instead, place the option to do so at the very end of the checkout process. If you provide site visitors with a smooth and effortless checkout procedure, they’ll be more likely to become return customers.

7. Hidden shipping fees

Another frustration people often face when shopping online is to be greeted with high shipping costs upon reaching the final page for the checkout process. Customers want to know how much they're going to pay for a product early on in the process.

If your shipping rates are high, customers may believe that your ecommerce business is attempting to hide the total cost of the product.

An easy way to reduce cart abandonment issues because of hidden shipping fees is to include a shipping calculator on each item page. From here, people can input their zip code to identify how much it will cost to have the product shipped to their home or business.

Better yet, you may want to add options for free shipping on your site. If you don't want to offer free shipping on all purchases, you could provide it for orders that reach a certain dollar amount, say when shoppers buy at least $50 worth of inventory.

8. Wrong target market

If your ecommerce website is well-designed, engaging, and functional, it’s possible that your online store isn’t selling for a reason unrelated to the site.

For example, you might have targeted the wrong market with your marketing campaign, which means that potential buyers aren’t visiting your website. Having a great product isn’t enough if the right people never even see the marketing materials you’re supplying.

You must perform audience research if you want to identify who the target market for your online store is. It’s best to do this research using a variety of techniques, such as competitive analysis, user testing, Google Analytics, on-site surveys, and focus groups.

With the information and data that you gather, it should be easy for you to determine who is interested in your business. Once you start to create marketing campaigns that use this data, you should notice that your ad spends are generating business over time.

Another great way to identify the audience for your online store is to build a customer profile. Some of the questions that you might want to ask yourself when creating customer profiles include the following:

• Do these customers typically purchase items online?
• How much does my customer value the services/items that I offer?
• Does my primary customer prefer technical communication or casual communication?
• Does my customer perform an ample amount of research before making a purchase?
• What are the education levels and income levels of my ideal customer?

By answering these questions, you can create a profile that paints a more detailed picture of the audience to whom you want to sell.

9. Poor marketing strategy

Even if you have a good idea of who your audience is, you might still make the mistake of having a poor marketing strategy. The marketing campaigns that are created for your online store should include a variety of elements that allow you to reach a wide range of people.

For example, every online store should have a presence on social media. Social media websites like Facebook and Instagram are among the largest platforms in the world, giving businesses access to millions of potential customers.  

In addition, depending on your budget, you might want to plan to venture into the world of paid ads. Among the most popular platforms for pay-per-click ads for an ecommerce business are Facebook and Google.

You should also avail of SEO for your ecommerce website to improve your rankings on search engines like Google and boost organic traffic to your store. To obtain higher conversion rates, make sure that your business uses retargeting to send ads to individuals who have already paid your website a visit.

Another common mistake with online stores is a lack of a live chat service. Potential customers may visit your website immediately after seeing an ad of yours on Facebook or Google.

If they have any questions about your products or services, it’s important that they can reach you immediately. When a customer contacts you with questions via live chat, a representative for your company can spend time guiding that person toward a purchase.

Finally, don't hesitate to look into email marketing as well, as this gives you the opportunity to create an email list of potential and current customers.

10. Low customer engagement

Today’s customers don’t want to do business with an impersonal company. If you want to keep customers of your online store happy and sell more products, high customer engagement is essential.

Even though it's important to avoid being too pushy, not engaging with the customer at all could be even worse for your reputation.

A great way to engage with your audience is to start to have conversations with them on social media platforms. Your brand will be at the forefront while you show these customers that you value their opinion.

Higher customer engagement usually corresponds with an increase in brand loyalty and helps you to sell more products.

Another method your ecommerce business can use to bolster customer engagement and allow you to sell more goods is to focus on your content marketing. In addition to creating more engaging content on any social media platform on which you have a presence, this also entails creating content for your blog. Plan to add articles that are designed to help people in your niche.

If you provide your customers with articles and discussions that interest them, they’ll continue to choose to visit your website, which will likely help you to sell more inventory. This will also aid in attracting new shoppers who are going to want to buy from your brand. Make sure that the content you create for your online store is appealing to your target audience for the best results.

11. Wrong prices for products

At the end of the day, one of the most important factors for whether a product sells is likely its price. If a product is priced incorrectly, all the good marketing in the world won’t be enough to increase sales, regardless of the niche in which your brand is selling.

However, it’s important that you strike the right balance when determining the best price for the product you’re selling.

If you price items too low, your customers may associate your items with a lesser quality. On the other hand, a high price may lead to a “sticker shock” reaction that causes the customer to choose to exit your site and buy from another store.

Keep in mind that shipping costs and taxes must be calculated into the product pricing for your ecommerce business.

While some trial and error will likely be needed to identify the right pricing for a product, market research can also help. This is an important step, so don't hesitate to spend a decent amount of time in order to get it right. Finding the best price for your product should make it easier for you to gain new customers and keep them over time.

Starting an online store is just the first step

Finally getting your ecommerce business off the ground is exciting, but the work doesn't stop there!

Your online store will require effective management to ensure its success. Even though running an online storefront is never easy, you do get to avoid many of the expenses that come with managing a physical store. If you find that your online store isn’t selling at an ideal rate, try to start to identify the reasons why your sales aren’t higher.

Once you know why your products aren’t flying off the (digital) shelves, you should be able to address the issues and increase your sales.

No matter your specific niche, to give yourself the best chance of success in selling products via internet commerce, you’ll want to be sure to choose a stellar ecommerce platform with an integrated website builder to create your shop. There are numerous options available, so it's important to evaluate them carefully to ensure that the one you plan to use is a great fit for your needs before you start to sell. 

With the WiziShop all-in-one solution, you'll be able choose from a plethora of templates to easily create a storefront that matches the vision you have for your brand. Adding and managing your inventory is a cinch with our platform, and you can add a variety of payment and shipping options to accommodate your customers' preferences. Plus, you'll get to enjoy 400+ pre-integrated features and 50+ SEO optimizations designed to skyrocket your conversions and rankings on search engines!

Avail of the helpful guidance of our Business Coaches, who can assist with any question you may have pertaining to the management of your shop, from the moment you sign up with the solution. Training on all kinds of ecommerce-related topics is included in your subscription to help you take your knowledge and business to the next level.

In addition, take advantage of our revolutionary artificial intelligence to save you loads of time when it comes to creating text content. With this handy feature, you'll be able generate blog posts, product descriptions, translations, and more in mere seconds!

Try WiziShop free for 7 days, get your first month for just $1, and discover for yourself why it's the best ally for your entrepreneurial adventure in ecommerce today!