Every prospect that enters your business – whether it’s an online store or an offline store – has one of two purposes in mind:
- They are just browsing and have no intention whatsoever of buying.
- They want to buy your product.
The people who fall into the first category are just browsers. Hopefully, someday, they will come back. On the other hand, you should be concerned about the people who fall into your second category because not all of them buy from you.
Yes, they want to buy the product. No they did not all buy it.
In order to help ascertain why they didn’t buy it from you, you need to take a look at some of these issues that drive motivated prospects (“warm leads”) away from your business.
- No value to them. Your sales pitch needs to provide them with value. To do this, you need to understand the benefits that your product provides and promote those benefits, not the features your product has. “Keyless remote entry” on cars is a feature. Convenience is a benefit. If the benefit is not clearly spelled out for your prospect, they may not understand why they should buy the product.
- No urgency. A sense of urgency is helpful to sell any product or service. Do you create a sense of urgency? Sometimes the urgency is created by the sale that you’re offering (“the price goes up next week”) and other times the urgency is created by a worst-case scenario (“buy this insurance today just in case something happens tomorrow”).
- Non-selling site. Your website acts like a funnel to help turn prospects into customers. By monitoring how your funnel operates, you’ll discover if and when your site is shedding prospects.
- No hand-holding. Like children, customers need their hands held every step of the way though the process. At first glance, that statement sounds insulting to customers, but it’s not meant to be: we know the process much better than our customers and since they are new to how your shopping cart works, they need someone to walk them through it. Many shopping carts are abandoned because the customer was confused or scared that the next click would charge their credit card if they weren’t 100% ready to buy.
- Behind the times. You need to look the part. No one goes into a hole-in-the-wall store and expects to buy luxury goods. Whether your business is offline or online, you need to make sure that your walk matches your talk. This is especially true of websites who may see sales slump as website development trends outpace the look of the site.
There will always be people who don’t buy. That’s the reality of business. However, there can always be more people who do buy because of your constant improvements. Give your store a quick check-up to make sure that interested prospects are more likely to spend their money with you.
