Converting Visitors to Customers

Hello all,

My website (https://www.the-ishop.co.uk), has been running since August 2010, and I have only had 10 real sales so far (the 11th being a gift voucher I gave after a mess-up I made with an order).... I've sunk a fair bit of money into it (nearly £600), so as I'm sure you can imagine, I'm not massively impressed. :frusty:

To be honest, I don't know what I'm doing wrong. My visitor numbers aren't too shabby - an average of about 40 per day (though there are notable fluctations - sometimes I have 14 a day, other days I have 60), but as I mentioned, I've only had 10 orders.

I've got a fairly good blog running, with a bloke writing some fairly funny technology-related stuff and indirectly promoting some of my products at https://www.the-ishop.co.uk/blog
I use Facebook and Twitter for marketing extensively (though not as much recently for a number of reasons), so it's not like I'm not getting the word out (so to speak).

Until now, I've only been selling to UK customers (mainly because one of my dropship suppliers only delivered to UK addresses), but as I am no longer using the aforementioned supplier, and am now using a more international one, I have decided to become less of an isolationist. I've started adding additional countries and currencies so perhaps that will bring in a few more sales!

Anyone got any suggestions?

:clap:

My impressions are that your site is very good - easy to navigate and it looks good. If I'm converting british pounds to american dollars properly, it looks like the pricing is also good. So what is my estimation as to the problem with a poor conversion rate?

1. You are in a very competitive and saturated field. Something has to set you apart from your competition - and it cannot be price because someone can always undercut your prices. You need something that no one else has, and something that is in demand.

2. I didn't see a way for you to capture visitors' contact information. Of course, you need to offer an ethical bribe to get it - like a free gift, % off, special discounts, etc. I see that you connect with your visitors through Facebook, but you need to connect in a more personal manner to develop raging fans.

That's about all that I have. I hope it gives you some ideas!

Thanks for your thoughts Jerry - much appreciated!

I do realise that I'm in a very competitive and saturated market - that's something that I accepted when I first started off.
I also realised recently that I needed to strike the balance between good prices, but not so cheap that it gives the impression of poor quality. £3 for an iPhone case could potentially be seen as a mark of poor quality or of just being desperate. But equally, I don't want to raise my prices so much that I cross the threshold of losing customers because of high prices. I just need to find the grey area in between, but it's a matter of where it is.

When you say 'capturing visitor's information', do you mean emails for newsletters? Admittedly, I don't really use newsletters, primarily because I don't really know what to di with them. What do I write about? Do customers really want emails telling them about our newest stock? Should I automatically subscribe them to our blog, so that they have a newsletter with genuinely interesting information/articles, and a bit of a sales pitch with offers and tips?
Something for me to think about, methinks...

When you say 'more personal manner', what do you mean there? Not sure I understand...

1. you are running you entire site on SSL (that'll make it a touch slower and no need as zencart auto switches to ssl when needed)
2. You are running ssl, but the site is being marked as unsecure, go to your homepage as you listed above and it is not showing as secure, infact on some browsers (IE)you will get a warning, I think the issue is in one of your stylesheets

I can't even access your site at the moment.

Yes, there is a technical issue that's in the middle of being sorted out. I installed the Short Description module, and now it won't work, even when I roll-back the changes by restoring past backups... Very odd!

Thanks for looking anyway!