Put Your Effort in Selling, Not in Building Your Website!

Andreea • Apr 02, 2021

Reading time: 8 mins ⏲️

Learn how to increase sales whilst understanding how your website actually works. Check out our latest tips and tricks as well as some solid statistics!

Beautiful workplace table and tablet flat lay

When was the last time you were thinking about how you can increase sales for your business? What was the outcome? No matter the size of your business or the starting point of it, you surely had this question in your mind: how can we boost sales online?

In the following article, we explore some interesting tactics aimed at increasing your online sales.

Everything is Happening Online Now. Is Your Business There?

Technology is advancing extremely fast and your business has to keep up. At this pace of change, who knows what the future may hold?

This is a game-changing question that every business seeks answers to. What we can say for sure is that even word-of-mouth marketing was impacted by these changes. Consumers have stopped talking to their friends about your product or service at the local store or pub, and even more so during this 2020-2021 pandemic period.

Now they are talking online about what your business has to offer. In fact, 90% of prospective buyers will read online reviews before visiting your business and 88% find online reviews as valuable as personal recommendations. So if you aren’t online, you are missing valuable opportunities.

And being online means that you’ll be in good company: among 4.94 billion other people, to be more specific. Therefore, you need to have an attractive website that generates traffic, linked to social media platforms.

How to Increase Sales by Customizing Your Website

Is web design a decisive factor for your customers to continue engaging on your website?

According to studies, you have about 50 milliseconds to make a first good impression on a potential future customer. That’s just 0.5 seconds for them to form an opinion, whether they like or dislike it, whether they want to continue navigating through your products and services, or if they want to leave.

Everyone is familiar with the aphorism “Do not judge a book by its cover.” While it holds very high moral value, it is not something we can apply to websites. Human perception of appearance leads to instant decisions in the consumer's brain, and this could be either your downfall or your success.

9 screen with different templates and websites on them

Tips and Tricks for Website Personalization

A. The readers will look at the top left corner first

An eye-tracking study found that upon accessing a website, people stop to read in the upper left corner. Eye-tracking technology follows the movement of the reader's eyes as they are viewing a page.

From this data, it was established that the process is the following: people make a quick scan of the main sections and decide whether they want to continue reading. Less than three seconds is necessary for this decision. If they decided to stay, readers will focus on the top part of the screen, so make sure to include the most important data in the first two paragraphs.

B. Always have a call-to-action on your website

A proper call-to-action is usually missing from small business websites. People see your offer, are interested, but can’t really figure out how to get your services.

Let’s get this straight. A call-to-action needs to be above the fold and when there are longer content pages, don’t forget that a follow-up should be near the bottom. Be clear about your offer and make it captivating to the eye by using contrasting colors to your site’s background color. And most importantly, it needs to be clear and relevant for your visitors.

A girl smiling, shouting and holding a megaphone.

C. Make your website design attractive and make sure it loads fast enough

A website’s content must be visually appealing and easy to read. Nobody likes going from one block of text to another block of text. A survey found that 66% of people would prefer to read something beautifully designed versus something plain. Also, the same survey found that 39% of users will stop engaging if an image takes too long to load.

D. Extra tip — Be in the first search results

Even though this doesn't have to do with your homepage design, it is based on eye-tracking studies and is crucial for your success.

A Google study concluded that if your page is not among the first three search results, you might be missing out. People usually find what they need in these first results and don’t bother searching further down the page. That’s Google’s job, to return useful searches that match the users’ needs. Make sure your website is included.

How do you do this? You should invest in Google Ads campaigns in order to reach the top positions in the Google search engine and to get more customers. Make sure your website is also optimised for SEO, which will bring you more organic traffic. This represents a smart strategy of promoting your business on the long term.

Optimise Your Website for Your Customer’s Smartphone

A woman's hand holding a phone and having her laptop nearby.

Do you own a smartphone? Chances are very high that you do. Well, your smartphone shows the mobile version of your website. So, keep in mind that the number of people who would rather access sites through a mobile device than a PC or laptop is growing by the day.

In the past year, 55.55% of users worldwide accessed the internet through a mobile device, compared to 41.61% through Desktop. What does this mean? Considering that in 2013 mobile usage was only at 22.18%, we are seeing an all-time peak, and looking at the data, this trend will continue.

Furthermore, most people will not recommend your business to their friends if you have a poorly designed mobile version of your website. This translates into less traffic to your website. You may also want to consider the fact that 70% of mobile searches on websites lead to action within 1 hour.

Reviews and ratings play a key role in whether a customer is pleased or displeased with the product. An experiment showed that a user’s expectations strongly reflect on usability ratings.

A different study shows that the initial impression can last a very long time, and regardless of how many later impressions contradict the first, they will never be as valuable as the first one.

Consumer’s expectations towards products and services are rising, with the introduction of innovative technologies such as responsive web design.

To summarise the theory for this technology, let’s put it like this: considering the large variety of devices with different screen shapes and sizes upon which websites are explored (smartphone and tablet), responsive web design adjusts to the pixel-width of the screen in use. This maintains the content and features necessary to ensure a user experience is equal to that of a desktop browser.

It is an upgrade to user-friendly experience websites, which enables all of the site’s features and prevents customers from zooming, squinting their eyes, and making them uncomfortable.

If you are at the beginning of building your website, take a look and reach out to experts who understand the statistics for small business websites.

Ensure a High Product Quality to Increase Sales

A black board having a triangle, and on which side there are different words written:

How important is product quality nowadays? With an invasion of low-quality products on the market, of which some seem to have success, you might be tempted to say the quality isn’t so important anymore.

That couldn’t be more wrong. If you want to boost sales in the short and long term, ensuring you deliver high-quality products is vital.

Here are 6 reasons product quality is important:

Creates trust with your customers
Ensures recommendations
Produces fewer customer complaints and returns
Customers consider aesthetics when making a purchase
Generates a higher return of investment
Allows for company growth.

If the above reasons have convinced you to adopt a high-quality approach towards your products, you’ll be eager to apply these tips and tricks to ensure it happens:

Choose and implement a quality management system
Create a strategy for your product
Take into consideration that you have competitors
Listen to what your customers need
Ensure that all products are tested.

Challenge Accepted?

Building your website can be quite challenging, and it can take big amounts of time that could be better used in further developing your product.

You have to deal with a lot of things, starting from moving your whole business into an online environment, setting up and customising your website correctly, and ending up with optimising it for different screens.

Keep in mind the importance of first impressions, as they can and will dictate how users will perceive future interactions with your website.

The great part is that you don’t have to do everything by yourself to increase sales, and nor should you. If this sounds a little challenging for you or if you just don’t have the time for it, reach out to a professional to handle building your website.