It takes a lot of effort to get targeted and qualified traffic to your offers. That’s why it’s vital to make sure that you’re doing everything within your power to avoid losing these potential sales and customers right when you ought to be closing the deal.

It really is all about conversion, and anyone who tells you different doesn’t understand the fundamental principle of business or has more traffic than they know what to do with. Converting a customer from prospect to satisfied and hopefully long-term buyer is what we’re all after, and the last thing we want to do is shoot ourselves in the foot with silly mistakes that can be avoided entirely and which suck the profits right out of your shopping cart.

Conversion Mistake #1: Bad or Non-Existent Reviews

A spate of poor reviews will most certainly keep some from buying, as will the lack of any reviews altogether. People need to trust that your products and services will do what they say they will, and that you stand behind them with awesome and helpful customer service should the need arise. Always be professional and provide an exceptional service. One way to actively combat negative or no reviews is by soliciting reviews from satisfied customers.

Conversion Mistake #2: Poor Calls to Action

Make sure you are optimizing your calls to action for effectiveness. This means testing everything from button colors to text size, and every thing in-between. This is an ongoing process, tweaking and adjusting your pages so they can achieve optimal conversions. A slight change can make a huge difference in either direction, so regularly test, test and test some more.

For tips on creating a powerful call to action see my article here:

Creating a Powerful Call to Action

Conversion Mistake #3 – Site Security

It’s one thing to develop trust between you and your customers, and it entirely another to have them trust your checkout process. With identity theft stories running rampant every day, customers are concerned about where and how they give up their personal information, especially their credit cards. Make it as easy as you can for them by employing such tools as VeriSign or Truste, or any number of other online security badges and companies.

Conversion Mistake #4: An Onerous Checkout Process

One very glaring aspect of shopping cart abandonment issues is that merchants tend to make the checkout process way too long. This is of course an effort to gather information for future marketing, but it may have a more immediate, negative effect. Don’t require so much data from your customer that they click out and head over to your competitors! Likewise, DO offer several payment options, and implement a guest checkout, so that a first-time buyer isn’t forced to become a “member” in order to buy something for the first time.

Conversion Mistake #5: Lousy Imagery, Product Descriptions and High Prices

If you go to all the trouble to get the customer to a page where they can buy your item, and then stick them with poor pictures, scant descriptions and high prices, you’ll end up with no sales! Use high-quality images, and show the products in all their glory, from several angles. Give a lot of information in your product descriptions, especially dimensions, colors, composition or ingredients (if applicable). This imparts trust and helps them cement their decision to buy from you! Lastly, make sure you are charging a fair price, as nothing will make someone leave faster than an unreasonably high price!

Conversion Mistake #6: No Mobile Options

The whole Web is going mobile, and shortly most transactions will be emanating from a mobile device. Make sure your site is optimized for mobile, and not simply the look of the site, but the transactional part as well.

There’s been intense growth in the number of smartphones over the past year. According to Meeker, there are more than 5 billion mobile phone subscribers in the world, and smartphone adoption still has a lot of growth ahead. “Mobile usage continues to grow, making up about 15 percent of all Internet traffic”. For my own site, over 22 percent of all traffic is from a mobile phone so my figures are much higher than the statistics in the study. So, always make sure your site is optimized or you could be losing sales!

Conversion Mistake #7: No Visible Support

While many think this is a luxury, a recent study by Oracle indicates that some 57% of consumers believe that customer service is one of the most important facets of a website. Using live chat during business hours is worth considering, especially if you’re selling something that generates a lot of questions.

You worked very hard to get these targeted visitors, so let’s not ruin the day by fouling up the conversion process!

Are you having problems with your online sales conversion? If so, check through these points, implement the tips and you might be pleasantly surprised as you see an increase in your sales conversion.