All website traffic isn’t created equally. Sometimes the data can tell us: hey people are showing up to my website (yay!) but I’m still not getting many inquiries, leads or ultimately sales, relative to how much traffic is coming to my site. The eyeballs are there because we built the thing and the people have come, but it’s not turning into $$ for your biz.
The knee jerk reaction of most business owners to this (in my experience as a marketer and now coach) is to first throw in the towel, say the funnel isn’t working, burn it down and start all over. Because that’s the easiest option right? Ha! You know I’m joking.
So before we do anything drastic, let’s look at what your traffic is actually telling you.
I’m going to walk you through three of the most common scenarios of why your traffic isn’t turning into sales. And yes, I see this across service-based and ecommerce businesses that are trying to sell their products and services online.
1. Your ads are built for clicks, not leads
One of the most common bad traffic situations I see is when a business owner starts to dabble in Meta Ads and they get the ads “working” but no one is taking the next step in their funnel.
Let me paint the picture – let’s say it’s you – you get the right ad creative, you’ve built the landing page, you’ve nailed the messaging, your funnel is TIGHT… or so it seems. You switch those bad boys on (the ads) and let them run for a few days but you’re not getting any results. Your goals might be email sign ups, sales call bookings, or add to carts on your physical or digital products.
The thing is, your click-through rate on your ads is bangin (let’s say over 2%) but that traffic that’s clicking – isn’t sticking around on your site or taking the next steps that you mapped out in your beautiful funnel. What gives?
A good click-through rate tells you people like clicking your ad. It doesn’t tell you whether they were ever going to buy from you.
If we take a closer look at your Meta Ads campaign: 9 times out of 10, your campaign is optimised for ‘traffic’ when your campaign actually needs to be optimised for ‘leads’ or ‘sales.’
When you tell Meta or any ad platform that you just want “clicks” – they’re going to get you “just” clicks. They’re not looking for people with high intent who actually take action – they’re just looking for people with “clicky” behaviour. These platforms have a lot of data on us and it can differentiate between someone who likes to click ads vs someone who actually fills out a form or completes a checkout.
On top of that, if you don’t have your ad tracking set up correctly, you could be sending “bad” information back to Meta. Ads operate on a feedback loop between the ad platform and your website. Your website can only give Meta the right data if it’s set up correctly with your Pixel and event tracking.
So yes, setting that up might give you a headache but it’s going to save and likely make you a lot of money in the long run by setting it up correctly.
So make sure your ad tracking is set up correctly and your campaign objective is actually in line with your funnel goal (aka leads or sales), so the platform sends you the right kind of traffic.
2. You’re skipping the middle step
Okay, it’s understandable that we want to send people who have never heard of us before to our website and get them to buy instantly or book a sales call – that’s the dream. What tends to happen is a bit different. A typical conversion rate from cold ad traffic sits around 1-3%.
You could go “okay, that’s the benchmark” and then just aim for that. But what I’m more interested in is what happens to the other 97-99% of people landing on your website. You see, if you’re spending money and putting effort and energy into getting traffic to your website, I (your marketing mad scientist bestie) want to see you reaping the rewards of that money, effort and energy well into the future.
I don’t want you to “pay to play”, get people to your site, then have 97% of them disappear never to be heard from again.
What I want you to do is be able to reach out to all those people – you know those people who you spent a lot of money on to get to your site. Because most marketers and business owners know our people need A LOT of touchpoints and reminders with us and our brand before they’re ready to buy. One, because humans get distracted a lot in this day and age and two, because trust is the currency we’re trading in now in this day of AI-everything.
So there are two things you can do to make sure you’re not wasting your ad spend on a 1-3% dice roll to get some sales. (I might do another blog post diving deeper into these topics below and come back and link it for you, stay tuned, my friend)
One, you can offer a quick win for your audience in exchange for their contact details. That quick win could be a lead magnet, a training, a video sales letter (VSL), a questionnaire, or a discount. You want to be collecting email addresses and/or phone numbers, so you can reach back out to your lead and move them further down the trust funnel and closer to a purchase. (More on lead generation here: Meet Leadie)
Your second option, (and I would do this on top of option one) is to run retargeting ads to your warm audience. You can retarget people with meta and other platforms’ ads after collecting their behavioral data. So for example, if someone has interacted with you on Instagram, signed up to your email list, or visited your website (or a specific landing page) in the last 30 days, you can retarget those people with ads and remind them about your offer. When done right, retargeting ads can have a higher conversion rate because you’re reaching a warm audience who already knows, likes and trusts you and often just needs that extra nudge to make a purchase.
Both of these strategies can help you get more bang for your buck when it comes to turning that traffic tap on and converting it to sales.
3. The website doesn’t point anywhere
I’m going to try to land this last one for you with a metaphor. Let’s say you head to an op shop and you walk through the front door and suddenly feel very overwhelmed. Not only is there stuff everywhere, but there are literally signs pointing you in 3 different directions to “buy this” or “checkout” here but the signs are old and you get to where they pointed only to find it’s not what the sign promised. You don’t know where to find the thing you came for and on top of that you don’t know how to find the bloody checkout to purchase it. So you give up, and go home empty handed feeling frustrated.
For you, this op shop could actually be your website. The user-experience of your website could actually be confusing your audience, pointing them to dead ends, and lack a clear path from discovery, to investigation, to purchase.
Too many buttons, offers and navigation links competing for attention, and your visitor’s not going to stop and work out which one matters – they’ll just leave.
You’ll know your website is doing this if you have a good amount of traffic hitting your website, but they may only visit one page before leaving – leaving you with a high bounce rate. This means someone landed on your site, had a quick squiz around, then decided they weren’t intrigued enough to keep moving around your site or were too confused and gave up because they couldn’t find how to take the next step.
The best way to fix this is to look at your site like a potential customer or client would:
- Where do you enter your site (are you getting traffic mostly to a specific page)?
- From there, where does that page point you to take the next steps?
- Are there several next steps offered, none or one clear path to keep moving?
If you feel confused, your audience is likely feeling even more confused. I like to move through each step of a funnel or website and think “okay, what is the ONE thing I want my audience to do next from here?” and then make sure that’s super clear, obvious and the only option for them. (More on customer journeys here: The 3 Customer Journey Types Every Profitable Business Needs)
Even if your website metrics are looking okay but you know they could be amazing, I encourage you to do this exercise of moving through your site like a new lead to see where you get confused.
I listed these conversion fixes for you in a specific order for a reason. It’s worth working through them in that order because there’s no point polishing your website’s user experience if your ads are still optimised for clicks instead of leads.
Remember: we can tweak forever but I’d rather you get comfy with your analytics and website data. Learning how to diagnose issues from what the numbers tell you will serve you a lot longer than any single tweak. Getting traffic and eyeballs and fresh visitors to your site is an exciting first step to driving more sales to your business, but as we’ve learned, not all traffic is good traffic. And I wish for you my friend, very good traffic and very good sales.
