You can’t increase the revenue of your webshop? Here are the possible reasons.
Whether you are launching a new webshop or increasing the revenue of your existing webshop, there are critical conditions that must be met in order for your online ads to be able to achieve their goals and generate as much revenue as possible for you (and, of course, remember that not only to increase webshop revenue, but also to achieve adequate return).
In this blog post, we’ll show you what could be the reason why your ppc ads aren’t able to effectively increase your webshop revenue. If you can improve on these, you can also increase your webshop revenue!
What are the basic conditions for a webshop to advertise online?
Below are the basic conditions that every webshop must meet in order for online advertisements to be able to make purchases at all and not just get “worthless” webshop visits through them without any purchase transactions, i.e. actual revenue.
Webshop usability – easy usage
It is extremely important that the checkout process in your webshop is easy to go through, without major bottlenecks and significant difficulties. There should be a clearly visible add to cart and cart button on the product page and the start of payment should be easily accessible, no need to search.
In 2022, it is also key to offer your customers multiple payment (cash on delivery, online payment, bank transfer) and delivery methods (post office, parcel point, store pick-up, home delivery). Online credit card payment is key! There are still many webshops that offer only bank transfers, which most shoppers don’t want to mess with and prefer to shop in another webshop instead. Some buyers opt for a cheaper but less convenient mode of delivery, while others opt for more expensive but more convenient home delivery.
The delivery time and delivery cost information must be clearly indicated in your webshop! Not only should customers be able to see this when they start the checkout process, as both factors can be a serious barrier to placing an order in your webshop in the end. Not to mention that you don’t list a product in stock that you actually only order from the supplier after the customer orders it and it arrives at you in 2-3 weeks and then ships it to the customer after that. Anyone who wants to receive the product within a few days will not wait for this.
Requirements for the appearance of the webshop
The appearance of your webshop should be organized, e.g. the individual elements, which should be in a row, should not slip apart, the products displayed in the grid arrangement should also be neatly arranged!
The page load time of your webshop must be fast (up to 2 seconds), because after 3 seconds, the expected e-commerce conversion rate of your webshop is halved. The table below shows how critical this is.
Page load time (sec) | Expected ecommerce conversion rate | For every 100 visitors how many will become customers |
2 sec | 3% | 3 |
3 sec | 1,5% | 1,5 |
4 sec | 0,75% | 0,75 |
5 sec | 0,375% | 0,375 |
6 sec | 0,1875% | 0,19 |
7 sec | 0,09375% | 0,094 |
On the product category page, use appropriate filters that work properly, display products properly, do not slip / stack products at any screen size!
Use the appropriate CTA elements on the website (e.g. add to cart, start payment, remove from cart) in a clearly visible and usable form! Use CTA elements of the right size on your mobile device, which webshop visitors can easily press with their fingers on the small mobile screen!
The display of your webshop should be responsive, i.e. the display of items should work properly for any screen size.
Give enough information to your webshop customers!
Use good quality product images on your product pages and show a product from several angles! Remember that e.g. in case of a dress or shoe, you have to provide the virtual viewing function in your webshop! You can even use 3D rotation (such as ecipo.hu) if this is technically feasible.
Give your potential customers enough information in the webshop to make a purchase decision!
Your product descriptions should be information-rich, relevant, and complete. Think about what questions potential customers may have about a given product (e.g., material, warranty, place of origin, size)! For complex products that need to be explained, create a FAQ section, an educational blog article, or a decision guide with the most common questions and answers.
Build trust and be transparent, and provide product evaluation opportunities for your customers!
Use confidence-building elements in your webshop, such as a “trusted store”, superbrands, any user-friendly webshop recognition, a professional award or any other element that proves the outstanding quality of service and customer service.
Meet the basic technical requirements of your webshop!
The buttons and the individual webshop functions should work flawlessly and correctly! Perform regular and thorough testing to ensure that there are no new technical issues with your webshop. Perform a full test when updating a webshop engine or making other major webshop changes!
Keep checking your internal links to make sure no links point to a broken page. For broken or deleted links, always set a 301 redirect.
If you are advertising a webshop promotion that requires customers to enter a coupon code at the cart, make sure the coupon code is working properly and the appropriate discount will be deducted in the cart.
A lesser known but common problem is that some products cannot be deleted from the cart. Make sure this feature is available!
Does your webshop have the right measurements to track results and make decisions?
Before launching any online advertisement on your webshop, you must ensure that the results of future advertisements can be accurately measured and the results of online channels can be tracked. Without proper measurement data, you cannot make an informed decision and thus cannot set up an appropriate strategy fory our online marketing activities.
When publishing your webshop, you must have professionally set up Google Analytics 3 and Google Analytics 4 measurements, including enhanced e-commerce measurements. However, don’t make the mistake of measuring only purchase transactions, it’s important to measure all webshop interactions that matter. Don’t forget to collect segmented audience lists either!
Have a Google Search Console account and keep track of any error messages, URL’s that need to be fixed, and usability issues.
If you run Google Shopping ads, have proper Google Ads-tagged conversion measurements and dynamic remarketing settings! Let’s set up your Google Merchant Center account with the utmost care and keep optimizing your product feed! If you advertise on Facebook, you should set up the same elements.
Let’s use a tool that allows you to detect problems with the use of your webshop, that allows you to optimize the user interface of your webshop (e.g. Hotjar, Google Optimize), be it the main page, the product search results page or the product page! Let’s test and optimize your webshop based on the results!
What could be the reason if your webshop traffic can’t grow?
Failure to comply with the basic requirements for any webshop presented above will fundamentally preclude the generation of substantial customer traffic for any webshop, regardless of the online advertising channel. The ineffectiveness will be true for all traffic channels, be it visitors from organic searches, visitors from online ads, or direct visitors.
If the webshop is not in the best possible condition – in terms of usability, conversion path and user interface – and e-commerce data is not properly measured, these shortcomings significantly hamper growth opportunities.
Increasing webshop traffic can also be hindered by online advertising campaigns that are not tailored to the specifics of the particular webshop – e.g. outdated campaign types and bidding strategies, as well as the use of inappropriate campaign goals, optimization for the wrong purpose, very common e.g. use ppc campaign goals that don’t fit your business goals (e.g. they want to increase webshop traffic, but ppc campaigns are optimized to spend at least 30 seconds in the webshop).
The barrier to increasing webshop traffic in many cases is that the webshop owner bases his growth strategy solely on ppc ads. Only ppc ads can reach a certain level of traffic, but without other promotional activity, you can quickly reach a plateau beyond which you can no longer grow. The real engine of growth is the combined use of the right online and offline marketing tools, as well as the combined use of several mutually supportive key elements within the online marketing channel (ppc advertising, search engine optimization, content marketing, social media marketing, etc.).
The lack of a true unique USP can be also a barrier to webshop growth. Can we explain to ourselves why someone should buy from us and not from another webshop? Our webshop can’t grow if we just make a thousandth of a phone shop online, but we can’t differentiate ourselves from the other 999s who offer exactly the same products as us.
Many times the growth of a particular webshop is limited by problems such as:
- We want to increase the number of orders, but we are unable to serve an increased number of orders. Then we will obviously lose customers because they will not receive the ordered product on time, which will cause the order to be canceled and will also cause the webshop a bad reputation.
- “As long as there’s no revenue, we can’t increase advertising costs, but we can’t increase costs until there’s no revenue” – this is a vicious circle with no solution! To start a webshop, you first need to invest, from which we will later generate revenue. Unfortunately, this is how it works!
- We want to increase revenue, but we no longer have a sufficient stock of goods to serve the increased supply, we do not have enough stock of the products we are looking for. In this case, we can’t serve the increased supply with ads, so more visitors will leave without making a purchase, even though we’ve generated more demand, we can’t realize it as more revenue.
- Our product range does not match the real demand and, in the case of seasonal products, the seasonal demand of the given period. We have a large stock of products for which there is no demand, we do not have a good stock of popular products for which there is a higher demand.
- There is no solvent demand for our product. This occurs more times than we think! Especially in the case of innovative, new products, there may be no solvent demand for the product. The focus is on being solvent, it can be any super product if people are unwilling to pay the purchase price for that product even though there is interest in the product.
- Our customer service is inadequate. If we can’t retain the customers that have already purchased from us (because they’re frustrated with the product, delivery time, customer service, loyalty program, etc.) and constantly have to gain new customers, it won’t allow for long-term growth. The engine of growth is to retain the customers you have already acquired and to get more.
- We do not use the so-called. cross-sell and upsell sales tactics, e.g.
- Recommend product in other product categories (cross-sell)
- Personalized product recommendation based on the product the visitors are viewing (cross-sell, upsell)
- Recommend accessories for a product in a cart, e.g. phone insurance, protective case, protective film (upsell)
- Offering free delivery over a certain purchase value
- Pay for two get three promotion (upsell)
- Seasonal promotions (end of season sale, coupon days, etc.)
- Providing package offers, e.g. mothers day gift box (upsell)
- We do not use a marketing automation system.
In conclusion
The limiting factors presented above are especially important when increasing webshop revenue.
Let’s not forget, however, that not only increasing revenue but also increasing return on investment is a critical factor in a webshop! A common barrier to improving ROI is a too low margin and sub-optimal cost structure for webshop sales. If we do not have a sufficient margin, the return on our webshop cannot generally be effectively increased (because the amount we can make a purchase from ppc ads is expected to be higher than the profit we make on that purchase).
When starting a new webshop, pay attention to the existence of critical conditions (webshop-side conditions) and be aware that starting a new webshop requires a significant investment that will only pay off in the future. There is no growth without investment!