Why is my ecommerce site converting at less than 1% ?

[van24]

Hi everyone

Here's an ecommerce site that I'm working on - www.candidastore.com. It's an ecommerce store specializing in supplements for women's health.

Currently the conversion rate (sales divided by visitors) is under 1%. Its about 0.75% to be exact, and I don't know why this is. From what I have been told, a conversion rate of 2-3% is reasonable, especially when you are getting lots of very targetted traffic like this site.

I'm particularly confused because:
1. The pricing is reasonable
2. There are lots of good product descriptions
3. Site speed is good
4. The checkout process is the standard Magento one-page checkout, which I like
5. The traffic coming to the site is VERY targetted

I would love to hear some thoughts as to how I can improve the conversion rate.

Many thanks!
Van

[greger]

Hi Van, Thank you for posting your question:
I'll reply one by one:
1. I do not know anything about candida, except that it's a fungus, so I cannot say whether not I agree to your pricing.
2. Yes, you have tons of great product descriptions. I've read through many of them and they give me some good info. Still this is where the main problem lies.
You're selling what I would categorize as health-supplement products. This is an area where great profits can be made, but where many also fall short.
The problem with this area is that in many cases the "real effect" of the products cannot or hasn't been proved yet. People see the product and wonder wheter not it will have an effect. When I checked out your Caprylic Acid 600 mg capsules I was met by a neat and informative description. However, there's something missing. You need that extra sales-pitch. For example, research has proven that patients treated with caprylic Acid experienced a decline in symptoms of 60% etc.. do you have any research to back up such claims? Make it clear to the customer that this is what will solve their problems. "You need this product because it will get rid of you symptoms guaranteed! If you're not happy we'll refund you the money!" "100% satisfaction guaranteed". I'm sure you understand what I mean. And yes, you will have some freebies ordering and then *****ing about the product not working, but overall could such marketing techniques leverage your sales substantially. I'm no expert, but this is my honest idea.
3. Yes, site speed is great. Good work!
4. Include a symbol for visa/mc, or at least make it clear to your customer what types of payments you accept from them. besides that your checkout process is flawless.
5. Could you elaborate on this point? Where do they come from? google? Are you actually targeting people who are looking for remedies against candida, or those seeking basic information about it? That makes a big difference so I hope you can clarify.

Regards,
Greger

[bbparis]

Your website looks great, but maybe you have to make some ads for your website ? or to use adsense ? did you try that before ?

[van24]

Thanks Greger I appreciate the tips! I like your idea of doing a bit more selling in the product descriptions

[greger]

Thanks Greger I appreciate the tips! I like your idea of doing a bit more selling in the product descriptions

I'm happy to help. Another good idea would be to include user-feedback. List short but catchy reviews left by former customers i.e. "great products!", "thanks for such a wonderful product" etc next to your product descriptions(integrate this with guaranteed user satisfaction, although be careful not to overdo it). This might sound dishonest but perhaps you should make up some user-reviews? A large amount of sites are posting "fake" user-feedback to promote their products. It's unethical, but for a small businesses trying to grope with its competitors it might be just the one that can give it a jump-start.
Good-luck!

[LillyLi]

I just went through the checkout.

You'd charge me almost 10USD for shipping more over, I can only pay via credit card.
I find the shipping too expensive and would like to use PayPal for instance.

About your conversion rate - since you are in a niche there, I'd say you simply have too much traffic on your website that isn't looking for what you are selling.
You wrote:
5. The traffic coming to the site is VERY targetted
How is it targeted?
Is the targeting correct?
If so - ask your customers why they don't buy.
Offer something for everybody on your website who writes you an email why they don't buy even though they searched for Candida.
Maybe there is a competitor with faster/cheaper shipping or similar.

The website looks great.
One thing though:
"You May Also Like" is empty:
http://www.candidastore.com/healthy-...iotic-150.html
Maybe you can avoid displaying it or associate some products there.

[jeffvdovjak]

Do you know how many people are abandoning carts? That's usually a big cause.

The site looks beautiful! And it loads fast. I would trust your site to make purchases (if I was interested in the product).

Some suggestions I have, based on my own experiences here and elsewhere:

1) When I click through to the shopping cart, I start to wonder if it's worth it. There's a lot of fields, and pages to go through. When I select to go through as a guest, I'm hit with 6 pages, the first one up being a long one! I selected Guest because I didn't want to go through the hassle of filling out tons of forms! I just want to give you my credit card and shipping information --- but this looks really time consuming!

2) FAQ - as an out of country buyer (not USA, I'm in Canada), I always look for the fastest way to figure out if it's even worth my time. I hate going through form after form, to find out my $5 purchase will cost $25 to ship (happens more often than you think --- happened today in fact). I know you've got it in your shopping cart, which is good. But maybe in an FAQ too.

3) No products stand out immediately to grab my attention. Perhaps featuring a product, or better yet a result. "Want this? Take that! - Find out why it works". Make me feel smarter and I'm likely to buy (maybe why infomercials still work). And you can grab my attention... do something unexpected or controversial, eg, "Why ____ isn't good for you!"


Hope this helps you!

[972kravmaga]

the website looks really great, informative and with good colors.
i'm not sure exacly why is your conversion rate its so low, but would like to inform you about a problem i notice on your home page, the item boxes seems to be break down, look at the next screenshot:
review.jpg

other than this problem, your website and its pages loads really quick. nice work.