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Over the past few months, you’ve probably noticed that your business is just not as profitable as it was earlier this year. Your income has dropped considerably since May when I wrote an article titled “Why are my sales so slow? Tips to boost productivity.”
In that article, I discussed some of the reasons why sales can get stuck and how to improve the efficiency of your sales process.
You may have also heard from other sources (such as friends or colleagues) that their revenue has dried up and they cannot figure out what to do about it.
It's normal for there to be a lag between making purchases and receiving confirmation that your product or service helped someone else achieve their goal, which creates a gap in revenue.
This drop in profitability can make you feel anxious and overwhelmed. You might even start thinking about giving up because you don't know what to do next. It's human nature to run away from problems, but ignoring them will only make them worse.
Instead of running away, try doing something to solve the problem. This could mean reevaluating your marketing strategy, changing your offering, finding new ways to market yourself, or any number of things.
Avoid comparing yourself to others- instead compare last month to the same time last year. See whether there are any patterns.
Even though you’re spending all this time developing your site, engaging with social media, responding to comments and messages, and running promotional campaigns, if people can’t find it, then they won’t know about you or your product!
Running a successful online business takes investment – in terms of money and energy.
But not investing anything more than you are already is a way to lose your shirt (and beyond). You need to invest in your business, otherwise it will fail.
You must put in effort into promoting your business by staying active on social media, creating good content for your site and marketing via other channels, etc.
It’s easy to start investing when your business is doing well, but what about during times when it’s struggling?
When your business is experiencing a lull, it’s important to keep up the momentum that made it succeed in the first place by investing just as much time in promoting it.
This will give it a boost back to its original success, and help it recover from whatever caused the drop-off in revenue.
A lack of consistency is one of the biggest reasons why your business drops off revenue, as well as growth. If you are not advertising consistently, then people will begin to tune out and ignore your brand.
There can be many different reasons for this. You may be doing things that are no longer effective or efficient, or there could be something else replacing them.
It’s important to keep looking into what is working for your business and drop concepts that aren’t. Don’t get too attached to those things, though – use the money you saved to invest more effectively!
You would probably agree that investing in new equipment or software is very expensive. Luckily, these things are easily accessible now, so don’t feel like you need to spend big money to stay competitive.
Many tools free to use are similar to ones that cost money, and they’re both okay. It just depends on how much money you have available at any given time.
Sometimes, just like with your house, you need to drop in high traffic days to see how well your home business is going. You will not know what kind of sales will happen unless you expose your business to as many people as possible!
That’s why it can be so tough when winter comes around. The holidays are typically a busy time for most online businesses, but this year, some people fall into a pattern that doesn’t work as well.
This includes staying off of social media sites during the season because people don’t visit them as often or at the same frequency.
And even if they do, there’s no way to tell whether someone who visits once a week is actually buying something or simply browsing.
So, while the winter weather may make it harder to get through the day, rest assured that your income has probably dropped alongside it.
A growing number of sites have the very common problem that even though they’re running an online store, they don’t get enough money to buy anything!
This is often because they drop off the site before making a purchase or buying something else first. It can also be due to slow loading times which make people leave the site, or due to too many interruptions (such as advertisements) while shopping.
These costs add up for you, the business owner!
It is important to understand this loss of revenue so that you can try to prevent it by improving your website’s performance budget-wise.
But what are these losses? And how do we reduce them?
We will look at three main factors below – why most websites lose money and ways to decrease their impact on your business.
1. Loading time
A lot of things can cause people to abandon their cart when they visit your site but one of the biggest reasons is poor page load time.
When a person visits your site for the first time, they want to know if your site is fast and easy to use. They may go somewhere else if it isn’t.
Many web browsers now offer ‘speed tests’ where users can check the speed of different sites. By doing this, they can find out whether there is a reason your site takes longer than other sites to open or not.
Even though you’re not doing anything to promote your business, YourSiteWelcomesYou is still keeping you from earning revenue!
It seems crazy but it’s true – when someone visits Your Site Welcome You (YSWAY) they are creating an impression of your company and your services.
This can have negative effects if you don’t keep up with it.
Research shows that nearly one third of all mobile users will abandon a shopping cart because there was no way to checkout on their device.[1]
In fact, one in five smartphone users will delete a transaction just due to poor navigation or lack of features. [2]
By having easy access to review sites like Google and Facebook, your customers will be able to look up your products and services before buying from you.
But what if they find something bad? They could easily write down poor experiences and leave your website forever.
Fortunately for us as bloggers, we can prevent some of this drop off by adding links to our websites via YSWAY.
Why does dropping income matter to you? Because it takes time money energy to run a successful business.
Without enough investment, your business may not survive longer than its lifespan. This is especially true for more expensive businesses like professional grade photography or web design.
Luckily, we can avoid these drops in income by working smartly to increase link exposure.
It’s hard to underestimate how frustrating it can be when you work really hard to organize a drop-off event, coordinate with vendors, secure donations, and everything else, and your event is a total flop.
It happens to the best of us — we launch a new product or service and then nothing happens. People don’t show up, or they show up but there aren’t enough for everyone, or what people did attend doesn’t look or feel like our event.
Or maybe they just didn’t feel like going? I’ve heard all three stories at least once.
Either way, you spent time and money hosting an event that got cancelled before anyone could come, or spend hours preparing for attendees and then cleaning up after their departure.
Impacted by this loss directly (of income), indirectly (loss of word of mouth and exposure) and even tactically (you wasted resources and energy setting up for the event and then tearing it down), you lose out on revenue.
Recent studies show that around one-third of web users actively look for something to purchase online, and half of those check out at least two sites before buying from a seller. The other half visit only one site before deciding where to spend their money!
It is very important that you keep your website up-to-date and fully functional at all times so that when this person does find the need to make a purchase, they are drawn to your site because it functions normally.
This will hurt your revenue during these visits if not addressed soon!
Many website owners fail to update their websites due to cost or lack of knowledge about how to do it properly. There are many free ways to test your website’s performance, but none offer as detailed information as Google’s tool do.
But then they stop coming!
What happens is you create an online store, people come to your website to check it out, see what products and/or services you have, and then they leave without making a purchase.
This is very frustrating for you as a business owner and seller of goods because you want to make a sale but you have to convince these potential customers to buy something from you instead of another source.
It can also be scary for you as a seller if there’s no one walking through your door — you need sales to keep paying the bills.
A lot of times, experts say that when this happens it’s due to three main reasons:
The feature “failure”
When a customer clicks around on your website looking at things and buying nothing, it can feel like a failure on your part. You worked hard to build the site, invest in advertising, promote the site, and still nobody wanted to spend money with you?
That’s totally normal and it doesn’t mean you’re not offering good quality service or anything, but it can be difficult to deal with.
You may feel embarrassed, discouraged, or even angry. It may hurt your self-esteem or cause stress and anxiety.
