You Might Be Losing Thousands Of Dollars Because Of This Silly Mistake

I was just reading an article on ecommercetimes.com about giving customers a buying experience they can’t resist. And right before that I was looking at marketing campaigns of a few companies. I looked at their ads on search results pages, re-marketing ads and call-to-action (CTA) elements on their sites.

Although I found some of the copy very enticing, I noticed that a few of those companies made it rather difficult for me to actually buy their products. That pretty much slammed the brakes on my buying mood.

I’ve mentioned in previous articles the importance of linking directly to a product page from where you’ve promoted it. It could be from an on-site CTA, an offsite PPC ad, blog mention or a link from a comment, but it should always be linked directly to a product page if that particular product is being promoted.

The more hoops you try to make your potential customers jump through to make a purchase, the higher the likelihood of them not completing the whole process. That’s a good way to tank your conversion rate.

A typical short and sweet sales process should look like this:

Ad/CTA -> Product Page (Add to Cart) -> Checkout (with one-page checkout option)

But, this is what I’ve often come across:

Ad/CTA -> Main Page/Category Page (have to search for the product myself) – Add to Cart – Checkout (without one-page checkout option)

And a couple of times I came across this:

Ad/CTA -> YouTube Video Page/Blog Post -> Main Page/Category Page/Product Page – Add to Cart – Checkout

I would venture a guess that many customers would have given up if they landed on a main page or category page and discovered that they had to search for the product the wanted to buy. I know I did.

In summary, keep everything direct and to the point. Bear in mind that the main purpose of an ad is not to drive traffic to a site. It is to entice a viewer or visitor to buy a product. The shopping experience need not be memorable, since memorable is a bit hard to pull off in an online setting. It just has to me smooth, a non issue.

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