666 Hits, 50% CTR, 0 Sales
One of my sites got 666 unique visits last month and from that site there were 389 clicks through to the merchant (amazon). Those 389 clicks were split over five products that are featured on the site.
So far so good but the bad news it no one bought anything. The items all appear to be in stock. The prices aren’t listed on my website so maybe the users weren’t aware of the cost of the items and decided not to buy once they reached the merchant.
Whatever the reason I find these figures pretty bad. Even if the item the user clicked through to wasn’t to their taste I would have expected at least some of them to have a look around amazon and find an item more suited to their needs.
The item is something I would expect to sell well online as you don’t need to see it in the flesh to buy it as you probably wouldn’t get to do that in the shops as it would stay in its box. Plus it is quite big so I would’ve guessed users would’ve rather have it delivered than go and buy it from the shop and try and get it home themselves.
Has anyone seen anything like this? Got any tips on how I can turn it around to make a few sales?
Move away from Amazon, you only get 24 hours for the customer to make a purchase for you to get a sale.
Move to a merchant selling the same item but with a proper cookie life, I made a sale last week from a 4mnth old cookie!
Perhaps. I’ve always found amazon to convert better than anyone else but in this case that is obviously not happening. I will have a look at other merchants. Cheers.
Reveal the site?
If not… look at the keywords people were coming in on, how well do they match the products?
666 ? Maybe its a sign? sorry had to laugh
Did the people find your site by searching for this product?
I have always had zero success with Amazon. Many of my sales take a week from click to conversion. And every so often I get sales from ancient cookies. Well worth switching to another network.
Easycontentunits is a great way of finding who else sells the products.
Yeah I did think the 666 could be a sign! Yeah, most people arrived at the site after searching for the generic keyword term the site is based on.
I’ve now stuck an ECU on the site with a larger selection of items from different merchatns at the top of the home page. Hopefully people who arrive at the site will see this straight away and click off to the merchants.
Have people had much luck with this kind of approach – an ECU displaying prodcuts as the first thing people see when they hit the site? I have this on a few of my sites but not sure if it is effective or not?
Can you also share on how have you managed to get these figures? Are you using the ECU stats or an inhouse counter to get these details.
Best I would suggest is to change your links for a week to another merchant who offers a decent cookie period for the comparison between the merchants performance.
Personally I do not like ECU (slows down page load as slow to load / 100% script so to Gbot show as no content / bad design). I would learn a bit of php, its quite easy and display the products yourself.
If that is not an option and ECU is for you then yes do put them on the first page people land on. At the end of the day you dont visitors to spend time crawling your site looking for products, you want them on and off to a merchant as soon as possible then spending more time buying on the merchants site.
Look at the visitors journey..
Where do they enter – on what term?
Where do they go and for how long?
Where do they bounce?
Where do they click? (use a heat map tool like CrazyEgg to visualise your visitors)
Ask your visitors questions like what do they want or what do they think(use a tool like kampyle)
That is very strange – i usually find that Amazon converts very well.
To me it looks like it can only be down to one of two issues – broken tracking or uncompetitive pricing from Amazon. Amazon’s tracking is usually very reliable so perhaps there are other merchants which are offering the product significantly cheaper?
I know what you mean henry, ECU does seem very slow. I am worried it scares people off before it gets a chance to load.
Nearly every comes to the site by searching for the exact term the site is promoting.
Must be that the items are too expensive at Amazon.
Since putting the ECU on the top of the page I have had 26 clicks through to six merchants that are not Amazon – none of which has resulted in a sale.
Although this month I have had so far 71 clicks through to Amazon and two sales bringing in £14 which is pretty good.
Congrats on your two sales, that’s £7 each. Isn’t that the max. commission from Amazon though? If the product sells for more than £140 then you may get more elsewhere, though of course it depends on the % being offered. I have to say that Amazon’s basic 5% is not bad for lower priced items.
Amazon aren’t always the cheapest, and if it’s a 3rd party seller don’t forget to take the delivery charge into account.
Thanks Ray. Yes both sales were capped at £7. The site has since been knocked back to page two in Google so not getting any hits any more.
I like your site, looks very professional. Is it using any feeds? Have we done a link swap? I have a couple of related sites if you are interested.
Page 2 is not necessarily “the wilderness” in my experience but I guess it depends on the product. Make sure your title and desc tags really stand out.
I’m updating my own xml feed by hand at the moment to ensure good product info/page speed. Might automate prices later but keep my own product info.
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