7 Solutions to Stop Losing Online Sales

If you're wondering why you're not converting more online visitors into customers, you have to ask yourself the following questions: Are your products easy to find on search engines? Is your content informative and concise? Are you tracking your website metrics to measure the effects of your advertising and site design? If the answer to any or all of these questions is no, then there's no doubt that you're missing out on sales that could be yours. Stop losing customers with these seven tips:

1. Your products + search engines = sales. Are consumers searching online for what you sell finding your competitors’ products instead? If your products aren't returned as search results either naturally through feeds or via paid advertising, then your store might as well be invisible.

Get your products on search engines; most consumers find your site by searching for your products and services using online search engines. Submit your product catalog to comparison shopping sites by using shopping feeds. Increase your natural search results and relevance by optimizing your site for search engines.Consider a paid search engine marketing campaign.

2. Bounce back. As web analytics author Avinash Kaushik says when consumers visit sites with high bounce rates, "They came, they puked, they left."

The average bounce rate for an e-commerce site is around 50 percent. If your site's rate is higher, all the time and money you spent to bring shoppers in via search engines was for naught. Your website must have a beautiful, functional design and be full of useful, targeted content. Is your site functional in all browsers? Does it load fast or does it make visitors wait for a "cool" splash page that nobody but your web designer cares about? Think about how consumers arrive on your site and make sure that if they clicked through to see a specific product they land there and not on your homepage. Stop frustrating consumers and get your bounce rate under control.

3. Keep on track. You're not tracking your website analytics. Maybe you don't even know what your bounce rate is. You change your website but have no idea if these changes are making any difference. Did updating your content increase traffic? Which search engine provides you the most visitors? It's impossible to know this information without tracking your metrics.

You're in luck, this is an easy fix. Install an analytics package and start monitoring these aspects of your business. Measure the effectiveness of your site design and advertising by tracking how changes to your site affect traffic. Use A/B and multivariant testing when you make changes to determine what's working and what's not. Test colors, words, button placement … you never know what can make a big difference. Just remember, it's not the data, but what you do with the data that matters, so don't stop at getting an analytics tool, use it.

4. Make content king. Your site's content doesn't get the sale. All that search engine optimization work and beating down your bounce rate just gets consumers in the door. Once they're there, can your content do the heavy lifting required to close the deal? Or does it fall short, leading to lost sales?

Words sell, so create content that drives conversions. Ensure that when visitors looking for a certain product arrive at your site, they say: "This is the one I've been searching for!" Accomplish this through the use of words, photos and videos that inspire confidence. See your site as consumers do and place your most convincing copy and calls to action in prominent places they can't possibly miss. Never forget that visitors don't read websites, they scan them. Use fonts and layouts that are easy to read and design with location, bolding, italics and color to get shoppers to that next click.

5. Get the follow-up. Now you've got spectacular content, but precious visitors are sliding off your site, never to be seen or sold to again. You've worked hard to get them to your site, so don't let them slip past you without getting their email address for marketing campaigns, e-newsletters or just for your database of prospective customers.

Offer visitors a highly visible place on your website to sign up for promotions, offers or notifications. You can easily connect this submission into an online email software program that can send an automatic reply and notification. Presto, you're building a database of warm leads. Consider a "freemium" approach, allowing consumers to sign up for free goods or services through your site, then market upgrades, paid or premium products and services, to them. Either way, get those email addresses. They're gold!

6. Stay top of mind. Remember those folks who left your site without buying? Don't let them forget you. If your business is dependent upon return customers (and whose isn't), then staying top of mind is crucial to clinching the deal.

This is where a retargeting strategy can have a great impact. Cookie the users on your site and then use banner ads on display networks to remind these visitors of your products. Too many online merchants fail to think beyond the click with retargeting campaigns. Keeping your website in front of visitors’ eyes is valuable because it constantly reminds them of your products, giving your brand a fighting chance to be first choice when it comes time to buy. Retargeting success is also a function of list size and duration, so patience is required as visitors increase and impressions grow. Too often merchants lose patience with advertising that doesn't show results immediately; with retargeting, perseverance is what pays off in the end.

7. Retain your customers. Getting initial sales is expensive, and a big part of that revenue goes to recouping your spend. No business survives, let alone thrives, without making an effort to get repeat business. Merchants literally cannot afford to ignore current customers, especially considering that competitors are working hard to get their business.

Make customer retention a priority. As in your No. 1 priority. When you see how much money, time and effort went into getting each initial sale, it's obvious that customer retention is critical to a healthy bottom line. Provide excellent customer service and support, stay in touch via social media, email and personal contact, and make sure your current customers are still getting your best deals. Loyalty goes a long way in this economy, so do everything you can to make sure that your best customers’ business is something your competitors’ money can't buy.

Don't lose sales that should be yours. In these tough economic times, it's vital to have thought through every angle and covered all the bases. Put these seven strategies to work for you and start seeing more online sales today.

Amit Kumar is the founder and CEO of Lexity. Amit can be reached on Twitter @akumar.