Website Traffic or Sales Conversion where should I concentrate?

So you have a website selling flowers online, so your goal is to sell more flowers, right? Do you think the more people that visit my site (traffic), the more sales I will get?  Well, sure, kind of, BUT…

It’s not always the case that more traffic to your site will increase your sales.  There are many reasons that more traffic may actually decrease your sales conversion rate and cost you money.

Only a limited number of people are looking to send flowers to your locations every day.  You can’t increase the number of people searching to increase the traffic. You can only broaden what people are looking for.

But this will never work for you if people come to your site not looking to purchase flowers but looking for other information.  If your PPC (paid advertising) is too broad, all this costs you money for bringing people to your site who don’t want to buy.

Of course, if you have NO traffic, you need to generate traffic through PPC, Search Engine Optimisation or other marketing activities.  But not all traffic is good traffic.

Please have a read of our definitive  Marketing Guide For Florists   to understand how to drive traffic to your website.

Let’s dive into this concept for florists and some high-level ideas.

What is website traffic?

Whenever someone visits your website this is considered “website traffic” .  The user may come from:

• Organic search (SEO)
• PPC (Google Adwords)
• Direct Traffic (entered your website address)
• Social Media
• Email Marketing
• Link from another site

And the list goes on.

As a business marketer, you have control of only so many of the sources of traffic for your website. 

Where does your website traffic come from?

To see where your traffic comes from, you should use Google Analytics; look at the menu Acquisition -> Overview.

Bounce rate?

Another critical traffic metric for you is the bounce rate.  If you have a high bounce rate above 80%, then you should consider why this is.

What is the sales conversion rate?

The sales conversion rate is the percentage of people that buy on your site.

It’s calculated by:

No of Visitors / Sales = Sales Conversion.

There are wildly different industry sales conversion rates for eCommerce businesses. Here are some variations:

Google suggests that the overall Google Ads conversion is 1.91%.

Other industry sources suggest anywhere from 1 – 5%, with the average for eCommerce businesses overall between 1 – 2%.

The sales conversion rate is quite dynamic and can change based on the time of year.  For example, American Floristry giant 1800 flowers reports at Valentine's day, the sales conversion rate is up to 25%.

From our experience, we have seen an average of between 3 – 6% for florists when we remove all bots.

I’ve seen conversion rates as high as 50% on Mother’s and Valentine’s Day, but this is incredibly unusual.

Time of Day is essential for sales conversion.

The time of day is also significant for sales conversion rates.  Across all our customers we see a time of day sale rate like the below graph.

Customers generally purchase flowers starting around 8 AM, peaking around midday and remaining solid until midnight.

How do I raise the sales conversion rate?

If you already have good traffic, you need to look at your site and why people are not buying.  As a florist, your website must be on point and working.

We have written before about how to increase the sales conversion rate in the past. Have a read of this article.

Let’s look at the top ten factors in increasing your sales conversion rate:

1. A well-designed website
2. Have a solid Call to Action CTA
3. Attractive products
4. A price point that matches the customer's expectations
5. Easy to find Delivery Info Page
6. Easy to find contact information, including phone number and address
7. An easy to use the checkout
   1. Only ask for the information you need
   2. Don’t require customers to have to sign up for the checkout
8. Social Proof or Trust Indicators
   1. Google Reviews
   2. Social Media Feeds
9. Transparency in costs IE upfront about delivery costs
10. Less “friction” in the checkout process

Takeaway Conclusions

Your focus should be on getting people who want to buy from you to your website through SEO, Google AdWords or many digital marketing tools.  The critical metric for you is your Sales Conversion Rate and increasing this all-important metric.

Focus on quality traffic and don’t chase traffic for the sake of traffic.