Online Marketing Services for Coaches, Consultants, Trainers and Service Entrepreneurs

5 Shopping Cart Mistakes That Will Kill Your Sales

For your coaching business to succeed, you need to be able to convert website visitors into sales.  Website traffic is great, and we all want lots of it.  But without sales, you don’t have a business - you have a hobby.

Here are the top 5 mistakes I see coaches and consultants make with their shopping cart that kills their sales.  If you’re making any of these mistakes, just follow my simple recommendations, and you’ll definitely see an improvement in your sales conversion.

Mistake #1 - Accepting only one or two forms of payment

The more forms of payment you accept, the more sales you will make.  Now, I’m not suggesting that you start accepting chickens or bushels of apples in exchange for your products or services.  But you could offer any of the following:

  • Multiple debit and credit cards: VISA, MasterCard, American Express, Discover
  • PayPal
  • Checks that can be mailed to your business address
  • Monthly payment plans

Mistake #2 - Not streamlining the checkout process

Keep the checkout process to a minimal number of steps.  It’s been proven that too many steps reduce sales.

Here are tips to streamline the process:

  • Don’t ask for information that you don’t absolutely need
  • Reduce the number of steps and webpages needed to checkout
  • Go through the entire checkout process in both Internet Explorer and Firefox browsers so you can see what your customers will see.
  • Make sure all your hyperlinks work.

Mistake #3 - Offering multiple up-sells on multiple webpages

When someone decides to buy your product or service, your goal is to get them to the “Submit Order” button as quickly as possible and in as few clicks as possible.

Up-sells are a great way to increase your income and help clients get more value.  But the best place for an up-sell is right on the checkout page.

Asking customers to go through page after page after page of up-sell offers just creates frustration and confusion.

Mistake #4 - Not customizing the look and feel of your shopping cart

When your shopping cart pages look similar to your website, your customers will feel more secure about their purchase.

Here are some things that can be customized on most shopping cart pages:

  • The header image or text at the top of the page
  • The background colors and/or images
  • Font colors and styles
  • Adding logo images

Mistake #5 - Not having a secure checkout page

It doesn’t matter how secure you know your checkout page is.  If at any point your customer starts to feel insecure about the purchase, they won’t buy.

You can do everything else right.  But if you mess up here, you’ve lost the sale.

Here are simple things you can include to create a secure purchasing environment for your clients:

  • Include your company logo, name, and header graphic on the shopping cart pages
  • Include gold lock images on your website, the checkout page, and at the bottom of the browser window.
  • Make sure all the checkout pages have “https://” in the URL.

Action Step: If you haven’t gone through the entire buying process for your products and services, I suggest you do so soon.  Don’t get someone else to do it for you.  Many of these mistakes get made because people who set up shopping carts and websites usually don’t understand the psychology of the online buying process.

See if you’re making any of the 5 most common shopping cart mistakes and implement the suggestions above to dramatically increase your sales in the coming year.

Bonus Tip: Most of the above suggestions will help you increase your opt-in conversions as well.  Just apply the same principles next time you ask clients to fill in a web form.