Most sellers focus on attracting new consumers to their sites and products.

When focusing mainly on clicks or low CTR, it is often all about the main image and title, advertising, and reviews.

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But what they tend to miss is what happens after that?

Pushing for more traffic and clicks is not guaranteed to bring profit. This is when investments in advertising might be wasted if people don’t convert.

More precisely, every time a visitor to the product becomes a buyer, it converts.

As this isn’t a visible cost from the beginning, CVR (conversion rate) becomes overlooked.

While you are investing more and more into ads and optimization, the real problem isn’t luring people onto the page; it is what drives them to make that purchase.

Where Conversion Breaks and Why People Don’t Buy 

As everything goes in any business, small gaps isolated don’t seem as urgent, and are easily taken for granted.

The same thing goes for most conversion problems – they’re just stacked up.

Unfortunately, when it comes to this situation, these gaps quietly reduce trust and slow down the entire buying process.

So, what can we do about it? You focus on user expectations.

Think about it – Why is Amazon so popular? 

The primary reason is that it’s extremely user-friendly. 

Any user, any demographic can come online, browse for what they’re looking for, and they can easily find it, get more information about the product in a very simple (templated) way. It’s not confusing, it’s not clunky, it’s clean. 

Amazon expects each and every product page to be clear, correct, and easy to navigate through. If it’s not, that specific product page will be taken down until it’s been properly adjusted.

When it comes to users, it usually comes down to the first 7 seconds of users interacting with the product page. At that point, most users will either form a positive or a negative opinion. This is also where the ‘Halo Effect’ comes into play; it’s where if the first impression is positive, users will naturally assume that everything else is positive as well.

On the flip side, if the initial impression is negative (which sellers like Amazon want to minimize or avoid entirely), the ‘Horn Effect’ will take effect. So even if later the positives would start showing up, the user will abandon the product before it has a chance for a second impression.

This is why all pages MUST prioritize mobile optimization. More than half of all online sales are done via mobile. If the page looks bad (or clunky or weird) on mobile – regardless of it looking superb on desktop – the product page will ultimately be considered ‘bad’.

And sure, some analysts will say that this is a CVR problem, but in reality, product page quality is one of the main factors when it comes to successful sales.

The following are some key areas where conversions drop, past the first impression.

Keyword Mismatch 

Another point that’s usually taken lightly is keywords meant for too broad a public.

One thing is looking for high traffic (more visits), but another is attracting people with intent.

When your product is misrepresented, keywords and links can end up bringing unqualified and/or uninterested users. This leads to the ACoS (advertising cost of sales) increasing due to low conversions.

Emphasis should be put on alignment between the product and its page and the search leading to it.

Inefficient targeting leads to unnecessary costs, while also making your sales stagnant. So, every other step won’t be as important if you don’t have a properly targeted market.

Lack of Trust and Clarity

Here’s the thing – once someone lands on your listing on Amazon, after they are introduced to the page, there are two leading questions: do they understand the product, and can they trust it?

Even if one side is missing, the sale is rare.

Before the product is even considered, people often go immediately to reviews and ratings. There can be bad and good ones, as long as there are many valid opinions. The problem begins when there is an insufficient number of reviews or if negative reviews overrule.

On the other hand, product understanding is equally important when the description is all about features and properties that don’t communicate directly to the consumer.

Focusing on consumers’ experience first, the representation of actual benefits to the buyer’s life will lead you one step closer to a sale.

Meaning that the product should have at least one thing outstanding compared to the competition, and a direct answer to how it makes life easier.

Not to mention, the way it is all positioned says a lot. Firstly, gaining trust and then providing visitors with real use cases leads to higher conversion.

Pricing and Buying Experience 

Coming down to the most sensitive part of every sale, is forming a price and making that purchase easy.

Besides, people actually judge the product based on the store they are buying from and the simplicity of the process.

As everything is online, every person can check competitors’ prices or find a substitute. That’s why perception of the product price might not be the same as its actual value.

This goes to show that even if pricing is set to be competitive, revenue will still depend on how well traffic converts, plus how much each order is worth (profit margins).

For instance, if you’re selling your products on various platforms, you have to align the price to them. Let’s narrow it to Amazon and DTC.

Even when there is a better price on another platform, the buying experience can lead to canceling the purchase. It is known that many DTCs face friction outside of platforms, such as Amazon.

So, to make checkout smoother (e.g., checkout friction, abandoned purchases, etc.), businesses typically rely on online payment processing services. This is especially the case if approval rates, chargeback risk, stricter industry requirements/regulations, cross-border payments, APMs, high cart values, subscriptions, etc., are present, since all these factors can affect whether a transaction goes through or not. 

Basically, the main goal here is to make good experiences and reduce the potential risk of something being too good to be true.

Conclusion

When everything is summed up, the whole point of focusing on traffic is what comes after that click.

When there aren’t enough converted visitors, many opt for more ad spend instead of looking at it from a different perspective.

And, when buyers take it all together, there are too many factors repelling them from the product.

Filling the gaps creates a new trust bond between the product and a potential buyer, while aligning price and description just ensures their purchase.