How many vistors per sale is normal?

Is there a standard conversion for the number web visitors to sales? like a 1% conversion or something like that?
For ever 400 visitors I make a sale...that seems kinda low for me ( I get around 500 visitors a week! lol). The price was $49.00 but have since dropped it down to $29.00 to see if it would increase.

 

It depends on your product, your look and your sales copy. Every website is different and I don't believe there is any magic ratio for sales. You just keep changing until you find something that works.

 

I will also echo that there is no average. The site that allows me to work from home got around 100 unique visitors a day when I was able to pack in the day job.

I have other sites that bring in more than 10 times that and make me a marginal amount of income.

It all depends on the product/industry.
The best thing you can do is study your logs and establish patterns. Sometimes fixing a simple grammatical mistake, for instance, can mean one extra sale a day

 

It also depends on the kind of traffic you are getting.

 

agree with honey,, also a factor the kind of traffic youre getting (ie. country).

 

Yep, everythig said is true.

It all depends on your product/pricing. You don't need too many sales per week of a product that makes you $299 as with a product that makes you $19.95 to make your business viable.

With a cheaper product you obviously need a larger visitor number mass, good sales pitch (benefits to customer not features) and it has to be easy to make the order. Surveys show that people don't mind spending up to $50 ($49.95 is better they say) on a quick (sometimes emotional) purchase.

Large priced items need less visitors but you have to be prepared to cultivate a customer relationship over time.

Therefore, a 1% conversion for a product making you $19.95 requires a large number of visitors (unique) - just do the numbers .... lets say, in one month you get 5000 visitors - a 1% conversion would mean 50 sales. At $19.95 a pop that equals $998.

And then, it's all about the quality of the visitors. You can increase your conversion rate by sitting down and really thinking who your target market is. And then learn eveything you can that there is to market to them - such as this forum, which is a goldmine

 

Another thing to remember is that it is not your price, but your margin that is important. Obviously, a product that sells for $100 and has a 10% margin for you is not as good as one that sells for $50 with a 30% margin.

You may also want to compare your prices across your industry: Too high OR too low can result in lost sales. Too high is obvious, but too low can also be harmful as your price can destroy your credibility. I doubled the price of one of my products and revenue more than doubled because I was making a higher number of sales than before, with each sale being worth twice as much.

 

Good point! Many think they have to offer the lowest price to beat their competition and gain more sales. That is not true.

People are prepared to pay a premium if they perceive a higher (or unique) value to your product/service. It is your job as a marketer to offer as many direct benefits to a potential customers wants and needs that they are prepared to pay more.

 

I'll second (or third) this. Every site's different. Play with it, see which settings/layout/whatever work best. And then play with it some more. There is no "magic formula."

At least, not yet. If there were, someone would be selling it for several million dollars, until google changes all the rules and makes it go away.

Very true. Bring in tightly targeted audiences from select affiliates, and the conversion ratio will probably be pretty decent. People looking to buy "baby beds for twins" are probably more likely to buy than people who chanced by looking for "photos of twins."

 

I heard that 1% conversion was an average figure you could expect - that came from a guy I know that makes just e-commerce websites.

Don't know if that is a reflection of him or not though.

I would be very cautious about changing the price of your goods though.

Undervaluing your product is very hard to overcome.

 

Just a personal pet peeve I figured I'd mention.

I'm much more likely to buy something at $50 than $49.99. I might pay an extra penny in sales tax (does that still depend on the state? It's been ages since I've bought *anything* online <lol>), but I don't feel like some sleazy marketer has picked the price based on some stupid survey.

(And please don't ever pull the "How much would you expect to pay for this?" crap on me).

HomeOfficeVoice made this same point, though it might not quite be obvious.

Don't underprice. People assume that "discount" or "cheaper" means "less worthwhile."

I ran across this problem several years ago, writing shareware games. You pay $60 in a store and expect a real, top of the line game experience. You spend $10 on a shareware game...ho, hum. It's obviously not as good as that one charging 6x as much. Never mind the benefits of avoiding all the middle-men.

MS Office got huge (way back when) by charging much more than their competitors, putting things in a bigger box, and offering less. Now they're the undisputed champion of basic office software. (Anyone out there not know the basics of using Word?)

 

the most important thing is how well you target your traffic. for example - if you rank #1 for "widgets" you might get a %1 conversion rate in selling widgets. but if you rank #1 for "blue widgets for sale", although the traffic is 10 times lower than for "widgets", the conversion rate could go as high as 80%

 

I know a lot of people have had success with sales by offerring incentive products or ebooks.