Okay, so a question I get all the time is "how do I get more traffic and sales"?
That is a universal question.
Everybody's asking some sort of iteration of that question, How do I get more traffic and sales?
The first thing that I want to address is this question "how do I get more traffic"?
The real problem is how do I get sales, right? Many think that in order to get more sales, they need more traffic. So they ask the question, How do I get more traffic?
Because they think I have to have a massive amount of traffic to my website in order to make sales. If I don't have traffic, I won't have sales. Now, while that is true, you do need, if you wanna sell something off of your website, you need somebody to visit your website, right? But generally website conversion rates, that means how many people visit your website versus how many people actually purchase for e-commerce is between one and 2% on average. And that means in order to make one sale, you have to get a hundred people to your website. If you wanna make two sales, you need to get 200 people to your website. Now, that's also an average. If your website is a very attractive, or, or, you know, they, they have a hard time using it or they're, they really don't understand what your product is, or your, your photos are dark or your conversion rate can definitely be much less than one to 2%.
But in general, the rule of thumb is one to 2% of people that visit your website convert into traffic or convert into sales. So when people are asking, How do I get more traffic in sales? What they really want is the sales. They think traffic is the way to it. And how I wanna answer this question is actually to flip the entire thought process, right? Let's forget about traffic. Traffic is simply somebody visiting your website. This says nothing about their buying intent. It says nothing about anything else. And it's also highly dev dependent on you having a fantastic website. Now I get clients that make thousands of dollars in sales a month and they don't have a website at all. So there is no traffic going to their website. There's no, there's no traffic going anywhere because they don't have a website. So how are they making sales if they don't have traffic?
And that's where I'm saying I want to kind of re flip this idea of, you know, I need to get traffic in order to get sales and talk first about how do I get sales, right? If you really understand what it takes to make sales, then you don't have to worry about traffic. I never worry about traffic with my Happy Rabbit toys website cuz I can create sales without having general traffic. Now I use my website to complete those sales. I don't have to, but I do. It's easy for us. We already have it set up. We've had a website since 2003. There's no sense getting rid of it. It does make things easier. But I am not sitting and waiting on just random people coming to my website to make a purchase. And that is what happens with a lot of people is they build this website.
Now it's sitting there and they're like, Somebody going to come and visit my website. So how do you make sales without having a website? Well, first of all, let's get the the question of how do I actually collect the money out of the way? Cuz that's the biggest hangup. People think you need a website in order to collect money. You can collect money through PayPal, you can collect money through Square, which is my favorite. If you have a square car reader, you can also send people invoices. You if as long as you know their mailing address and their email, then you can send them an invoice. And a lot of my clients use the square invoices and they send a lot of invoices. Why? Because they've already made a sale, right? They've already made their, their, this is just the last part of the transaction is getting the money in the buyer's mind.
They're already sold. They already want it. Now they're just like, you know, I I just need to send you the money. What's an easy way to do that? That can be square, that can be PayPal or it can be a website. So how do we get them to that position? How do we get somebody from, I don't know who you are, to I'm ready to buy without depending on this traffic thing, right? So I have four steps that I teach all of my clients to do in order to make sales. If you don't do these four steps, if you don't follow these four steps, it doesn't matter. If you have the most amazing website in the world, you're not gonna make more sales. It doesn't matter if you have the most amazing products in the world, you're not going to have more sales.
It doesn't matter. It, it, none of this stuff matter. Traffic doesn't matter if you don't follow these four steps, none of these other things matter. These are the big four, these are the things that matter. So the very first thing that you need to do if you want to make sales is you have got to have a specialty. You cannot be a generalist. You cannot make a little bit of everything because it's fun. Okay? If you wanna have fun, have a hobby, no problem with that. I have hobbies, I have things I like to do. I don't make money with them. And if I wanna dabble in a little bit of this and a little bit of that, I can do that. That because it's my hobby. When you're running a business, if you're playing with a little bit of this and a little bit of that, then your, your ideal customers, the people that are most likely to buy from you aren't going to be able to find you.
So let me give you a real quick example on that. If you have two shops, let's, let's say two different Facebook pages. This could be Instagram accounts, this could be websites, whatever it is. Let's say you have two different Facebook pages. You have one that's called Cathy's Crafty Corner, and you have another one that says Cathy's Soy Candles. Okay? So Cathy's Crafty Corner. If I am a candle buyer, if I love candles and I specifically like to buy soy candles and I take a look at the name of Kathy's business, would I then think, man, I can't wait to go over there and see what candles she has. No, because I'm not gonna be clear on that at all. I will have no idea that Kathy is selling candles cuz it just says Kathy's crafty corner. I don't know if she sells crochet candles. Reese, I don't know what Kathy sell sells.
And when you leave a customer, or, or when you, when you send an ambiguous message to your customer, they don't anchor you in their mind anywhere. They don't think of you. Oh, you're the candle lady, right? They're just like, I don't know. And move on and move on. You don't even get the opportunity to show them what you have because they're not gonna waste their time, their own time investigating your shop and your products to try to figure out what the heck it is you sell. So Cathy's Crafty Corner, people use names like that all the time because they want to not be nailed down to anything. And what they don't realize is that if you don't specialize, then nobody knows you for anything. One last example, or first, let me finish this example. Now if we look at Cathy's soy candles, Cathy's soy candle shop, what does Cathy sell?
Soy candles. It's a shop for soy, soy candles. So if I like soy candles, if I like candles, I'll be like, Ooh, that person sells candles. Let me go check it out. Cuz I love candles, I want more candles. What do you got Cathy? See now I'm going to go check you out. Cathy's crafty corner. I'm going to ignore Kathy's soy candle shop catches my attention. Okay? So this goes beyond just name, it goes for the images that you're using. If you post an amazing picture of an Afghan that you, that you crocheted and you put it out there to the world and I see it and I like candles, I'm not interested in the Afghan, right? Not necessarily somebody can like both, but let's just assume that what I really want is candles. So you're putting out all this effort to put out an Afghan and then you're gonna put out a wreath and then you're gonna put out some soap that you made and then you're gonna put out the candles and the candle people ignored all of your other posts.
And when they see your candle posts and they go to your, your Facebook page, Oh wow, look, these candles, let me go check it out. Wait a minute, I see blankets and res and what is do they even sell candles? Boom, they're gone. They're gone. They're gone. So the last thing I wanna talk about with this, with this specialty is if you are at a farmer's market, So I used to run a farmer's market. You will see people at my old farmer's market with specific names like the pie lady, the apple man, the Honeyman, the muffin man the Bread Ladies, okay? And then we have a bread man too. The reason why they get these nicknames is because those are the only things that they sell or, or it's at least like the 80% of what they sell. It's what everybody knows them as.
Now, what we found out from the farmer's market is that the lady who sold nothing but pies, she would bring 70 pies with her to a farmer's market, would sell more in a day than the person across the, the aisle from her that was selling pies, brownies, cupcakes, couple of baskets of tomatoes some crafts that their grandkids did and you know, who knows what else, right? The person with all the different things on their table did not do well. They would have four pies and still have two left. By the end of the day, the pie lady has sold 70. The difference is, is people go to the person who's the expert on pies, who has an abundance of pies. It feels like the right thing to do to buy a pie from the pie lady. It doesn't feel as right to buy a pie from somebody who sells a little bit of everything, right?
So this is the same with your online shop. If you are trying to be everything to everybody, then you are not gonna communicate clearly to anybody and they're gonna look you over. And if you can't catch people's attention and let them know I am the source, I am the exact place of exactly what it is you want, and I specialize in this one thing, if you can't catch their attention that way, then you're not gonna get traffic. You're not gonna get sales, okay? You might get a sale here and there, but you're gonna definitely damper how many sales you have. I had a client years ago, had five different products, wanted to add a six. I'm like, Look, you, you can, but you're just gonna make it hard on yourself. And she's like, No, I'm gonna prove it. I can do this. She did it for three months, made very few sales, finally got frustrated, pulled out one product, made a Facebook page just for that product, sent everybody over there within weeks, she was making many, multiple times more sales with that one product than she did on the page with lots of things.
And she had more followers on that new page than she did her old one. This is, this is what it takes guys. It you've got to specialize. So that's number one. First, you need to specialize. The second thing you need is you need to attract an audience. This is where social media comes into play. Another reason why I don't like traffic, Traffic comes and goes, think of traffic on the road. Traffic means they're driving by. They're not parking and visiting, right? If I have traffic in front of my house, it doesn't mean I have a lot of visitors to my house. It just means I have people passing through. When people visit your website and they don't buy and they leave, you may never see them again. They may never think of you ever, ever, ever again. It's super important that we capture as many people as we can and we actually build an audience.
So rather than going out there and advertising your website I'm a big fan of advertising ways for them to follow me. So I do things to collect email addresses. I do things to get them to like my Facebook page. I do things to get them to like my Instagram account because then I can communicate with them over and over and over again. And if they're not ready to buy today, I'm gonna be in front of them so much that when by the time they're ready to buy, they're thinking of me. Okay? So they're not just traffic passing through, they are visitors, they are fans, they are followers, they are following you and they want more content from you. So I am not a big fan of like Facebook ads to a website. I never do that. I have, I, I shouldn't say never. I have done it, but it doesn't work.
I don't do it anymore cuz it just doesn't work. That traffic means nothing. What you need is a following. And this is again, where I, I look at Facebook and Instagram are the easiest ways to create a following. My favorite of the two is Facebook. Mainly because there are more people on Facebook. I am more familiar with Facebook and generally a lot of the crowds that we're catering to with handmade products tend to be a little bit older women. And they are on Facebook, that's where they're hanging out. So I wanna be where they are hanging out. So you've got to build a following. You need to have a social media presence that clearly communicates your specialty. And then you need to get people to follow you on that platform. Now, the easiest thing to do is invite your friends and family. I, there are a lot of strategies that I teach in my Handmade Sellers Club program that shows you how to pull that audience in.
But the most important thing is, and what I wanna le what I want you to remember moving forward is social media isn't advertising. Don't think of it as advertising. Social media is building a community of people that you have permission to communicate with so that they can ultimately buy from you. Cause people don't usually buy the first time they see something, they don't usually buy the second time. It can take three, four or 5, 6, 7 50 interactions before they decide to buy. And if all we're doing is sending them to a website and they go and they visit, they may like our stuff and they may say, I'm just not ready right now. Maybe, maybe at Christmas time. And then they forget all about you. If you instead get them to follow you, then they're like, Yeah, I like this stuff. Oh my gosh, I like that one. It's getting close to Christmas. They've got exactly what I'm looking for. I'm going to buy. Okay? So we need to be communicating with them on a constant basis so that we are always top of mind. And that's why an audience is critical, Critical, critical, critical. Social media really changed the game on this. It allowed us to build those audiences in a fast and easy and free way in many cases. All right, lemme take a quick drink.
So now that we have a specialty and we're tracking our exact right customers to us and we're building an audience, next we wanna work on desire. This is a biggie. We want them to want our products. How do we do that? The biggest way we do that is with fantastic photographs. Fantastic photographs and or video. And video. I would say <laugh>. You could do photographs only. I wouldn't do video only. A combination of two hits the nail on the head. The reason why photographs are so important is because we are not selling in person. A person cannot come to our booth and pick up the product and view it and say, Yeah, I want that. When we're online, they're a hundred percent dependent on our ability to clearly communicate what it is we are selling. So they can decide from there, Do I want it or do I not want it?
If the picture is not beautiful, then there's no desire being built. No desire being built. If the picture does not clearly show what your product is, there's no desire being built. Nothing is happening there. People are in fact are trying to quickly move past your posts because they don't like what it is they're seeing. Even if, let's say they love soy candles or at Cathy's soy candle shop and they're like, Cool, I like soy candles, Cathy has 'em, I'm gonna follow her. And then your pictures come through and they're blurry and they're dark and you can't see the label and there's, you know, no clarity of what the product even is. Recently ran a challenge where we asked people to post products and do like a scale of one to 10 post. And I saw one person who, or it was a a one word, described this in one word and I saw one person respond to somebody's post and say unsure was their answer.
And she's like, What are you unsure of? She was like, I don't even know what is in this picture. I don't know what this is a picture of. And the person responded with like the scent of the item, but they, they totally missed the boat, that it wasn't clear from the get-go what was even supposed to be in the picture. Was it soap, was it shampoo? Was it a candle? Was it a wax melt? Like what was it? It was not clear. So we need to make sure our photos are on point. Along with this is our descriptions. Descriptions definitely help, but I have seen time and time again where people will buy with almost no description because the picture is so pretty. The picture is pretty half the battle is having beautiful products, having interesting products, having products that make people say Wow, the other half of the battle is taking really great photos of that.
And that's why I also love using video because video tends to have more context to it. And I can sit here and show something in a video. Like here I've got this little guy here, I can show this in a video. And you guys can see all of the dimensions. You can see about how big it is. You know, you can see it. If I just take a picture of it, you're not really gonna get context of what it looks all the way around what it looks like in, in different lighting. The scale of it, like how big is it compared to my hand? So video can help fill in a lot of gaps that can be more difficult to capture in images. Not that you can let go of images cuz you're not gonna be able to use an image on your webs or a video as your product image on your website.
You do need to have static images and you need to get good at that. And that's why, again, this is one of the things we focus on in handmade sellers club is because we focus a lot on photos. We have a whole training there on photos. Because without those great photos, you haven't built desire. So you can have your specialty, you can have your, your audience. Heck you can even have traffic. I'll even grant you traffic and everything will come to a screeching halt if you don't have fantastic photos. If your photos aren't great, then there's no sale that's going to happen. And then finally, finally, the fourth ingredient to actually making sales is engagement. Now engagement and desire are somewhat linked. You're kind of doing those things at the same time. But if you have fantastic photos and you do not have a relationship with your actual audience, if you aren't encouraging them to comment on your posts, if you are not being a real person, if you aren't connecting with them on a more personal level it's gonna be difficult for you to make sales.
So if you've ever wondered, you know, why is it my friends and family buy from me, but I can't get strangers to buy from me. The reason is cuz they already know, like, and trust you. Okay? When we're selling online, there is a certain level of mistrust, of uncertainty. I don't know you, I don't know if I'm actually gonna get the thing that's in the photo. I kind of want the product, but I don't, I just don't know. I don't know, I don't know how I feel about this entire transaction. And that can make people just absolutely freeze in their shoes saying like, I, I, I don't know how to make a decision here. The reason our friends and family buy is cuz they know like and trust us. So if we want perfect strangers to buy from us the way our family and friends do, we need to develop a relationship with them and actually engage with them.
That means showing your face. You know this again, it's the same as when you go to a show you're not hidden behind some black wall <laugh> where people are shopping for your stuff and then they come to a little hole in the wall and pay for it and then leave our face. Is there, how many of you have noticed that if you get up and talk to people at your booth, they're more likely to buy like that? We know that's true. That's that selling at craft shows 1 0 1. If you sit in a chair with a skull on your face or if you just leave your booth, right? I used to run the farmer's market. If somebody left their booth, people would walk up, look around, Oh, I kind of want that. Where are they know? I guess I'll move on to the next one. You know, the desire for the product would have to be extreme for them to sit and wait <laugh> for somebody to come back.
If we don't have that personal touch, if we don't build the no like, and trust, if we don't build relationships, if we don't engage with people, we are gonna miss out on a lion share of the sales. Because when we do do those things, when we do engage and we do do all of these, then they're buying from us. Not just because they want the product cuz they wanna support us because they love our personality and and they wanna be involved. They wanna live vicariously through us and our business. They want to be entertained by us. You'd be amazed at how many people show up to just random Facebook lives that people are doing, not even selling a product because they like to hear that person talk cuz they're like, you know, know what? They have such a great personality, I love it. And by the way, I have to have that.
Is it for sale? Give it to me. It takes all of the, the antagonistic elements of the sale away when it's a friend selling to a friend. It's not me chasing down a stranger and saying, I want you to buy this. Buy this right now. Right? I'm trying to sell to you, sell to you, sell to you, sell to you. Instead, we're backing up like, Hey, I'm just bringing you into my world here. This is what I do. I make soy candles and here's how I make them and here's how I pick the scent. What are your favorite sense? This is my fa ooh, look how good that smells. I can't believe how it turned out. And look, look, look. See how the color rate there and look at all the little inclusions I put on the top. Isn't that so pretty? We are building desire and we are building a personal connection with those people at the same time.
So doing posts with a selfie on your social media, doing Facebook lives, being in your reels, being a real person in your real, showing your face goes a long way. Showing them behind the scenes, this is what my shop looks like. This is what my product looks like per partially done. Here's a time I totally messed up. All of those are ways for you to build relationships with people to where they're like, you know what? I have 20 different options of places I could buy X product for this person that I know in my life, my, my mother or whatever, but I'm gonna buy it from her cuz I like her. This is, this is how it works. This is how network marketing works, right? This is how you get somebody to buy, you know, shampoos and, and makeup and all of that stuff that they could just buy at the store because of the relationship they have with you.
All right? So those are my four keys. Those are my four ingredients to actually making sales. If you nail those, then people will approach you and start saying, I want to buy from you. Now notice I didn't say advertise, I didn't say, you know, get in front of a bunch of people and sell, sell, sell your heart out. I didn't say any of that stuff. This is a non salesy way to sell. This is you leaning back and saying, I'm just inviting you into my world. And they're leaning forward saying, Just sell me everything that you have. Give me all the things, right? So it's a non-confrontational, non salesy way to sell. And it works like a charm. When you stop selling, you make the most sales. And at that point they say, Where can I buy it? You can give them a link to your website.
Did you just get traffic to your website? Yeah, but you gotta sale. Like, that's what I'm most concerned about. And you'll find that your conversion rates are gonna skyrocket even if you never change a thing on your website. Your website could look like crap. And as long as they can check out without a whole lot of roadblocks in front of them, as long as they can still do the checkout process, then they will buy because they, you already sold them over here. It really didn't matter. Okay? So that's it, that's what I've got for you guys today.
How
Do I
Get more traffic and sales? That is my answer. Just worry about the picking a specialty, growing an audience, building that desire and engaging your audience. And you'll never go wrong.
If you are a handmade seller who wants to sell more products online, then you need to be a Handmade Sellers Club member. You'll discover how to build your social media following, get post ideas, create viral reels, and get the coaching you need and start making sales today. And you can even get your products featured. Right now, you can get a two week trial to Handmade Sellers Club for only $7. Go to handmade sellers club.com to invest in yourself and your business today.