5 Services That Won't Increase Your Sales, But Will Reduce Your Losses
Posted: Sat Dec 07, 2024 5:45 am
It’s great to talk about ways to increase sales for an online store and tools that make it easier to acquire, convert and retain customers. But sometimes you have to face the dark side of online business. When things go against you, there’s not much you can do right away. But you can definitely bounce back quickly and try to salvage the situation as best you can. Today, we’ll talk about tools that allow you to minimize losses or revenue drops.
tools that allow you to minimize losses
Image source: Pixabay
Ignoring offline factors, let’s review some of the main reasons that lead to situations where the store owner starts losing money (including making less money).
The good news is that for each of these loss triggers, there are tools to help minimize their negative impact.
1. Website failure (or malfunction)
The consequences of a website suddenly becoming unavailable are obvious, but let's recall the most important ones:
If there is nowhere for your customers to look at your products list of telephone number data you will naturally lose new orders and potential customers.
Your online business image will suffer
As a result, the advertising budget you have allocated for your website will go to waste.
In addition to not converting, in response to the broken website, acquired users will evaluate the brand negatively and may never come back.
Glitches, where a website loads and everything seems fine on the surface, but one of the core functions isn’t working very often. For example, a user may search for a product, select a size, and specify other preferences, but they won’t be able to add it to their cart. This can be hugely detrimental to your business.
Warning - This page cannot be displayed
Image source: Pixabay
In case of malfunctions and downtime, response time is key; fast repairs will help you minimize losses. The team that services each of your online stores should be the first to know about any such issues; if possible, even before users notice them.
This can be achieved with the Super Monitoring web application.
Super Monitoring is an online service that constantly monitors various aspects of websites. First and foremost, it monitors the availability of a site, that is, the correct response of the web server. In the next step, it checks the content, that is, it verifies the presence of a defined piece of text or code. With this service, you can also monitor the page loading speed, a feature that has recently become very important from an SEO perspective. The most advanced monitoring feature allows you to test all processes according to defined scenarios. In the case of e-commerce websites, such a process can look like this:
Search for a product.
View product card.
Customize the product (e.g. size, color).
Add the product to your cart.
View cart.
Change the number of items in the cart.
Enter the recipient data.
Select payment and shipping methods.
Place the order.
When a fault or failure is detected, after verification from several locations (to exclude false alarms), the website monitoring service sends alerts via email, SMS and voice calls. After receiving an alert, log in to the user panel and then you can get detailed information about the event; the time it occurred, the type of failure and (depending on the type of problem) additional data such as screenshots or analysis of loading times of certain elements of the website.
Super Monitoring prices start at $5.99 per month, and the package that allows you to use all the features listed above costs $29.99 per month. We can say that using this service is worth the benefit it will bring to your business.
2. Decreases in traffic (number of visitors)
If you want to check if there is a sudden drop in the number of users visiting your web pages, you can see it in the website statistics. Of course, you can’t spend a lot of time looking at user data, so here you can set up alerts that can be a big time saver. Fortunately, Google Analytics , the most popular analytics package , allows you to define alerts that provide information about the drop in the number of website visits or page views, among other things.
The most common reason for an unexpected drop in traffic is SEO issues (Google penalties in the form of a filter/ban or perhaps the effect of an update to Google’s algorithm) or simply the results of the competition’s positioning activities. Therefore, in addition to traffic, it is also worth monitoring your website’s position in Google’s search results. And while doing so, it can be useful to also verify the effects of your own SEO activities.
AccuRanker is an SEO tool that provides Google position tracking and alerts in case your website traffic drops suddenly or your website is removed from the index. It allows you to check search results for any selected position and different language versions of Google. The tool is aimed at agencies and SEO professionals, but it is a great solution for everyone in terms of position tracking and alerts.
It’s worth noting here that traffic drops can also be caused by a slow website. Google uses site speed as one of its ranking factors, and if your website takes more than 3 seconds to load, your SERP rankings may drop.
Slower loading times can be detected early on by using the Super Monitoring website monitoring service described in the previous article.
3. Crisis in social media
The power of social media has reached such a level that dissatisfied customers can use the internet to start negative discussions that reach a much wider audience than those who praise the brand. Often triggered by anger, these types of customers can set off a kind of “snowball” effect of negative emotions that can be very difficult to stop. This type of action often involves trolling or deliberately badmouthing a retailer on behalf of a competitor.
In such cases, response time is of the utmost importance. Regardless of whether the information discussed is true or not, the brand representative should get involved in the discussion as soon as possible.
Brand representative
Image source: Pixabay
Brand24, a popular brand monitoring service, can detect not only discussions on social media but also on blogs, forums, etc. Brand24 servers constantly scan the entire internet, scanning and indexing all content. All you have to do is define your own brand as a tracked keyword to receive notifications when it appears on any page, post or comment. Thanks to a special algorithm, Brand24 can evaluate the common sentiment, i.e. recognize negative messages among positive and neutral messages.
Contrary to the title, Brand24 can increase sales when configured correctly. In addition to identifying brand mentions, the second important feature of the service is support for “social selling” – that is, identifying discussions that are potential sales opportunities. Instead of a brand, category-related keywords are tracked using the service, so you can join discussions where people interested in making a purchase are looking for a supplier.
The cheapest Brand24 plan costs $99 per month.
4. Competition activities
Declining sales in an online store are often caused by direct competition; a promotional campaign or constant price reductions. So it's worth taking a look at at least some of your "closest" competitors to get an idea of where you stand.
Dealavo is a service that monitors your competitors’ prices. It scans online stores as well as price comparison and auction websites, allowing you to track deviations from standard trends and compare prices head-to-head with competitors. It then generates detailed reports and sends alerts that inform you about the same.
If you don’t have many competitors and you know them all, you can use another monitoring tool called VisualPing. VisualPing is used to detect changes on websites, but it works in an unusual way because it doesn’t analyze the site’s code. It monitors pages visually or through screenshots and detects even the smallest changes on the pages. It then sends you appropriate alerts to let you know that something has changed. This functionality can often be quite useful.
You can mark the interesting part (e.g. price) on the selected subpage (e.g. price list, promotions, product card) and receive notifications only when there is a change in the selected area. This way, you do not have to spend time constantly monitoring a website you are interested in and can be immediately informed of major and minor changes that occur on the website.
The cheapest package (excluding the small, free one) costs $10 per month and allows 25 tests per day, with a maximum frequency of 24 hours. Larger packages allow you to test tracked pages for changes every 5 minutes. This might be worth a try.
5. Hacker attack
It’s common knowledge that the majority of hacker attacks in the world are carried out by robots or automated programs. It sounds like a bleak vision of a dystopian future, but simply put, it means that hackers have automated the action of attacking websites with malware. The bots they write scan the internet looking for insecure (vulnerable, outdated) websites and launch an automated attack once they find them. The compromised website joins a “botnet,” a network of thousands of websites that perform the hackers’ commanded functions, such as sending spam, distributing malware, advertising shady products and services, or seeking more victims. In the process, the victim website is demoted.
An online store that has been hacked does not have to stop making sales all of a sudden. Most of the time, it continues to perform its functions while performing new actions for the hacker. As a result, at some point the store’s domain name is blacklisted. Emails sent by the store stop reaching customers, and browsers start displaying warnings before loading the page. This can be very damaging for the brand’s image and credibility factor.
tools that allow you to minimize losses
Image source: Pixabay
Ignoring offline factors, let’s review some of the main reasons that lead to situations where the store owner starts losing money (including making less money).
The good news is that for each of these loss triggers, there are tools to help minimize their negative impact.
1. Website failure (or malfunction)
The consequences of a website suddenly becoming unavailable are obvious, but let's recall the most important ones:
If there is nowhere for your customers to look at your products list of telephone number data you will naturally lose new orders and potential customers.
Your online business image will suffer
As a result, the advertising budget you have allocated for your website will go to waste.
In addition to not converting, in response to the broken website, acquired users will evaluate the brand negatively and may never come back.
Glitches, where a website loads and everything seems fine on the surface, but one of the core functions isn’t working very often. For example, a user may search for a product, select a size, and specify other preferences, but they won’t be able to add it to their cart. This can be hugely detrimental to your business.
Warning - This page cannot be displayed
Image source: Pixabay
In case of malfunctions and downtime, response time is key; fast repairs will help you minimize losses. The team that services each of your online stores should be the first to know about any such issues; if possible, even before users notice them.
This can be achieved with the Super Monitoring web application.
Super Monitoring is an online service that constantly monitors various aspects of websites. First and foremost, it monitors the availability of a site, that is, the correct response of the web server. In the next step, it checks the content, that is, it verifies the presence of a defined piece of text or code. With this service, you can also monitor the page loading speed, a feature that has recently become very important from an SEO perspective. The most advanced monitoring feature allows you to test all processes according to defined scenarios. In the case of e-commerce websites, such a process can look like this:
Search for a product.
View product card.
Customize the product (e.g. size, color).
Add the product to your cart.
View cart.
Change the number of items in the cart.
Enter the recipient data.
Select payment and shipping methods.
Place the order.
When a fault or failure is detected, after verification from several locations (to exclude false alarms), the website monitoring service sends alerts via email, SMS and voice calls. After receiving an alert, log in to the user panel and then you can get detailed information about the event; the time it occurred, the type of failure and (depending on the type of problem) additional data such as screenshots or analysis of loading times of certain elements of the website.
Super Monitoring prices start at $5.99 per month, and the package that allows you to use all the features listed above costs $29.99 per month. We can say that using this service is worth the benefit it will bring to your business.
2. Decreases in traffic (number of visitors)
If you want to check if there is a sudden drop in the number of users visiting your web pages, you can see it in the website statistics. Of course, you can’t spend a lot of time looking at user data, so here you can set up alerts that can be a big time saver. Fortunately, Google Analytics , the most popular analytics package , allows you to define alerts that provide information about the drop in the number of website visits or page views, among other things.
The most common reason for an unexpected drop in traffic is SEO issues (Google penalties in the form of a filter/ban or perhaps the effect of an update to Google’s algorithm) or simply the results of the competition’s positioning activities. Therefore, in addition to traffic, it is also worth monitoring your website’s position in Google’s search results. And while doing so, it can be useful to also verify the effects of your own SEO activities.
AccuRanker is an SEO tool that provides Google position tracking and alerts in case your website traffic drops suddenly or your website is removed from the index. It allows you to check search results for any selected position and different language versions of Google. The tool is aimed at agencies and SEO professionals, but it is a great solution for everyone in terms of position tracking and alerts.
It’s worth noting here that traffic drops can also be caused by a slow website. Google uses site speed as one of its ranking factors, and if your website takes more than 3 seconds to load, your SERP rankings may drop.
Slower loading times can be detected early on by using the Super Monitoring website monitoring service described in the previous article.
3. Crisis in social media
The power of social media has reached such a level that dissatisfied customers can use the internet to start negative discussions that reach a much wider audience than those who praise the brand. Often triggered by anger, these types of customers can set off a kind of “snowball” effect of negative emotions that can be very difficult to stop. This type of action often involves trolling or deliberately badmouthing a retailer on behalf of a competitor.
In such cases, response time is of the utmost importance. Regardless of whether the information discussed is true or not, the brand representative should get involved in the discussion as soon as possible.
Brand representative
Image source: Pixabay
Brand24, a popular brand monitoring service, can detect not only discussions on social media but also on blogs, forums, etc. Brand24 servers constantly scan the entire internet, scanning and indexing all content. All you have to do is define your own brand as a tracked keyword to receive notifications when it appears on any page, post or comment. Thanks to a special algorithm, Brand24 can evaluate the common sentiment, i.e. recognize negative messages among positive and neutral messages.
Contrary to the title, Brand24 can increase sales when configured correctly. In addition to identifying brand mentions, the second important feature of the service is support for “social selling” – that is, identifying discussions that are potential sales opportunities. Instead of a brand, category-related keywords are tracked using the service, so you can join discussions where people interested in making a purchase are looking for a supplier.
The cheapest Brand24 plan costs $99 per month.
4. Competition activities
Declining sales in an online store are often caused by direct competition; a promotional campaign or constant price reductions. So it's worth taking a look at at least some of your "closest" competitors to get an idea of where you stand.
Dealavo is a service that monitors your competitors’ prices. It scans online stores as well as price comparison and auction websites, allowing you to track deviations from standard trends and compare prices head-to-head with competitors. It then generates detailed reports and sends alerts that inform you about the same.
If you don’t have many competitors and you know them all, you can use another monitoring tool called VisualPing. VisualPing is used to detect changes on websites, but it works in an unusual way because it doesn’t analyze the site’s code. It monitors pages visually or through screenshots and detects even the smallest changes on the pages. It then sends you appropriate alerts to let you know that something has changed. This functionality can often be quite useful.
You can mark the interesting part (e.g. price) on the selected subpage (e.g. price list, promotions, product card) and receive notifications only when there is a change in the selected area. This way, you do not have to spend time constantly monitoring a website you are interested in and can be immediately informed of major and minor changes that occur on the website.
The cheapest package (excluding the small, free one) costs $10 per month and allows 25 tests per day, with a maximum frequency of 24 hours. Larger packages allow you to test tracked pages for changes every 5 minutes. This might be worth a try.
5. Hacker attack
It’s common knowledge that the majority of hacker attacks in the world are carried out by robots or automated programs. It sounds like a bleak vision of a dystopian future, but simply put, it means that hackers have automated the action of attacking websites with malware. The bots they write scan the internet looking for insecure (vulnerable, outdated) websites and launch an automated attack once they find them. The compromised website joins a “botnet,” a network of thousands of websites that perform the hackers’ commanded functions, such as sending spam, distributing malware, advertising shady products and services, or seeking more victims. In the process, the victim website is demoted.
An online store that has been hacked does not have to stop making sales all of a sudden. Most of the time, it continues to perform its functions while performing new actions for the hacker. As a result, at some point the store’s domain name is blacklisted. Emails sent by the store stop reaching customers, and browsers start displaying warnings before loading the page. This can be very damaging for the brand’s image and credibility factor.