Going after the low hanging fruit

We constantly look at ways to get our existing customers and our best customers to buy more, but what about the first time visitor. This could be an untapped opportunity on your website.

This past week at Vin | 65 we watched a great presentation on First Time Visitors. Consider some of these facts:

• First Time Visitors are 60%+ of a websites traffic. (We ran a rough sampling of our website and this stat holds true)
• First Time Visitors only convert around 2-3%. Repeat visitors convert at an average of 8%.

If first time visitors are 60% of your traffic and they convert at 2%, growing this conversion from 2% to 3% is a much bigger sales gain than growing your repeat visitor from 8% conversion to 9% conversion.  If your first time visitors are not converting well, there can be some low hanging fruit here.

What is the goal of a first time visitor? In your tasting room the goal is obviously for them to try some wine, and ultimately buy a few bottles.

On the web the goal is to either have this visitor buy a bottle or two, or to have them signup for a newsletter, and definately have them come back to your site in the future.

So how do you treat first time visitors? You need to build trust. Having a good "About Us" page. Maybe having a "First Time Visitor" page. How about some testimonials? user generate ratings?

You should also make it easier for first time visitors to buy wine. Shipping is a huge hurdle and typically wineries give shipping discounts on larger quantity orders, but a first time visitor probably only wants to "try" your wine before they commit to a larger quantity order.  You may want to look at First Time Visitor shipping coupons.

How do you convert first time visitors?