Should I Invest in Facebook Ads or my Website

We recently got asked this question by one of our Ignitor students and it was such a good one I wanted to share it with you.

“Should I spend money on updating my website or use that money for Facebook ads?”

Such a great question. And the answer to this question really depends on a few important factors. There is not a blanket answer.

If you want to sell more on your online store there are simply 3 ways to do this:

1. Increase the number of people coming to your website (traffic)
2. Increase the number of people buying from your website (conversion)
3. Increase how much they spend at the checkout (order value)

So, should you invest in Facebook Ads or your website?

If you have lots of traffic coming to your website and no one is buying, then you need to improve the conversation rate of your website.

If you don’t have anyone coming to your site, then you really need to get some traffic to your website to see if it converts or not.

If you have traffic but aren’t getting any sales:

Ok, if you’re starting with lots of traffic and no conversion, there could be 2 issues.

1. The wrong people coming to your site
2. Your website needs to be improved and optimised for conversion

Have a look at your google analytics and see where your traffic is coming from. If you’re confident that you’re attracting the right people to your site but they aren’t buying, then yep, it’s time to improve your site.

A good conversion rate in eCommerce is around 3%. If yours is lower than this you can improve your conversion rate in a couple of ways:

First, let’s look at 5 behind the scenes tech checks to run on your website to make sure you’re optimised for conversion rate. If you need to increase your conversion rate start by running these 5 tech checks.

Next, you want to make sure that when people hit your site they have a great user experience. Let’s look at 5 onsite must-haves your online store needs to make sure you’re optimised for conversion rate.

If you need more people to come to your site:

Typically a good conversion rate is 3%, but if you don’t have anyone coming to your site you won’t be able to draw any conclusions on your conversion rate. If you have a really high conversion rate but hardly anyone is visiting your site, chances are your site isn’t getting the exposure it needs to grow. Your mum buying your products doesn’t count. A data set of less than 1000 unique visitors per month, you need more traffic.

What we recommend here is that you get your website as ready for traffic as possible yourself. Shopify allows you to setup your online store quickly, cheaply and you don’t need any web development skills. Don’t spend thousands of dollars building a fancy schmancy online store. Start with the minimum viable product.

Then, run traffic to your site and see if it converts.

As we always say in our program, until you test, it’s just a guess. So don’t worry about getting your site perfect, get it out to market and let your customers tell you if it’s working or not.

Remember, your website is not a tattoo

So start where you are.

If you have less than 1000 visitors per month, spend your money getting people to your site and pay attention to what the data is telling you. You can learn how to get more people to your site in our course eComm Ignitor.

If you have more than 1000% people per month and your conversion rate is less than 3%, spend your time (and possibly money) improving your conversion rate. We teach this in our eComm Ignitor program. We can do a website audit for you and highlight exactly what you need to improve.

Written by Megan Winter

Megan is an award-winning marketer and has worked with some of the fastest-growing eCommerce brands in the world.

Megan loves helping ethically-produced, heart-centred, soul-driven online store owners to make more income and achieve more impact.