One lesson I've learned as a consultant is to prequalify potential clients before I invest a lot of time with them.
There are specific things I've noticed in my best clients that I look for with new clients.
If someone doesn't have these qualities or fail the qualification in another way, I gracefully decline working with them.
It might sound extreme but it's needed.
Time is my most limited resource and I can only work with a few clients every year. It's in my best interest to hold clients to the highest standards so both of us can be successful.
Your store should do the same. Prequalify your traffic.
Since you're selling a product, you can handle a much higher volume than I can. 1,000 or 1,000,000 times more.
You still should be picky and work with only the best customers. Or at least the good and great customers.
The customers you don't pass your qualification will be the ones who pester your customer service, demand refunds, and in-general are a pain in the ass to work with.
There are a lot of ways you can prequalify customers. Your pricing strategy, branding, and market position are three strategic ones.
Another way is to change how your store's products are listed in the search results.
If your store's products are listed with a price of $99 in the search results, next to competitors with a price of $7 and nothing at all, you're going to look expensive. If you're selling a premium product, that's exactly how you want to look.
You're prequalifying customers before they even click on your store. What you give up in traffic by scaring away the bottom rung customers, you'll make up in sales with the qualified, higher quality customers.
To do this, first you need to install JSON-LD for SEO so Google can see your store's product data.
Then just wait until the bottom rung customers stop coming to your store.
Working with the best,
Eric Davis