Top 5 Reasons Customers Are Leaving Your Dispensary Website

Discover why your website isn’t performing as well as you want it to.

Whether you sell online, in person, or both, your dispensary website matters. If traffic drops off or bounce rates skyrocket, this is a sign people aren’t sticking around to check out your shop.

To help you figure out what’s wrong, here are the top five reasons customers leave your website. Plus, get expert tips on how to fix each problem along the way.

1. You host your dispensary menu somewhere else

Third-party apps like Leafly, WeedMaps, and Eaze are smart places to host your dispensary menu because they have:

• • Plenty of downloads and traffic
  • Helpful content that users want to read
  • Your target audience’s attention

Cannabis ecommerce apps like this are a no-brainer.

But third-party cannabis ecommerce sites shouldn’t be the only place customers can find your goods. You have to host your own menu on your own website.

Why your dispensary’s menu is important:

Cannabis apps make it easy to connect with new customers. But it’s up to you to keep those relationships alive. And it’s hard to build trust with customers when they go to other apps for answers, instead of to you.

In short, when customers can shop right on your website, it’s easier to reinforce your dispensary’s role as an expert resource.

Dispensary menu pro tips:

• • Make sure your dispensary menu is easy to find (no more than one click from the homepage) and always keep it updated
  • Don’t post a PDF because Google can’t read and index the document
  • Instead, post your menu’s text to help with SEO

2. Your dispensary website is confusing

Imagine you’re trying out a new grocery store. You walk inside and you can’t find anything. The shelves aren’t organized in a way that makes sense. And when you’re ready to check out, you can’t find the cash registers.

What happens next? Chances are you abandon your cart and you never come back.

This is exactly what happens when customers use confusing websites. Here are some signs that your dispensary website is problematic:

• • Complicated menu systems
  • Sidebars that don’t provide value
  • Too many advertisements (for example, if you use Google AdSense)
  • Busy website design
  • No clear conversion points

Why dispensary websites have to be easy to use:

People are less likely to do something if they aren’t good at it. This is because we like to feel that we’re competent and we can complete tasks on our own. And it’s frustrating when we don’t feel this way.

As new dispensaries pop up every day, consumers have more choices. This means your dispensary website has to compete with everyone else’s. If it’s easier for a customer to:

1. 1. Give up on figuring out your website
   2. Find a new dispensary
   3. Buy another dispensary’s product instead

Then it’s time to rethink your website’s usability.

Dispensary website pro tips:

• • Review Google Analytics (or any other traffic app) to find your dispensary website’s entry and exit points
  • Make it easy for customers to accomplish goals (e.g. add items to a cart or contact the shop to talk with an expert)
  • Consider redesigning your website with a user-centric developer with experience creating cannabis websites.

3. Your cannabis content strategy needs some help

Customers want content. They want to know how your product can help them solve a problem.

And customers want content that’s well-written, organized, and easy to find. If your dispensary doesn’t have a blog, consider setting one up. And if you have one but it’s not converting, think about the content you’re posting and ask yourself questions like:

• • Does my content solve a problem or answer a question?
  • Is my content relevant to my target audience?
  • Are my articles tagged and categorized in a logical way?
  • Is the blog easy to find on my dispensary website?
  • Is each piece of content optimized for a relevant keyword?

If you answered “yes” to each question, you’ve got a leg up. But if you answered “no” to any of them, you’ve got some work to do.

Why dispensary content is important:

Content serves more than one purpose. It helps you rank in search engines (SEO). It builds trust with your customers. And it educates potential customers about your dispensary.

Dispensary content pro tips:

• • Produce content that’s valuable. It has to solve a problem or answer a question
  • Make sure each piece of content is organized and well-written
  • Work with dispensary SEO and content marketing professionals to make sure your blog is up to snuff

4. You have too many (or too few) conversion points

A conversion point is a spot on your website where a customer completes a desired action. Here are some common conversion points for dispensaries:

• • A customer places an online order
  • A customer signs up for your monthly email newsletters
  • A customer opts into SMS marketing
  • A customer fills out your contact form
  • A customer writes a positive online review of your dispensary

Keep in mind that you can (and should) have more than one type of conversion. But if you have too many conversion points, users can’t prioritize. And if you have too few, users get lost. Here’s an example of each:

Too many conversion points:

Let’s say your homepage has a dozen calls-to-action (CTA). They aren’t clearly organized and there are multiples of each type.

How do users know which action to take first? You have to show them. Organize actions into a hierarchy based on what you know about your customers.

For example, do most customers shop online? If they do, your first CTA could point them to your menu. But if they shop in person, your first CTA could point them toward a contact info page (or form).

Too few conversion points:

Now let’s say your homepage has no CTAs. The page is just text and photos. There’s nothing to interact with or accomplish.

What are users supposed to do? Again, you have to show them. First, identify what users can accomplish. Then, organize those actions in a way that makes the most sense to your customers.

Why conversion points are important:

Conversions are actions that have been successfully completed. This could be a sale. Or a form submission. Or an email newsletter sign-up. Whatever a conversion looks like to your dispensary, you have to make it easy for the customer to accomplish the task because:

• • You can’t get conversions if customers are confused
  • You can’t get conversions if customers can’t take action

Dispensary conversion point pro tips:

• • Build an interface that immediately highlights what you can do for your customers
  • Organize CTAs into a hierarchy that matches your customer’s priorities
  • Use Google Analytics or other data platforms to measure conversion success

5. Your mobile website doesn’t compete

Let’s say your dispensary website is perfect. Your CTAs are in order. You have killer content. Your sales copy is on point.

But when you check your website on a smartphone, it’s a hot mess. The contact form doesn’t work. Half the page cuts off. The buttons are too small. So on and so on.

In short, mobile matters. And it matters a lot.

Everyone has a smartphone and customers use mobile devices to source and buy cannabis online. If your mobile website isn’t fast enough or if it flat out doesn’t work, customers will leave to find another dispensary.

Why mobile dispensary websites are important:

Roughly 97% of Americans own a cellphone and 92% of us own a smartphone. More than 60% of paid Google search clicks were on mobile in 2018, and that number keeps increasing each year. Even more, apps like WeedMaps have more than 250k monthly downloads.

People love smartphones, and they love using them to find new things online. If your dispensary website isn’t optimized for mobile, you’re actively losing customers.

Dispensary mobile website pro tips:

• • Always preview new website pages or functionality on mobile before you launch
  • Research and install plug-ins or apps that speed up your website
  • Partner with developers who optimize dispensary websites for mobile devices

Final thoughts: How to optimize a dispensary website

You’ve taken a deep dive into the top reasons people leave dispensary websites. Here are the key points you learned:

1. 1. Host your dispensary’s menu on third-party apps and your own website
   2. Clean up your website’s usability
   3. Invest in a strong SEO and content marketing strategy
   4. Organize your CTAs into an organized hierarchy
   5. Make sure your mobile website works and it’s fast

Want more expert tips for your dispensary? Get in touch with the cannabis dispensary professionals at Clutch. We’re here to help.