Why your website isn’t converting
There’s nothing worse than investing in a website that you love but yet doesn’t convert. The truth is your clients won’t actually tell you what they want or what they can’t use on your site they just leave. So how do you make sure your site is appealing and engaging to users?
1. They just don’t get it. One of the biggest mistakes on websites is trying to be too arty or techy. Your clients are coming to your site because they have a problem or a need that they are hoping you can address or fix. Sure in some cases such as high end fashion houses or artists websites you can take liberties and make the website all about the creative. Use you web design as the selling point, but in most cases, especially service based businesses, you need to quickly – within a few seconds – sell exactly what you are offering and how that will help your clients. This brings us to the next point – quickly selling your offering. Have you ever been to a website where the opening line is something like ‘we are client orientated facilitated specialists in technical etc ….’ What? You read all of this to find out they are bookkeepers! Your clients don’t won’t to feel stupid or uneducated, if you are a bookkeeper then say ‘we are bookkeepers”! Over techy explanations that don’t make sense will just drive your users away
2. They need to grab the sunglasses. I am yet to find a website that has a reason for fluro, just saying! But seriously, overly loud colours and the use of way too many clashing colours will drive customers away. When you are getting your website designed, take the advice of the graphic designer. You may have some ideas in your head but if the designer gives you alternative advice, remember they do this day in and day out and they know what works so trust that they have your best interest in mind.
3. Home but confused. If you manage to get someone to click a link and land on your site that’s half the battle, but get someone to your home page who doesn’t know how to use your site or where to click, and there goes the battle. You have lost. It’s always tricky if you have a lot of information you want to provide to a client as to how to make that work on your website. When you are getting your site developed your web developer will have clear ideas on how the information should be presented for optimum user experience.
4. They don’t want you to know everything. Especially if you are selling products, the last things a user wants to do is spend half an hour registering or filling out a form to buy a product. Make sure your checkout process is as streamlined and quick as possible and a user doesn’t have to tell you their life story in order to purchase from you!
5. You need a magnifying glass. There is nothing wrong with using beautiful typography on your site but when it comes to the content light grey size 8 font means the majority of us will struggle to read the site’s content and will mean we bounce from the site. Make sure you don’t compromise usability for design.
6. Get help with images. A slow site is a definite way to ensure a user leaves your site straight away. A big mistake made with websites is that people upload images directly from their camera without any optimisation for the web. Get help from your graphic designer with your images or there are many free tools online you can use such as https://www.webresizer.com/ and https://www.smushit.com/ysmush.it/
7. Fake, stock photography. If you are a small accounting firm, believe it or not people don’t want to see a bunch of picture perfect models looking over pretend paperwork. Your clients want to see real images, or icons images that tell a story. There’s nothing wrong with using beautiful stock imagery for backgrounds and to evoke emotion on a website but do your users really want to see a bunch off perfect, models who don’t really represent your business and core values?
8. You beat the spammers but annoy customers. One thing that can really kill the opportunity for a customer to connect with you is if they go to grab your contact details and all they can find is a generic contact form. Sure you might think that’s a great idea to have a form with CAPTCHA but what about if someone really wants to just know how to phone you or see where you are located? Don’t forget to show people you want to be contacted and make it easy for them.
9. Keyword dumping. Sure, we all need to do our best to compete in the digital space, but if you are following white hat practices there should be no reason why your copy is all about keyword dumping rather than helpful and insightful copy written for your customers. If you are still keyword dumping and adding 100 links in your footer with no real relevance, realise Google will not be happy with you and either will your customers
10. Forget you, its them. When you do right copy for your website, remember your customers want to know what you offer but most importantly how it’s going to help them. So remember it’s all about them and not you. Steer away from using “ we do this” and “we do that” too much in your site and stick to telling them how you are going to help them.
If you have a site that’s not converting and you want to chat about how you can improve your conversions, give us a call today for a free consultation on 1300 858 495
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