Are you having trouble getting website visitors to convert into customers? You're not alone. Many businesses make common website mistakes that hurt their website's conversion rate and, ultimately, their bottom line.
Web designers have a lot of creativity on their side. But a website that's all design and no substance isn't going to do much for your business.
Your website is a powerful marketing tool, and it should be treated as such.
Common website mistakes that could be turning visitors away
Fortunately, most of these mistakes can be easily fixed. You can dramatically improve your conversion rates by assessing your site and making the necessary changes.
With some minor improvements, you can immediately start seeing better performance from your site in terms of leads and sales. Read on to find out what they are!
Not having a clear purpose or goal
Every website should have a clear purpose or goal. Without one, it's challenging to know what content to include, leading to a website all over the place and confusing visitors.
Having a well-articulated strategy helps your website project succeed. Taking the time to think about each part of your plan and how it might be carried out will help you avoid website mistakes and get closer to your goals.
Before a single line of code is written or a design element is created, take the time to determine the purpose of your website. Once you know what it is, everything else will fall into place.
Some common website goals include:
– Generating leads or sales
– Increasing brand awareness
– Showcasing products or services
– Educating visitors
– Providing customer support
Once you know your website's purpose, make sure it's clear to everyone who visits it. Every page on your site should contribute to achieving that goal somehow.
When you take the time to figure out what you want your website to achieve, it's easier to make sure every element on your site supports that goal.
If you're unsure about your website's purpose, start by looking at your business goals. What do you want your website to help you achieve? Once you understand that, determine what kind of content and functionality will best support those goals.
Some website purposes are more complex than others. If you're having trouble narrowing down your website's purpose, try these exercises:
- Write down the top three things you want your website to accomplish.
- Create a “customer journey map” that outlines the steps someone would take on your site from beginning to end.
- Look at other websites in your industry and see how they've structured their content and design to achieve similar goals.
Planning is the key to success when it comes to website design. By taking the time to figure out what you want your website to achieve, you can avoid making common website mistakes that will hurt your conversion rate.
When you have a clear website purpose, it's much easier to create a website that meets the needs of both your business and visitors.
A web design brief covering the goals, scope, and timeline from the beginning can help prevent miscommunication and keep everyone on track.
If you want help developing a website that meets the demands of your company, book a website planning workshop with us. We'll work with you to figure out what you're looking for and develop a strategy to meet your goals.
A cluttered or confusing website design
Your website should be easy to navigate and understand, with a clear information hierarchy.
If your website is challenging to use, visitors will likely leave without taking the time to figure it out. Ensure your website design is clean and straightforward so visitors can easily find what they're looking for.
Some tips for creating a user-friendly website design include:
– Using plenty of white space
– Organising information using clear headers and subheaders
– Creating easy-to-use navigation menus
– Keeping pages concise
– Using images and videos sparingly
– Including calls to action
Your website's design should be an extension of your brand. If your brand is fun and approachable, your website should reflect that. If it's more formal, your website should convey that as well.
No matter what design you choose, make sure it's consistent across all pages on your website. This will help create a cohesive experience for visitors and make it easy for them to find the information they need.
A website that's easy to use is more likely to convert visitors into leads or customers. By taking the time to create a user-friendly website design, you can improve your website's performance and increase conversions.
If you're unsure where to start with your website design, consider working with a web designer or looking at website templates.
Creating a website design that's both user-friendly and on-brand can be challenging, but it's worth the effort. By taking the time to plan and design your website with your visitors in mind, you can create an experience that will help you achieve your business goals.
Lack of solid calls to action
What do you want visitors to do when they come to your website?
Your website should have a clear call to action (CTA) on every page. A CTA is a statement or button that encourages visitors to take a specific action, such as signing up for your email list, scheduling a consultation, or making a purchase.
Your website's CTAs should be:
– Relevant to the page content
– Visible and easy to find
– Written in persuasive language
– Designed to stand out from the rest of the page
If you're unsure what CTAs would work best for your website, consider running A/B tests to see which performs best.
Your website's calls to action are crucial to driving conversions. Including relevant and persuasive CTAs on every page can encourage visitors to take the next step in your sales funnel.
When designing your website's CTAs, keep your business goals in mind. What do you want visitors to do when they come to your website? By aligning your CTAs with your goals, you can create a more effective website that drives results. This is why a straightforward website brief is essential before you start building your website.
Boring website copy
Compelling copy is essential to keeping visitors engaged with your website.
Your website copy should be:
– Relevant to your audience
– Concise and easy to read
– Compelling and persuasive
– Free of grammar and spelling errors
Including testimonials, case studies, or customer stories on your website can also be helpful in convincing visitors to take action. Sharing real examples of how you've helped others achieve their goals can show prospects what you're capable of and encourage them to work with you.
An about page is another critical component of compelling website copy. This is where you can share your story, highlight your team's qualifications, and give visitors a sense of what it would be like to work with you.
Your website's copy plays a critical role in driving conversions. By crafting compelling copy relevant to your audience, you can keep visitors engaged and encourage them to take action.
When writing website copy, keep your business goals in mind. What do you want visitors to do when they come to your website? Keep this in mind as you write and design your website's content. This will help ensure that everything on your website works together to achieve your desired outcome.
If you're unsure where to start with your website copy, consider working with a freelance copywriter. They can help you capture your brand voice and create content designed to convert.
Take a look at The Word Man, Dave Harland. Dave's ability to capture the essence of a brand in website copy is undeniable.
Website copy is an integral part of your website design. By taking the time to write compelling copy, you can improve your website's engagement and conversion rates.
Not enough (or any) customer testimonials or reviews
Customer testimonials and reviews are essential for building trust with website visitors. Just look at Amazon. They're known for their customer reviews, which has helped them become one of the largest e-commerce companies in the world.
Customer testimonials and reviews can:
– Boost website engagement
– Improve website conversion rates
– Increase SEO rankings
– Help you build social proof
If you don't have any customer testimonials on your website, ask your happiest customers if they would be willing to write a review or provide a testimonial. You can also offer an incentive to sweeten the deal, such as a discount on their next purchase. If you have a lot of positive reviews and testimonials, consider featuring them prominently on your website or creating a dedicated testimonials page.
When potential customers see that others have had a positive experience working with you, they're more likely to be convinced to do business with you.
Ensure you include customer testimonials, reviews, and social proof like customer logos on your website. If you have any media mentions or awards, those can also be included here.
Outdated information
Your website should always be up-to-date with the latest information about your products, services, team, and company.
If you've made any changes to your offerings, update your website accordingly. This includes adding or removing products and services, updating pricing information, and changing team members or company leadership.
Suppose you're not regularly updating your website content. In that case, you're missing out on an opportunity to engage with website visitors and improve your search engine optimisation.
Outdated website content can be a significant turn-off for website visitors. Review your website regularly and make updates as needed. This will help ensure that website visitors have a positive experience and can easily find the information they're looking for.
Broken links
Broken links are links on your website that lead to pages that no longer exist. This can happen if you change the URL of a page on your website or delete a page entirely. When someone clicks on a broken link, they'll be taken to a 404 error page.
Broken links are frustrating for website visitors and damage your SEO. They create a poor user experience and can hurt your website's ranking in search results.
To avoid broken links, check all the links on your website to ensure they're working correctly. You can use a tool like Screaming Frog's SEO Spider, Broken Link Checker by Ahrefs or Dead Link Checker to help with this. If you find any broken links, update or remove them as soon as possible.
In addition to checking your website's links, you should also regularly check your website's sitemap. A sitemap is a file that lists all the pages on your website. This helps search engines index your website and can help prevent broken links.
Slow loading pages
A slow website is a major website no-no. In today's fast-paced world, website visitors expect websites to load quickly. If your website takes more than a few seconds to load, you're at risk of losing website visitors before they even have a chance to see what you have to offer.
A slow website can also hurt your SEO. Google uses page speed as a ranking factor, so if your website is slow, you will be penalised in search results.
To improve your website's page speed, start by compressing all images on your website. You can also use a tool like Short Pixel to cache your website and improve loading times.
In addition to compressing images and caching your website, improve page speed by reducing the number of plugins you're using and minifying your website's code.
Ready-made WordPress themes from sites like Themeforest are often loaded with unneeded features and bloated code. If you're using a ready-made theme, consider switching to a lighter-weight theme optimised for speed.
Your host also affects the speed of your website. If you're on a shared host, consider upgrading to a VPS or dedicated server. This will give you more resources and can help improve your website's speed.
Mobile unfriendliness
No longer considered a “nice to have”, a mobile-friendly website is now a necessity. Google's mobile-first indexing means that your website's mobile version will be used to determine your website's ranking in search results.
However, currently, there are no reliable fresh stats on the exact number of mobile-friendly websites on the Internet.
In April 2018, Canonicalized tested the top 1 million websites worldwide for mobile-friendliness. They found that nearly one-quarter of the world's top one million websites were not mobile-friendly, with 23.83% failing Google's Mobile-Friendly Test.
To ensure your website is mobile-friendly, check Google's Mobile-Friendly Test. This tool will tell you if your website is mobile-friendly and suggest how to improve it.
Poor SEO optimisation
If you want your website to be found by potential website visitors, you need to make sure it's optimised for search engines. This process is called SEO (Search Engine Optimisation).
Many factors contribute to good SEO, including website content, design, speed, and more. Google's SEO Starter Guide is an excellent resource for beginners and covers all SEO basics.
Google frequently changes its algorithm (the formula used to rank websites in search results). While there are over 200 ranking factors, some things you should always do to optimise your website for search engines are:
– Use keyword-rich titles and descriptions
– Optimise website images with keywords
– Use keyword-rich alt text for images
– Create fresh, original content regularly
– Promote your website on social media
SEO is an ongoing process, so it's essential to check your website's performance regularly.
Google's recent Helpful Content Update aims to serve website visitors with helpful, practical, and informative content. This means website owners must create fresh, original content relevant to their audience.
Whether new to SEO or a veteran, writing for your target audience will always be more impactful than search engines. Google's long-standing advice and webmaster guidelines emphasise the importance of creating content for people, not search engines.
Stuffing keywords into your website content is an outdated SEO tactic and can hurt your website's ranking. Not only is keyword stuffing considered spammy by Google, but it also makes for a terrible user experience.
Try to answer yes to these questions when creating content, and you should be on the right track to SEO success:
- Would your business or site's target audience find the content valuable if they heard it from you directly?
- Is your content coming from a place of expertise and authority? For example, does it come from personal experience using a product or service or physically visiting a location?
- After reading your content, will someone feel they have learned enough to help them achieve their goal?
In Summary
You've read about the ten most common website mistakes that can cost you leads and sales. But don't worry – these are all easily fixable problems. If you need help getting your website up to speed (so to speak), our team of experts is here to assist you.
We can look at your site and identify the areas where it could perform better. From there, we can work with you to make the necessary changes so that your website is driving conversions instead of turning visitors away. Ready to get started? Get in touch today for a free consultation.
