An excellent website is both beautifully designed and effective at converting site visitors. But not every site manages to convert – and it’s usually not because your business model isn’t good. In fact, there’s probably nothing wrong with your business model. If you have a clear value-add, target audience, pricing structure, and goal for conversion – you should be raking in new clients left and right.
There are a few reasons your website likely isn’t converting prospects – and nearly all of them are rooted in your web design. Luckily, these are all fixable problems – the key is being aware of them so you can start implementing solutions.
#1: Slow Load Speed
Every second counts. Load speed plays a critical role in your site’s effectiveness. If you take too long, you’ll lose a site visitor. It’s all about providing the best possible user experience – and having website visitors watch a loading circle spin endlessly isn’t a good experience.
Studies have shown that a web page that takes longer than 4 seconds to load has a 25%+ chance of losing that user. In a perfect world, you should be shooting for your website’s HTML load speed to be less than 1.5 seconds according to Hubspot.
#2: Unclear Cues
The last thing you want your site to do is confuse a user. Having unclear cues is one way business owners accidentally fall into this trap. A key example of this is having the way to contact you be unclear. Some businesses don’t have a contact page, or they don’t list multiple methods of contacting them (phone, email, contact form, meeting scheduler) on their site. This makes it significantly less likely that a user will reach out to you – even if they like your services and your messaging.
#3: Overwhelming the User
Having a ton intricate animations, videos, and autoplay ads on your site is overwhelming. Nobody likes being bombarded with a million different things to pay attention to when they’re looking for specific information from your business’s website. Instead, choose a few select focal points for your site. If you want to incorporate video, steer clear of auto-play, and limit yourself to one per page.
In this same vein, it’s important not to overwhelm the user with pop-ups that limit their ability to roam your site. One way that many site builders do this is through an endless stream of pop-ups pushing people toward an opt-in or a phone call scheduler. While having these call-to-actions is a great way to get in touch with people or build your email list, if your pop-ups take up the whole page, limit scrolling ability, or reappear every other five seconds, you’re overwhelming your user in a negative way. Try a more tasteful approach – like requesting an email subscription as they leave the page.
#4: Not Being Mobile Friendly
Well over 50% of all searches performed on Google happen on a mobile device. In fact, it’s estimated that in 2017 almost 85% of users were browsing on a mobile device. If your website isn’t mobile friendly, you’re going to lose that huge audience of consumers who are actively seeking you out.
Having a website that’s designed with mobile in mind can help to set you apart from the competition. It also will help mobile users navigate your site easier – increasing the likelihood that they’ll contact you, or fulfill the call to action you have on your website.
#5: Having Stale or Buried Content
The content on your website is a large part of what draws people in. If you’ve buried content by not having a clear site map, or your content is notably stale, people will take notice. For example, if you have a blog that hasn’t been updated in three years – that doesn’t look great.
If you have content that’s evergreen – just a bit dated, consider removing any time stamps from the posts. This will refocus your users on the actual content itself, not the fact that it was published in June of 2013.
To make your content more accessible, make sure that people can find what they’re looking for. You can do this with a clear and distinct header menu, an additional footer menu, and internal linking.
Your Site Deserves To Be Seen
There are a wide range of small errors you could make when setting up your website – all of which could harm your search ranking, the user experience you provide, or the amount of prospects your website converts. So, why not work with a team of professionals?
Your website is presenting your business to the world – it’s your own corner of internet real estate. And, frankly, your business deserves to be seen for the wonderful entity it is. A good design team will help to build a site that increases the amount of time people spend on pages, and the number of users who follow through to contact you, schedule a meeting, or purchase a product.
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