Conversion Killers: Why Your Website Isn’t Working as Hard as You Are

When you’ve put time, money and effort into building a business website – whether you handled the design and development yourself, or handed things over to the experts – you want it to work. This doesn’t just mean being branded, packed full of your services or products, and attracting a fair amount of traffic. You want it to bring in leads and sales, converting browsing users into loyal and paying customers. It’s not enough to have a website that looks great. Though this reflects positively on your business as a whole – and having an unprofessional, poorly made website is out of the question – it’s not going to work hard enough unless it sells what you have to offer. If that’s not happening, something has to change.

Below, we’ve taken a look at the biggest website conversion killers. If your website is guilty of any of these, it could be sending potential customers running to your competitors.

Website Conversion Killers to Avoid

Your Navigation is Too Confusing If people can’t find what they’re looking for quickly, they’re unlikely to stick around. They don’t want to spend their time working out how to get to a specific page, or finding themselves lost amongst an endless list of products or services. A cluttered menu or unclear website structure creates frustration and kills conversions. Instead, simplify your main navigation. Use clear, intuitive labels – for example, use ‘Services’ instead of ‘What We Do’ as it’s a lot clearer what’s on the page – and guide users from page to page using obvious call-to-actions (CTAs) and a logical page flow. Users expect to find what they’re looking for within seconds.

You’re Missing CTAs If you’re missing CTAs – or if the ones you have are weak – you could be sending potential leads elsewhere. When someone arrives on your website, they need direction. They need to know what to click, when and why. They don’t just want to see the phrase ‘Click Here,’ as this doesn’t tell them why they’re clicking or where the page will take them. Website users want clear CTAs like ‘Book a Free Quote’ or ‘Sign Up to Our Newsletter’ they don’t have to think twice about. Place CTAs throughout your website and use contrasting colours to make them stand out. After all, they’re useless if no one can see them.

Your Website Has a Slow Load Speed If you’ve ever ended up on a website that’s slow to load, you’ll know how much of a turn-off it can be. In fact, few things drive potential customers away faster than a slow, sluggish website. If your website takes more than a few seconds to load, you’re going to be losing visitors before they even see what you have to offer. Make sure that your website is optimised to load as quickly as possible, which means using a reliable hosting service, optimising images and compressing files. Remember, the first few seconds really do count when someone clicks on your website.

There’s a Lack of Trust Signals If your website looks unpolished, unprofessional or if it doesn’t offer social proof, new visitors and potential customers won’t feel confident enough to engage with your business. There are a lot of competitor businesses out there, and you need to show people that you’re the brand they can trust. You can build trust by adding testimonials, reviews and client logos. Your website design needs to look professional, mobile-friendly and aligned with the industry that you’re in. For example, if you’re offering legal services or business advice, the design of your website needs to showcase your expertise, trust and authority within the industry.

Your Value Proposition is Unclear With so much competition out there, you need to share what makes you different. Think about why someone should buy from you instead of a competitor, and make sure your website conveys that. If your homepage doesn’t clearly communicate your unique selling points and value, people will head elsewhere. Use strong headings to communicate your core value instantly, ensuring everyone can see it the moment they arrive on the website. Highlight the benefits of working with you and focus your messaging on how you can solve the visitor’s problem.

There’s No Lead Capture Strategy You can’t convert visitors if you’re not collecting their information and actively trying to capture them as a lead. If your only lead capture strategy is to have ‘Call Us’ on every page, you’re going to miss out. There’s a group of people who fall between being ready to make a purchase and those who are never going to be ready. There’s a group that are likely to convert, just not now. They might want more information, or they might want time to weigh up their options. To ensure you capture their information, offer checklists, ebooks or free tools in exchange for email addresses. You can then set up automated follow-up emails to nurture those leads, converting them further down the line.

Your Website Design Isn’t Mobile-Friendly With the rise of smartphones and tablets, more and more people are accessing the web via mobile devices. They’re not sitting at a desktop computer and logging on, they’re browsing on-the-go, from wherever they are. This means that if your website isn’t mobile-friendly, a lot of your traffic will immediately head elsewhere when they realise things aren’t loading correctly because of their screen size. It’s important to use a responsive design and test your website on multiple devices and browsers, ensuring it works equally well regardless of where it’s being used.

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