It’s no secret that a website has become instrumental in promoting your business and locking down clients. When a consumer is in need of a product, conducting a Google search and scanning the resulting websites is often how they decide who they will buy from. If you find yourself frustrated because your website is getting traffic but very little of that traffic is converting to sales, it may be time to evaluate your web presence and make sure these common mistakes aren’t hindering your business.
- Information Is Difficult to Find: Cody Ray Miller, founder of Freedom Online Team, has an excellent post about why the average internet user will only stay on a new site for 59 seconds. To summarize: If users can’t find what they’re looking for in that time, they will click away and you’ve lost a potential sale. To combat this, make sure the majority of relevant information about what your product is and who you are is easily viewable on your homepage. Also make sure instructions on how to contact you and how to order your product are clear, direct and easily viewable from your homepage.
- There Are Little to No Visuals: Increasingly, marketing is more and more visual. The popularity of social apps like Instagram and Snapchat have trained consumers to expect quick and snappy visuals and very little text. If your website consists mostly of rows and rows of unbroken text, your audience is likely to feel overwhelmed or a sense that finding out more about your product is too much work. Try re-designing your website with bigger, sharper and frequent visuals.
- Your Checkout Process Isn’t Convenient: E-commerce has resulted in a consumer base that expects quick and easy checkout methods. If your website hosts a checkout process that is clunky or inconvenient, your consumers will lose patience and leave. Make quick and easy methods such as PayPal available so that your consumers won’t grow frustrated.
- Links Are Broken: Broken links are death to websites. Periodically check and see that all links in your website are functional and up to date, especially links that lead to products and information.
- There’s Not Enough Opportunity to Convert: Make it easy for your website visitors to purchase your product or service. I repeatedly tell clients how important it is to have a call to action on your websites landing pages. In the above-mentioned 59 seconds, the average user will be spending on your site, very few will go digging to find out how to spend their money. Make it easy for them by providing as many opportunities to convert a sale as possible.
- You’re Trying to Do Too Much: Keep your web content focused on your primary product or service. Erika Napoletano, columnist for American Express OPEN Forum, offers a lot of great advice on how to communicate clearly in business. Don’t confuse potential clients by offering too many conflicting services that will result in them being unclear about what you’re actually selling.
- You’re Attracting the Wrong Audience: Due to your keywords and website domain, it’s possible that your SEO is simply attracting the wrong audience for your product or service. Doing an overhaul on your keyword research, search engine optimization and marketing tactics may be in order to ensure you are able to get in front of the audience you are actually targeting.
It may take some trial and error to discover what is keeping your web traffic from converting, but the resulting sales will be well worth the effort of investigating the problem.
Jason Kulpa is the CEO of UE, based in San Diego, a performance-based provider of Internet marketing technology and customer acquisition solutions.