– Bryan Eisenberg, author of Call to Action
Your website is an online representation of your business and surely you wouldn’t want leads to get turned off at the first glance. If traffic to lead conversion is a problem for you, these mistakes might be the culprits:
1. High page load time
If your website pages take ages to load, trust me, most of your traffic would just bounce off.
For instance, if you are an ecommerce business and your product pages take years to load, you probably just lost a sale.
I’ll give you another example. Recently I was comparing two software systems for a marketing report. I took a trial of both. One of them had a really slow page load time. That right there was a big negative for me and I would assume for all marketers.
There are a number of elements that can be fixed to reduce the page load time:
- Choose an appropriate hosting plan
- Reduce the number of external resources required to fetch data
- Reduce the number of redirects
- Reduce image size (tools like Smush It would help)
- Get rid of broken links (Use BrokenLinkChecker and W3C’s Link Checker to find them)
Also do check out 5 Ways Your Site Speed Kills Conversion (and How to Fix It)
2. Unnavigable structure
A website with too many tabs, a lot of writing, and multiple dropdowns would create a lot of clutter and confusion on the website. This is what you can do to avoid that:
- Don’t have generic navigation labels
- Place the most important items towards the beginning or the end
- Have ample white spaces
- Keep a brief copy
- Avoid dropdowns if you can
- Reduce the clutter
- Use UserTesting to get real users to test your website structure
3. Wrong message and positioning
Bad copy can even make even the most relevant traffic bounce off. Moreover, it’s not just the copy that one should take into consideration; it’s how and where you position it that makes a difference. Here are a few tips that you could implement straightaway.
- Copy must strike a chord with your prospects
- Keep your buyers’ persona in mind while creating the copy
- Keep the copy updated – Review website copy at least every 6 months if not sooner
4. Low credibility
For me, this is a really important factor, especially if it’s a small or medium-sized business. Some sort of customer feedback or verified logo from a credible source would go a long way in establishing credibility for the business.
I personally get excited when I see logos of big brands on certain business websites. It automatically establishes some credibility in my eyes. Good testimonials from customers, especially for those in education, health and wellness, and hospitality businesses, would definitely make a difference in terms of traffic to lead conversion. I read as many reviews/testimonials I can before I invest in such services.
To build credibility on your website, here are a few things you could do:
- Add customer logos
- Have customer testimonials in text/video format
- Provide some kind of money back guarantee
- Get verified by some authority/independent party
5. Poorly mapped conversion paths, wrong offers & CTAs
A CTA would make it or break it, as far as website conversions go. The best way to figure out what’s working and what’s not is to try different things – the color, position on the site, offer, copy, etc. Not just that, if you are offering a specific freebie, make sure the lead gets that specific freebie.
For instance, if you have a real estate website and you are offering a free real estate buying guide in the form of an e-book, make sure you give that once the lead fills the form. If you have an education business and you are offering ‘last 10 years’ kind of question paper, see that the student gets it once he / she fills the form.
This is what you need to look at if you think there is a problem with your conversion paths and CTAs:
- Review your existing conversion paths, CTAs, and Offers
- Find the problem points, and
- Map out more logical conversion paths.
There are the most common mistakes marketers make that are probably killing your website conversions. Fix this and a lot can change in terms of website conversions. What conversions mistakes can you admit to have made?
