A poorly designed website can break a business just as surely as a well-considered site can transform a business’s fortunes online. If you’re not getting as many leads online as you should, or are finding it tough to make sales, it could be that your website has become more of a liability than an asset.
In a previous article we looked at the main reasons why websites underperform – including slow loading speed, confusing navigation etc – either discouraging visitors from clicking on your site to begin with, or making a swift exit.
Assuming for now that these performance issues are addressed or do not apply to your website, we would like to look in more detail at the specific weak points that could be losing you leads – and how to strengthen these key areas.
What are your website’s weak points?
1. Too Much Information
The key to optimising your website for conversions is to make your content as accessible as possible, with clearly defined arguments and well-organised information that can be accessed quickly by visitors without much effort. Unfortunately, this requirement runs counter to the trend in website design towards longer and far more detailed webpages, seemingly endlessly scrolling from one issue to the next.
While your web content should be informative and detailed, there is a danger of providing too much information on individual pages. Visitors can feel overwhelmed or, at best, that they need to take their time to understand all the content they are presented with – deterring enquiries and scaring away many potential customers.
The solution? Keep each page on your website strictly focused on one service, one argument, or one product category. If you have a lot to say, break your content down into multiple pages, with a top-level page summarising the subject, and various subpages (and blog posts) that explore elements of the category in further detail. This makes it easier to optimise individual pages for one or two keywords, leading to greater search visibility, too.
2. Tab Overload
As a website owner, you want to make the user experience of visiting your website as intuitive, straightforward, and uncomplicated as possible. A big part of this is not clogging your visitors’ web browsers down with a succession of new tabs and pop-up windows. When a visitor navigates around your site, unless you have good reason to do otherwise, have the site open the new page in the same browser tab. Exceptions to this rule are checkout pages, but in most other circumstances, new tabs direct visitors away from your site by making it harder to navigate back to the previous page. Visitors become more likely to leave your site in frustration before making contact.
3. Difficult To Contact You
It may seem like an obvious point, but it is essential to provide your website visitors with a clear and easy means of contacting you. Many websites still use a single contact page as their point of contact, deterring enquiries from any other page.
Others force their visitors to jump through hoops before they can make contact – e.g. by making them sign up for an account, provide too many irrelevant personal details, or wade through complicated CAPTCHA processes to prove they’re not robots. What this does is create barriers that the customer needs to traverse before they can access the information they need, and many won’t stick around to do so.
4. No Need To Contact You
A Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) page is a treasure trove of information for potential customers and can attract website visitors by addressing specific search queries relating to your products and services on Google. However, don’t give away too much in your FAQs page – the point being, remember, to encourage customer enquiries, not to give them everything they need at once so they can leave and go straight to a competitor.
5. Content Is Inconsistent Or Out Of Date
An interested website visitor will visit multiple pages of your site, with those that are most interested paying close attention to your web content. Like most business websites, yours may have evolved organically, with new pages added and content created and updated at different times.
This inevitably creates opportunities for out of date and inconsistent web content – especially regarding the services you currently offer, prices, accreditations, your business contact details, and your company name. These seemingly insignificant points (to you) will be glaringly obvious to visitors and could undermine trust and credibility in your business. Whenever you update your content or something about your business changes, make sure your entire website is updated to contain accurate and relevant information.
Sales-driven web design
A business website holds little value unless it generates leads that convert into customers. Our marketing-focused web design service has one purpose – to turn your website into a powerful lead generation asset for your business. To find out more about what you can achieve with a fully optimised website, please call 01332 215152 today.
Image source: Unsplash
