There is nothing worse than having a website for your business that doesn’t make you any money, or a website that could be making you more money than it is.
If you’re here, I’m assuming you’re wondering “why is my website not converting?” and wracking your brain for ways to improve your website’s conversion rate.
Good news! There’s worse things that could be wrong with your website. If your biggest issue is that your website isn’t converting, then there’s several quick and easy fixes you can try.
If you’re not sure if your website is reaching it’s maximum conversion potential or not, you can check this in a few different ways.
How to check if your website is converting
There are two main ways you can check if your website is converting.
1. Check your bounce rate in Google Analytics.
2. Check your user’s behaviour flow in Google Analytics.
The metrics found under each of these Google Analytics stats will help you a great deal in figuring out where the problem is in your website’s conversions and this is the first step towards fixing it!
What does bounce rate mean in Google Analytics?
Your website’s bounce rate is the percentage of visitors who landed on one page and then left your website without navigating to another. Typically, a bounce rate above 70% is considered to be too high, so if you sit within this range you need to make steps to improve your visitor retention.
Ideally you should aim to work towards 50% and under for your website’s bounce rate, but depending on the type of website you have, you may see a higher bounce rate but still be quite successful with your conversions. For example, if your product or service pages go to an external service for payments or bookings, or if you have lots of blog posts that link to out to affiliated products.
What is a behaviour flow in Google Analytics?
Your website’s behaviour flow is an overview of the common user journeys taken on your website. You can filter these results on Google Analytics to get a better idea of behaviour flow’s depending on landing pages, clicks, etc. Basically, it’s incredibly valuable data to have on your website visitors.
For example, if visitors are working through your sales pages but not clicking through to buy your product/services, then you know you need to review the sales page to find out what is causing your website to not convert.
So, Why Is My Website Not Converting?
I’ve rounded up the top 6 reasons for a website not converting to sales for a business. These are the most applicable to all websites, whether you are a product or service based business, so buckle up and get ready to analyse your website!
These tips are the best place to start when looking improve how much money you’re making from your business and working on them will 100% improve your conversion rate. So if your website not converting is a major pain in your side, this is for you.
1. Lack of call to action
This one is SO IMPORTANT.
Once your visitor has read about all the great reasons to work with you or buy your product, where are you sending them next?
Do they just get to the end of the page and have to figure it out for themselves? Your chancing of a website not converting will be far higher if that is the case.
You need to make sure your website is full of relevant call to actions that take your visitor to the next step after visiting that page. Ideally to book a service or buy a product, or to the next step of your user journey if they’re not quite at that point yet.
Take a look at your homepage.
Do you direct your visitors on where to go next?
These directions should naturally lead on from the content your visitor has just read and encourage them to click.
Here’s a small list of my favourite call to actions:
- “Book Now/Buy Now”
- “Let’s Work Together”
- “Start Here”
- “Get Instant Access”
I like to use a mixture of buttons and text links for call to actions because they work for different kinds of visitors and content.
A button works great if you’ve reached a logical end of your paragraph and want your visitor to move on to another page. Links work better if you’ve got more to say but what you’ve said so far could be enough to convince them to move on in their customer journey.
2. There’s not enough information
Your website is the most valuable tool in your digital marketing tool kit, so your website needs to give visitors all the information they need to decide to work with or buy from you.
It’s not enough to have a few pictures, basic product pages or a small list of services and call it a day. Or even worse, just a booking form! It’s not enough! Your website needs to sell for you with great design, engaging copy and pictures that showcase your products or services.
Check out my blog post on 5 Pages That Every Business Website Needs for inspiration on pages and content you can add to your toolkit and encourage conversions.
3. Your website looks out of date
If your website design is more than a couple of years old then there’s a chance your design may be looking a little dated. An old looking website doesn’t build trust with your visitors who will be looking for up to date information on your business.
See my web design inspiration Pinterest board for examples of current web design trends to compare your website design. A website not converting fix can be as simple as a few design tweaks, or a whole new design may be what you need.
Your design should have lots of white space, high resolution images, a consistent colour palette, make use of grids and look just as good on mobile devices.
Don’t panic if you love your web design but think it might be a tad out of date, there’s plenty of options to give your existing design a refresh if you don’t want a brand new design.
And if it’s time for a new design that works to make you money? Get in touch and let’s talk about creating you a gorgeous new website design that converts for your business.
4. Your design isn’t mobile friendly
It’s estimated that around 52% of all internet traffic is on mobile which means it’s more important than ever to have a mobile friendly design.
When was the last time you went through your website on your phone or tablet to see how it looks? Do it now!
Is it delivering your content as it should be?
Are some of the design elements all over the place?
Can visitors easily navigate to your services/product pages?
How do they contact you/buy? Is it obvious?
As mobile and tablet users see less of your website on the screen than those on desktop, you need to ensure you’re maximising the space you have with the right design and content elements in place.
If a mobile user can’t use your website, then that’s a huge red flag for a website not converting sales and should be rectified ASAP!
5. There’s TOO MUCH information
Yes, having valuable and informative content on your website is important, but you can have too much of a good thing.
We’re living in a world where people want information right now and they don’t have time for long, descriptive paragraphs about how great your product is. It’s sad but true. They want to know what your product or services is going to do to improve their life or business and then they want to commit.
Look through your website content and ask yourself “Does this need to be here? What value is it adding?”
Once you’ve had a cull of your existing copy, work on on creating powerful headlines, direct, persuasive copy and call to actions to close the sale. That’s all you need! Loop back to the not enough information point if you think you’ve culled your copy a little too much after this ;).
6. Your website is too slow
Google classes a slow loading website as anything over 3 seconds.
If your website takes longer than this to load then you’re risking visitors becoming fed up of waiting or getting distracted and moving on from your website.
You can check your site speed on a free service like Pingdom to see what’s going on. It’s worth checking your services/product pages here too in case they have a different load speed because your whole website needs to be up to scratch.
There’s a few things you can do to immediately speed up a slow website but you might find it’s something more serious like your design or content causing the slow loading speed. If that’s the case I recommend contacting a web designer to assess the issue and help you put it right.
Psst… Site speed is also super important for SEO so you’ve got to prioritise this!
Phew, there’s quite a lot to work through there! Hopefully you’ve found some steps in this post that you can take to improve your website not converting.
