August 23, 2018

Why Your Websites Aren’t Converting

You’ve put tons of time and energy into building up your company. You’ve even invested in excellent digital marketing services for your web presence. But if you’re not getting users to convert when they visit your site, all that hard work means nothing to your bottom line.

The good news is this: there are a few pretty common reasons for websites not converting, and they’re all solvable. If your traffic isn’t turning into sales (or sign-ups, or whatever your online goal is), one of these might be the problem. Our Dallas web design developers can show you the proper way to build websites that convert.

You Aren’t Offering Real Value

Want visitors to convert? You’ve got to make it worth their while.

Think about it this way. If you own an online store, nobody is going to give you money for nothing – but they might do it for a product or service that they determine is worth the amount you’re asking. If you’re simply trying to get people to sign up to your email list (i.e. giving you some of their personal information), you still have to offer something of value in order to persuade them to take that action.

Visitors can’t be bothered to take action if they decide that your website isn’t offering them enough value to compensate them. Sometimes the answer is as simple as lowering prices, but often it’s more subtle than that. Consider lowering your barriers to entry, and even offering certain freebies in exchange for users’ time (for instance, a free ebook of useful information in exchange for signing up to your mailing list).

You Aren’t Targeting the Right People

If you’re getting plenty of visitors but very few are actually converting, you might not be attracting enough of the right kind of visitor to your website.

You may be publishing overly-generalized content in an attempt to appeal to everyone. This doesn’t often work. You’ll get a far better return-on-investment if your user base is largely made up of the people who want the solutions you’re offering – people who your message will really resonate with. But if you’re trying to talk to everybody, you’re probably not reaching anybody.

On the other hand, your laser-focused content strategy might just not be appealing to the demographic you’re hoping to reach. Analytics can help you determine just who it actually is that’s visiting your website – and if there’s a mismatch, it might be time for an overhaul.

You Aren’t Asking Users to Convert

That sentence might sound a little silly the first time you read it, but it’s true. You’ll get far better results if you tell users to take action at just the right point in time. It’s called a “call to action”, or CTA, and getting your CTAs right can have a huge impact on conversion rates.

Even if you’re not familiar with the term, you’ve definitely seen CTAs all over the web. There’s even one at the end of this article. They typically take the form of a directive, with action verbs relevant to your desired action (e.g. “Sign up now”, “Get your free ebook”, etc.). Depending on the type of content, it may make sense to place a CTA right at the beginning, towards the end, and/or sprinkled throughout.

You need to guide your users through the buying journey – or the email list sign-up journey, or whatever your goal is for each piece of content. It’s not enough that your service solves their problems, or even that your content speaks to them on a personal level. There are any number of things (on- or off-line) that can distract visitors as they peruse your website and prevent them from completing the conversion process. You can never make things too clear for your customers!

If you want to optimize your content for conversions, GreatLike Media is here to help. GreatLike Media is an Orange County web design and Orange County digital marketing agency. Contact us online to schedule your free consultation.

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