Answering every business owner’s nightmare: why isn’t my website converting?

Web Design

“If you build it, he will come”

Or so says the mysterious voices to Kevin Costner in the 1989 film “Field of Dreams”. 

Unfortunately, the same can not be said in the world of digital marketing. 

We all know that a business needs a website. But so often, we are conned into thinking that if we buy a website that looks pretty we will automatically get reems of enquiries coming through. 

Unfortunately, it doesn’t always work that way. 

How to diagnose the problem

If you’ve recently had a website built (or rebuilt, redesigned or re… anything) and are still tearing your hair out screaming “Why isn’t my website converting” it might be that you were misdiagnosing your problem. 

The problem might be any number of problems, from poor onsite optimisation that is stopping search engines from displaying the right content to the right users on the search results page to poor website copy to a broken enquiry form. 

The best thing you can do is have a digital marketing agency conduct a full website audit. This would look at the quality of your website’s content and optimisation and how visible it is online. 

Once you identify the problem, you can develop a course of action – a treatment plan for your website’s ailments!

Why isn’t my website converting? Possible reasons:

You don’t know your audience

Have you ever talked to your target audience (not just your current clients, but the people you want to reach)?

So many people haven’t. 

It could be that your website isn’t converting because you don’t understand your audience and so you’re not saying the right things to them. 

You need to effectively communicate with the right audience in the right way.  Understanding their needs, desires, and pain points allows you to tailor your messaging to resonate with them on a deeper level. This personalised approach can significantly increase the chances of converting visitors into customers.

Additionally, identifying your target audience helps you focus your marketing efforts in the right direction. This is where a good Birmingham digital marketing agency such as yours truly comes in.  

We can utilise our Know Workshop, along with other strategies such as target audience interviews and data analysis to help build a clearer understanding of your target audience. 

Instead of casting a wide net and hoping for some conversions, concentrating on reaching the people most likely to be interested in what you offer, maximises both time and budget efficiency.

It’s not mobile-friendly

One important perspective to consider is adopting a mobile-first approach. 

With the increasing number of people accessing websites through their mobile devices, it is imperative to have a responsive design that provides seamless navigation and functionality on smaller screens…not to mention load speed. 

It’s not visually appealing

Another aspect worth evaluating is the overall visual appeal and branding coherence of the website. 

A visually appealing design with consistent branding elements, not only captivates users but also builds trust and credibility. It’s essential to pay attention to typography, colour scheme, imagery, and layout when assessing your website’s visual aspects. By creating an aesthetically pleasing environment for users, you can enhance their overall experience and increase the likelihood of conversions.

There are no trust signals

Don’t underestimate the trust element though. 

Once you have their interest, visitors are looking for a reason to trust you (beyond the initial comfort offered by the environment you have created). 

Social proof can include things like:

• Testimonials
• Case studies
• Portfolios
• Reviews
• Google reviews
• Industry accreditation
• Industry affiliations

Lack of social proof can be a big problem. People are more likely to convert if they see that you have done good work for other people. Include testimonials, case studies, and success stories to provide this social proof. Make sure you include security badges and contact information too, as these also help to build trust.

The case for using case studies.

The copy isn’t convincing enough

If visitors can’t quickly understand what your website offers and how it benefits them, they’re likely to leave. 

Your value proposition should be clear and prominently displayed. Build on what you have learned about your target audience and show them clearly and succinctly, how your product or service can help to solve their problem or answer their query. 

The copy (i.e. the text) throughout the website should be benefit-focused. That means it should be about what you can do for your clients, not just about the features of each individual service.

It’s difficult to navigate

This leads us to simplicity and ease of use in general when evaluating your website design’s impact on conversions. 

Users should be able to navigate through different pages effortlessly without feeling overwhelmed or confused. The user journey should be streamlined by minimising clutter, providing clear calls-to-action (CTAs), and implementing intuitive navigation menus. 

A clean and straightforward interface creates positive experiences that encourage visitors to stay longer on your site and take action.

Its onsite SEO is poor  

If your website isn’t optimised, then search engines won’t be able to find it. Optimisation (known as SEO) doesn’t just happen automatically when a website is built. It has to be deliberately added to the website. 

A regular web developer may not automatically complete all of these activities when building your website. So, even if your website has been created by a great web developer, it’s worth having an SEO audit completed on your website, to make sure that your site is optimised properly.  

If your website isn’t converting, it might be that…

Onsite SEO requires several things to happen, amongst which are:

• Meta titles to be added to every page on your website.
• Meta descriptions to be added to every page on your website. 
• Alt text to be added to images.
• A sitemap to be submitted to Google Search Console. 
• Keywords to be added to the copy on your website at certain points in the copy.

Meta titles and meta descriptions are bits of information that appear when your page is listed on search engines. Here’s an example:

Alt text is descriptions that are added to images to help screen readers interpret those images for blind and partially sighted users. 

Also, these meta titles, descriptions, alt texts and keywords all need to be based on the keywords that users are typing when searching for your services. 

What is more, different keywords have different “intents”, meaning that users are looking for different types of information. That means you need to map different keywords to different parts of your website. 

It’s not authoritative enough

Your website’s authority is determined by a range of factors including:

• The number of third-party websites that are linking to your website. 
• The number of backlinks these websites use to link to your website. 
• The domain authority of the third-party websites that are linking to your website.
• Where they link to on your website. 
• How they link to your website (e.g. what anchor text they use for the link)

You can get a feel for how authoritative your website is by using an SEO tool. The tool will give you a score (normally called “domain authority score”). Different tools use different methods to calculate your score, so they are arbitrary, but they are very helpful as a way of tracking progress. 

If your website isn’t converting, it might be that your domain authority isn’t high enough. 

There are technical faults on your website 

Another reason that might be causing your website to not rank well is technical issues that are affecting your relationship with Google. 

Technical faults that search engines dislike include:

• No https security
• No XML sitemaps
• Slow load speed
• Duplicate content
• Poor mobile experience
• No use of structured data

Again, these are all issues that can be uncovered with an SEO audit. So, if you’re not sure whether your website is suffering from any of these issues, it’s best to get an SEO audit. 

Its CTAs aren’t prominent enough

If you’ve fixed everything we’ve already mentioned and you’re still asking “Why isn’t my website converting?” the answer may lie in the effectiveness of your CTAs. 

CTA stands for Call To Action and it’s a fancy name for any instructions you give your users that help them know what to do next. This could be a button that says “download now” or a link that says “enquire here”. 

Don’t underestimate the power of a well-crafted CTA in guiding visitors towards taking a desired action.

When evaluating your CTA strategy, consider its visibility and placement on your web pages. CTAs need to catch users’ attention, without being too intrusive or overwhelming. 

Its CTAs aren’t written well

The messaging needs to clearly communicate what to do. 

Utilise action-oriented language, and incorporate urgency if appropriate for your product or service. Try testing different designs and colours to see what resonates best with your audience; small tweaks could have a significant impact on conversion rates. 

It takes too long to complete the call to action

This might be more relevant for eCommerce websites or SaaS websites, but it can affect other types of websites too. 

 If your checkout process is lengthy, requires too much information, or lacks multiple payment options, visitors might abandon their shopping baskets. 

Likewise, if your enquiry form requires too many fields, users might get fed up and not bother. 

By continuously assessing and refining your call-to-action strategy, you can optimise its performance over time.

Don’t react, investigate

If your website isn’t converting, there could be a variety of reasons. Most likely, it will be a combination of the reasons that I’ve listed above. The main thing to remember is that you need to diagnose what the problem is before you do anything else. So many business owners I know think that getting a new website built will solve their conversion problems. But so often, the design isn’t the only thing stopping users from converting. 

So, get a website audit done on your website and diagnose the problem first. Only then can you put a plan in place to improve your website’s enquiry rate. 

If you do, you’ll end up with a website that’s working as hard as you are.