Boost Your Conversions: The Top 3 Website Mistakes and How to Fix Them
In this episode of The Website Success Show, Jules White, website and SEO consultant, dives into the top three mistakes businesses make on their websites that hinder their conversion rates. She illustrates how a lack of clarity, poor user experience, and unclear calls to action can leave potential customers feeling confused and unengaged.
Key Takeaways:
- Clarity is King: Ensure visitors instantly understand what you do, the benefits of your product or service, and how to get it. Craft a captivating hero section that clearly conveys your value proposition.
- User Experience Matters: Optimize your website's navigation, font sizes, and overall design to create a seamless and intuitive browsing experience for visitors on all devices.
- Call to Action is Crucial: Include clear and compelling calls to action that guide visitors towards the desired action, whether it's making a purchase, joining your email list, or scheduling a call.
Tune in to this episode to learn how to avoid these common mistakes and transform your website into a conversion powerhouse.
Bonus Tip: If you're struggling to identify areas for improvement, consider booking a Power Hour with Jules for personalized advice and strategies tailored to your unique business needs.
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AI-GENERATED TRANSCRIPT - MAY CONTAIN ERRORS
Introduction
Hi, so this morning I want to talk about the top three mistakes that I see time and time again that people make on their website that's affecting their conversion rate. So conversion rate optimization is making sure that the elements on your webpage are set up in a way that it encourages people to take the action that you want them to take on that page.
A Juice Bar Analogy
So imagine if you were setting up a physical shop. So imagine you were setting up like a juice bar in a mall and the people walking past every day, that's the traffic, coming through your website essentially. And say that you've got, your juice bar set up. You've painted the sign yourself.
You've done everything yourself, and it's not looking top notch professional. So you've not really thought about what the benefits are to people in terms of smoothies and the juices and what they're actually going to do to help people, what the benefits are to them.
So you're not really talking about that. You're not really talking about what makes your juices different, why they're special, why they taste so good. And the stool itself is not sort of visually appealing. So maybe you've got an old tablecloth on there and you've, got a menu, but you've not put it up on the wall or anything, not put it up anywhere that's visible.
And it's not clear. It's just literally what the juice is and the price, no benefits, essentially you're not selling very well on there and also with that menu. You've also hidden it in a drawer. So people have to ask you about it. It's not immediately obvious what people can get from you, what the benefits are, and how to actually get it as well.
Also, when they come to your store, you act a little bit weird. Either not really talking about what you do, not treating them as a human, not really thinking about a normal conversation that you would have with people where you talk about what you do and you're friendly and you make them feel special, you make them feel like they're the important person there.
So either that, either you're talking weirdly or not talking, having a normal conversation with them, or you're talking all about what you do, your background, and why you're so special. So essentially making it about you rather than making it about them and how you can help them. Also then you don't have any kind of clear action that you want them to take. So you, you may be there, maybe they do come over, they're a little bit curious, they ask you what you do, you tell them you make smoothies, and then you don't actually ask them.
Would you like one? Can I get you one? What would you like? What do you need? What kind of stuff do you like? So you're not actually having a clear call to action for them as well. That store, you've then still got the same hundred people walking past. So you've still got the same traffic coming every day, but imagine if you've set it up differently.
Optimizing the Store Setup
So imagine that instead that you've created a fantastic menu that's very easy to read, very easy for people to understand immediately as soon as they walk past. You have some eye-catching signs that let them know immediately your fantastic smoothies and how they benefit people and why you're different from that smoothie stall down the road that's selling stuff that's got loads of crap in it and it's not healthy, not going to help you.
So your stall looks visually appealing. It looks fantastic. It's very easy for people to immediately know how you can help them. And when they come over, you greet them as if they were a friend and you treat them as the most important person right now.
So you're asking them questions about what they like, maybe pointing out some of the benefits of what smoothies you have, maybe today's special. And asking them if they have any special requirements. So essentially making them feel like they're the most important person.
And you've caught their attention because of all the features and the benefits that you've told them about your amazing smoothies. You also then have a clear action that you want them to take. So whether that's you say, okay, what can I get you today? Or how can I help you today? Or something where you're immediately then giving them that clear call to action?
You're still getting those same 100 people going past your smoothie stall. You're getting more people then taking action because it's immediately clear. And it's something that when you talk about it, it sounds like this. Well, this is obvious. Obviously, if you're gonna open a shop or if you're gonna make a website, obviously you're gonna make it clear to people.
And you're going to make it get them to take the action that you want them to take. But we don't always realize, and especially when we're looking at our own stuff. And I do this with my own website as well. I love doing this for other people and it's so much easier to do it for other people as well.
Getting Outside Help
You can kind of look at it with an outsider's mind and with clear eyes on it as well. When I talk about this, I kind of think, well, it seems obvious, but actually it's not, and it's not easy to see it on your own site. And that's where getting some outside help can be really, can be really helpful.
I've done lots of website webpage walkthroughs this week and I love doing them. This is such fun doing them. I really do. But often I see the same things over and over again. So the things, the top three mistakes I would say are so not being clear on the what you do, how it's gonna make people's lives better and what they need to do to get it.
So within that hero section at the top of the page, that's where you've got three seconds to grab their attention and really keep them scrolling down. All the goal is to get them to scroll down to the next part of the page and the next part of the page and the next part of the page until they take that action that you want them to take.
Making sure the second mistake is making sure that you have a really clear user experience. So making sure that your navigation menus are clear and they're, they're uncluttered, simple, easy to use, thinking about what people would expect to see there as well. So rather than being cute and clever, being clear. Clarity is so much more likely to get people to take the action that we want them to take.
The Importance of Simplicity
We, I think, can often think about that we have to make things look interesting and have to make things different. And actually, realistically, for most people, that's not, that's not helpful. Anything where you, you confuse people. Then they're not going to take action really. So, making sure that's clear, making sure it's easy to use, making sure that it's visible and mobile.
So, one of the big things that often comes up on web page walkthroughs is about font size and making sure that, actually, you don't make people get their glasses out to read your website. And often that is something that then people think on mobile I need to make the font a little bit smaller but actually if anything it's probably a little bit bigger it needs to be because it's a smaller screen and especially if you've got the elements that people need to tap if you've got buttons or if you've got links within text people need to be able to tap that whether they've got big fingers or little fingers really.
So nice clear user experience that takes them on a journey through the page so it makes sense one section flowing into the next section that then keeps people's interest keeps people, keep people curious about what you do and for long enough for them to take the action that you want to take.
And then I think probably the third thing is having not having one clear call to action and on a home page this might be slightly different you may have a transactional call to action, which is where you want them to actually, make a purchase or book a call or something that leads directly in general leads directly to a sale, or you may have a transitional call to action.
So that's something where you ask people to join your email list, or you ask them to download a freebie or to read a blog post or something like that, where it takes them a little bit further along their, their buyer's journey with you. So making sure that call to action mentions the benefit again, if you can, if you can get that into the copy in your buttons and your call to actions, where actually it's encouraging people to take the action and encourages them why they want to take the action.
Consistent Messaging
So, yes, I want to get this amazing smoothie right now. And they click on the button and repeating that throughout the page. So making sure that they don't ever have to scan to, or they don't ever have to hunt for a call to action. If there's one thing that you want them to do from that page and keep mentioning it time and time again and keep mentioning it in the same way as well.
So using that same, you know, again, I think we, we feel like we have to be clever and we have to make it varied and have to make it different. And maybe trying different things will be better because then maybe they, they might like the wording of this button versus that button. But actually just having that repeated, that same message repeated throughout the page.
Is a better way to go. And then if you're finding that you're not convinced that that text is working, then try changing it. But until you get enough traffic to your website to have reliable, sort of reliable A to B testing, which realistically, if you're not getting 10,000 visitors a month, then it's going to take a long time to get to a point where you've had enough people come through to get reliable stats on A to B testing.
So it's a case of sometimes just tweaking and seeing how it feels. Our messages evolve over time and we definitely learn things, we maybe would see a call to action on another person's website and think, Oh yeah, that sounds good. I'm going to try that and see what happens. And it is trial and error.
And unfortunately, until you've got those big numbers on your website, you can't always tell within a week or two whether that's actually making a difference. But it is good to just keep repeating that message out the page, keeping it clear, making sure that you're catching people's attention and really selling the benefits of what you do.
Key Takeaways
This would always be my top one, is making sure people understand as soon as they land on your website, within three seconds, within one second realistically, what you do, how you're going to make their life better, and what they need to do to get it. So I hope that's been helpful for you.
I am just going to go and have a lovely coffee now in my local coffee shop. Tonight I'm going for a hot stone massage, which is very exciting. I haven't been for a massage for years, but one of my friends is just starting to do, do hot stone treatments. And we did training together years, years ago on that.
And when I used to do hot stone massage in the salon. It was a really nice treatment to do. So yeah, I'm going for that tonight and I'll see you soon."
