As business owners, our main objective to owning a website is making money, plain and simple. We build our websites in order to enhance our brand, create relationships in our market and most importantly, sell our products and services. But if your website doesn’t deliver on any of these fronts then it really isn’t living up to its true objective.
Unfortunately, business owners and Internet marketing experts alike make simple mistakes when setting up their website. And these mistakes might not seem all that huge on the surface, but they often accumulate and are responsible for poor conversions and sales.
We want website owners to take notice. We want to put the control back in your hands. If you eliminate the mistakes that we are about to share with you, and do your best to fix up the mix ups, then you’ll have a much easier time improving conversions, enhancing your brand and making sales.
#1 – You Have an Ugly Website, Let’s Face It!
When a user visits your website, it literally takes them about a half a second to decide whether or not they are going to trust you, your content and if they believe it’s worthy of their time. That’s all you get. A half a second. Maybe less.
Here’s another interesting tidbit…
If your website doesn’t load within three seconds, the potential reader will hit the back button and abandon it. People do not want to wait for slow load times because there’s a billion other websites out there and they have plenty of other things to do.
These are just two of the many usability and aesthetic issues that will turn potential visitors away from your website. If your site doesn’t look the way that they expect it to look they are going to run for the hills faster than you can count to 10. And if your website doesn’t load quickly enough, these potential readers are going to disappear and never type your URL into their browser again, or click the link that tried to take them there in the first place.
If you suffer from either of these problems, or any other potential usability issues, there is certainly a way to fix this.
For starters, take advantage of a usability review. As a trusted SEO service provider we can look over your website and figure out where things are going wrong. And, as conversion experts, we can help with design, color choices, email opt in box positioning and more. These changes will make a major difference in conversions and you’ll finally know why your website wasn’t making any money once these tweaks are put into action.
#2 – Your Business Processes
Next, it’s time to take a close look at the way that you run your business. You may have certain processes in place that are actually hurting your chances of making money instead of helping them.
Case in point, your website may get tons of search engine traffic. But no matter what you do and no matter how many people engage with your company, it doesn’t seem to make a difference in sales.
If this is the case, and for all intents and purposes it seems like conversions should be imminent, then you need to look at the internal processes of your business. Ultimately, something must be wrong and certain processes must not be supporting your visitor.
As an example, let’s say that your site metrics are phenomenal. You’re getting plenty of traffic to the site. And people even want to buy your products and services.
But there’s a problem. You’ve set your business up in a way that requires your customer to call so that they can place an order. This would be perfectly acceptable except nobody is available to answer the phone! This example company misses out on anywhere from 10 to 20 prospects per week who are looking to buy something because of a simple process misstep.
Do you see how this could hurt your website and ruin conversions? Look over your company processes to figure out where you’re making mistakes and leaving money on the table.