The days of thinking of your website as a shopfront are long gone. When people are ready to buy a product or service they are not going to head to your Facebook page or your Instagram feed, or even your TikTok account. They will run a Google search and if your website comes up you should have a decent chance of them buying from you.
This probably sounds idealistic. I’m guessing that your experience is more in the…. a scattered number of visitors a month and 0 sales league.
The idea that your website will just one day take off and bring you loads of sales is feeling a bit pie in the sky.
But it doesn’t have to. If you already have a website the chances are that it only needs a few tweaks here and there to put it in the same league as the websites which are bringing in leads and making sales.
Just imagine it…. no more selling on Facebook or Instagram. No more sponsored ads, just you, your website and your customers. Sound good?
Here’s why that’s not happening for you right now and what you can do to fix it.
You sound a bit wishy washy
Most of us shudder when we have to write about ourselves. Do we go with the formal…… ‘Holly is a website designer who…..’ 🥱 or do we go with the informal ‘Hi, I’m Holly!’ and risk losing out on customers who want formal?
If you accept right now that you are never going to get it right with every single person, you’ll be doing yourself a huge favour. Because seriously, everyone has their own way of talking/writing/being. My best advice is to just be you and you will attract the kind of people who want to work with you.
Next have a think about what you’re selling and how you’re selling it. As fancy as being an award winner is, people don’t really care what accolades you’ve got. Especially in a world where people can just nominate themselves and the competition is scarce. Think more about how you feel about what you’re selling…. if you’re passionate about it and the difference it’s going to make to peoples’ lives then that’s going to come across in your website copy and people are going to want to read more of it.
You’re not answering their questions
People usually land on websites because they’ve asked Google a question such as ‘what do I need to build a website?’ Whatever your industry is, think of the questions your customers are likely to ask then have a look at your website copy and see whether you’re actually answering them.
Remember, the people who are landing on your website usually know nothing about your industry so don’t assume that they do. Do some research as to what people will be asking for when googling and create content on both your website pages and your blog posts, which specifically answer these questions.
You’re not solving their problems
People visit websites because they have a problem they want solving. Are you addressing this on your website and are you telling them why your particularly product or service is better than any other product or service on the market?
Are they aware of what their problem actually is? For some industries this may be easy. It could be as simple as it’s getting to winter, the website sells energy efficient fan heaters and they just need to explain why they’re the best option and why the website is the best place to buy them.
What happens when it’s not as black and white as that. For example, someone may be thinking of having some mentoring or coaching but aren’t sure the search terms. Rather than ‘I am a six figure coach who will lead you to success’, it may be a case of ‘fed up of feeling stuck and not sure how to get out of it?’ is a better match for the clients you want to work with.
Have a look at whether your website text aligns with the search terms people are using and if they’re not, brainstorm some eye-catching headlines to get Google and your potential clients interested in your website.
You’re talking about you, not them
When putting all the hard work into your website it’s easy to think that your website should be about you. If you’re writing a personal blog, this is right, however personal blogs don’t make money. When you have a website for your business it’s not about you, it’s about your customer. You need to make sure:
Your writing is aimed at them, not you.
Your images are what they’re looking to see when landing on your website. It’s all well and good to have images you adore but if they don’t feel aligned to your visitors, then your visitors won’t buy from you.
Your branding is what’s going to run through the theme of your website and ultimately, pull your website together. It’s really important you don’t just knock up a logo in Canva as you may not have the rights to use it as a logo plus you’ll find a team of other businesses using the same branding. Using a proper branding specialist (and not someone you’ve found on fiverr) will mean you get a fully customised brand as well as branding guidelines to inform your website and marketing materials.
You’re not keeping in touch with them
When people sign up to receive emails from you, via your website it’s because they’ve had a look around, they like what they see and they want to hear more from you. People often need time and exposure to you and your services before they’ll fully invest in you and a good way to do this is to capture their email address and stay in touch with them. The more they hear from you, the more they’ll get to know, like and trust you and the higher chance there is of them buying from you.
People aren’t going to page you to get on your mailing list so instead you need to make it easy for them to sign up to receive emails from you by having a sign up bar at several points on your website.
You don’t have a Call to Action
When on a website people will not automatically know what to do. If you want them to book a call with you or send an email, they’re not going to know that if you just bury it in the body text once or twice. Seriously, people are serial skimmers and won’t be reading your website text word for word.
The answer to this is to have a prominent Call to Action on each page, if not each section, of your website.
This includes:
- Buttons
- Banners
- Forms
- Clickable text
Find the method that works best for you (I’m a fan of buttons as people naturally want to press them) and get working on how you can integrate your Calls to Action on your website.
Your website is hard to navigate
Chances are when you first got your website up and running you had an idea of how people would navigate it. You planned the menu, where arrows would lead and it all made sense…… to you.
I cannot stress this enough - people do not do what you think they will do when on your website. They’ll jump around, use arrows on pages, jump back to the menu, click images to try to get places, everything other than that beautifully smooth, linear journey you had planned for them.
As they’re going to do this regardless of how many flashing arrows you put in their direction the best way of handling it is to have a robust, well thought out menu at the top, which travels along the page as the user scrolls (known as a sticky menu) and some well placed links and buttons within the website.
As for the navigation menu, call your pages things people are actually going to search for - if you have testimonials, call them testimonials as people will not search for terms like ‘praise’ or ‘good vibes’ etc.
These are the main areas where people drop the ball with their website and changing them can make a huge impact to both, the search engines choosing your website in their search results, as well as how you retain visitors and convert them into customers.
If you have a website which isn’t performing and you’d like some help to turn it into the lead generating, sales making marketing machine it was always meant to be, then book a complementary, no-obligation call with me and let’s turn your website into an industry leader which gets chosen by Google again and again.
