4 Reasons Why Your Website Isn’t Converting (And How To Fix It)
Conversion, relative to your website, is when a visitor to your website completes a desired goal.
You have a high-converting website if people land on it, read your call to action, and then take that action.
Example: if someone ends up on betweenthelinescopy.com, scrolls to the bottom of my homepage, clicks inquire, and fills out my contact form, that’s a conversion. I’ve just converted a reader into a potential client.
As a service-based business owner, getting my website’s viewers to click the big, beautiful “let’s work together!” button is my #1 goal. I want people to want to work with me.
(Because I want to pay my astronomical daycare bill every month and buy whatever I want at Sephora on a random Friday afternoon for an extra serotonin boost.)
If you’ve been feeling like you aren’t getting the amount of inquiries or sign-ups or sales that you’re hoping for lately, it’s probably due to one of the following 4 reasons…
#1 — You’re not being specific enough.
Confusion is the enemy of conversion. If someone is confused about what to do next, or what you can do for them, or who your services are for, obviously they’re not going to reach out.
Instead, they’re going to “X” out.
And move on to the next site in their Google search, hoping to find a site that makes it easy for them to understand what to do after they get there.
Here’s how to fix that:
Make it stupid-simple. Your copy should be so specific and so simple, you almost feel stupid writing it out, because it seems that obvious to you. But I promise you: it’s not always that obvious to your reader. Err on the side of too specific as opposed to not enough information.
Use CTAs early and often. Don’t wait ’til the bottom of the page to add a call-to-action button. There’s no promise your readers will last that long. Nudge them toward the next step (whether that’s to view your services, or learn more about you, or download your lead magnet, or book a call, or fill out your contact form…) early and often.
On a recent kickoff call, one of my clients specifically requested that I include “lots of calls to action” because, after looking at my website, she liked that she had the option to either keep reading, or not.
She told me that she appreciated that I made it apparent, through my many CTA buttons, that it would be okay for my reader to click a button early on and exit the page, even though it was only the first section above the fold.
I’d never thought about this sense of permission and empowerment having multiple CTA buttons (early and often!) on my site would give my readers, but ever since she made that comment, I’ve noticed on other sites I’ve browsed how nice it is to not have to scroll all the way to the bottom to get to the next step.
(It’s all about user experience, baby.)
Don’t send them in a bunch of different directions. Giving your readers too many options often does more harm than good. On important pages like Services and About — the ones that people visit when they’re considering working with you — make sure you’re including only one call-to-action. Feel free to use the same call-to-action multiple times on the page, but make sure the CTA itself takes them to the same place.
Keep it at an 8th-grade reading level. This not only increases the readability of the site, but also the retention rate of your readers.
Use visual hierarchy. We all know that everyone skim-reads when they first land on a new site. Make it easy for the skimmers to get all of the info they need to know by using headings, subheads, and different colors and fonts throughout your pages. Avoid big blocks of text at all costs.
And here’s what your readers want when they land on your site:
- Who you are and what you do
- Why you’re a qualified person to outsource to (aka evidence that you know your shit, that you do good work that people like, and that people trust you with their projects)
- How you can help them (again — the specifics! the benefits!)
- Validation that you fully understand them and their current situation
- To know whether or not they can afford your services
And, most importantly, they always want to know what the next step is. Your website copy (and your website design!) should always make it exponentially clear what you want the user to do. They should never be left wondering where to go next once they’ve read through a certain page or section.
(Notice how I repeated that same point several times already in this post? That was intentional. I’m making it stupid-simple.)
#2 — You’re saying what YOU want to SAY, and not what your ideal clients and customers need to HEAR.
I’ve said this before but I’m gonna say it again because it’s a huge contributor to lack of conversion.
Your website isn’t a billboard, it’s a conversation.
One of the biggest mistakes business owners make when DIY-ing their own website copy is not considering what their target audience *actually* needs to know in order to feel confident in making the investment.
Here are 3 easy questions to ask yourself to figure out whether you’re making this mistake:
1️⃣ Would someone reading your site immediately learn what you do and how your services/offerings can benefit them?
…or are you assuming they already know?
2️⃣ Does your website have any industry jargon on it that your ideal clients might not get?
…and are you assuming they think all that fancy word choice is making you look cool and expert-like? (Hint: it’s not.)
3️⃣ Was your website copy written in an easy-to-understand, actually-sounds-like-a-human-wrote-it manner?
…or were you sacrificing personality for the sake of coming off as “professional”?
If you answered “no” to any of the above questions, you’ll want to reevaluate your website copy to make it sound less like a Yellow Pages listing in a 1980s phonebook and more like an actual conversation.
Here’s how to do that:
Start with listening. All good conversationalists are good listeners, too. Before you jump into the convo — aka before you write your website copy — consider who you’re talking to, and listen to their side of the story. Pretend like they’re asking you for help. What would you tell them (relative to your business’s offerings) about how you can improve their current situation, now that you know what it is?
Write to one person. The best conversations are one-on-ones. That’s how your website should feel to your readers.
Focus on the reader, not on yourself. No one wants to have a conversation with someone who only talks about themselves. Use the word “you” like it’s your job (to make it clear you’re talking to them and only them), and infuse your reader into every part of your site’s story. Help them see themselves in the copy — not you.
Talk how they talk. Use words that your ideal clients use (and understand). Consider your specific industry (and their level of knowledge of that industry) and determine which terms/phrases are appropriate to use, and which are too jargon-y.
Be a person first. If you wouldn’t say it out loud, don’t write it in your web copy. People want to work with people not businesses. Read your web copy out loud to see if it sounds good and normal, or if it sounds stuffy and weird.
#3 — You’re not proving that you’re worth it.
More often than not, your site’s readers are strangers. They don’t know you — or your business, or what you do, or how you can help them — at all.
…which means it’s your job to tell them all of those things; to get to know you. And then encourage them to trust you, and like you enough to reach out about working with you.
Know, like, trust: the website copywriting trifecta.
You can improve your site’s “hi, I’m a real, normal, likable person with awesome services you should invest in” factor by first learning how how to get comfortable with writing about yourself.
Then, you’ll want to learn how to write a high-converting homepage.
I could go on all day about this topic, but that rant is reserved for the people who are really serious about upping their website copy game.
Click here for the deets on how you can get access to my surefire sales-focused storytelling method for writing website copy that converts.
#4 — The right people aren’t reading it.
A huge, often overlooked reason your site isn’t converting is because the right people aren’t reading it. Being strategic about how you market your site and which channels you choose to do so is key to becoming visible to the people you actually want to be on your site.
Here are 3 ways you can organically market your website and get more traffic from the right people:
Start blogging. If you have a business, you should be blogging. Point blank period. It’s the easiest way to organically grow your business, because of the volume of searchable content. Here are a few more reasons why you should blog.
Use a lead magnet to get in front of the right audience. And added bonus? It gets people onto your email list — which is every marketer’s ultimate goal. To learn more, you’ll want to read about how to grow your email list with a lead magnet and why you need a welcome sequence.
Optimize your site for search engines (SEO). Helping the right people find your content via Google search (let’s be real, does anyone even use another search engine…?) is the most ideal situation possible. Think about how many times you whip out your phone to Google something every single day.
When you optimize your website for SEO, you’re improving your chances of coming up on page one of your ideal clients’ search queries, ensuring that the right people are making their way on over to your brand’s digital home.
To learn more about how to organically market your website using blog, email, and SEO (and how to write bomb web copy), sign up for the waitlist for my upcoming course!
I’ll be teaching you everything you need to know about how to write the best, most click-worthy blog posts, how to craft the best lead magnet offer and the most engaging emails, and how to actually understand (and utilize) search engine optimization… in ADDITION to teaching you how to write conversion-friendly website copy crafted specifically for your ideal client.
Trust me: you won’t want to miss out. Join the waitlist here.
The conclusion? Website copy can fix the majority of your conversion problems.
So, if you need (or want!) a website copywriter to help you out… you know where to find me ;)
(Or sign up for that course waitlist I was telling you about!)
