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| Photo by chuttersnap |
You have set up your website for your business, promoted it and you are getting substantial amount of traffic but you are worried your website visitors are not staying long enough to carry out actions that will lead to them becoming your customers like browsing product categories ,making a phone call, signing up for a service etc.Now that is potentially some good money you are missing out on which is a good reason to be concerned because customers equal money.
In an online community where there is a lot of competition.Brands via their websites are out there promoting the same kind of products and services as yours and trying to reach the same audience that you are targeting thus making prospective customers and clients spoiled for choice.And when it comes to making a choice they will choose the one appealing enough to give them a seamless experience and cater to their needs and interest.
Without realizing it, you may be pushing customers away because the design and content of your website are not customer-centric.Here are some of the easily avoidable website mistakes that have proven by data to hinder conversion or repel prospective customers
Mistake #1: Failing to have a way to capture leads.
A lead is an individual that expresses interest in your products and services.If you don't have an opt-in box on your website for visitors to provide their contact details (email address and any other detail like first name )you will have no way of reaching those who do not pay for your product or service or upselling your existing customers.
According to wordstream, 77% of people prefer to get permission-based promotional messages via email as opposed to direct mail, text, phone or social media.
According to wordstream, 77% of people prefer to get permission-based promotional messages via email as opposed to direct mail, text, phone or social media.
Mistake #2: Putting links in the way can be a distraction.
Putting too many links on your website can distract your visitors from completing a goal and then they to leave your site.Eric Sloan at Unbounce says 'drop the useless footer links' because 'the trouble with leaving this links on the page is that it allows visitors to become distracted from the goal of the page.' Other distractors could be splash pages, too many pictures and pop-ups.Mistake #3: Trying to make a sale too soon.
Trying to be pushy with your products the moment visitors arrive can give a wrong impression about your brand.They may see it as you caring only about yourself and not their satisfaction.Your visitors want to know you care
''The best marketing strategy ever: CARE''
-Gary Vaynerchuk
Mistake #4: Having a website that is not optimized for mobile
Optimizing your website for mobile users means visitors to your site from mobile devices have an experience optimized for their devices.This takes into account screen size of the device, site structure, page speed etc.
It is interesting to note that users spend an average of 69% on their smart phones. 52% of users said that a bad mobile experience made them less likely to engage with a comapny. And 61% of users said if they didin't find what they are looking for on a mobile site, they will quickly move on to another site.85% of website visitors want the mobile version of a comapny's website to be better than the desktop version These stats are enough to know that a website not optimized for mobile will be losing a good number of potential customers.
It is interesting to note that users spend an average of 69% on their smart phones. 52% of users said that a bad mobile experience made them less likely to engage with a comapny. And 61% of users said if they didin't find what they are looking for on a mobile site, they will quickly move on to another site.85% of website visitors want the mobile version of a comapny's website to be better than the desktop version These stats are enough to know that a website not optimized for mobile will be losing a good number of potential customers.
Mistake #5: Not including a call to action on your website.
According to wikipedia, a call to action (CTA) refers to use of words or phrases that can be incoporated into sales scripts, advertising messages or web pages that encourage users to take action.
Once you have piqued the interest and grabbed the attention of your visitor with your catchy and compelling headline; explaining the benefits and features , you need to prompt or force them to take action.It could be as simple as placing a button at the bottom of your page that indicates the action you want them to take like ''call us now' , place an order now'.That little phrase can make a world of difference with respect to turning visitors to customers. More than 90% of readers who read your headline read your CTA copy.So make it compelling enough.
Mistake #6: Having a poorly written copy.
A copy is a text that is aimed at catching the interest of a prospective buyer so that he or she can make a quick purchase.A compelling copy draws 7.8 times more traffic which means more potential customers.The copy on your site should be well crafted to interest and convince readers to carryout the action you want.Your copy should follow the AIDA formula.Attention, Interest, Decision, Action.
To catch people's people's attention, your headline needs to be catchy enough for them to take action within seconds.To pique interest, content must relate to your readers and not your company per se. Something that answers their unvoiced question of 'what is in it for me?' To generate desire in your readers, use power words that trigger excitement and create a mood.Then tell them to take action, highlighting both the benefits for taking action and what they stand to lose for not taking action.Read this to know more about the AIDA model for copy writing.
To catch people's people's attention, your headline needs to be catchy enough for them to take action within seconds.To pique interest, content must relate to your readers and not your company per se. Something that answers their unvoiced question of 'what is in it for me?' To generate desire in your readers, use power words that trigger excitement and create a mood.Then tell them to take action, highlighting both the benefits for taking action and what they stand to lose for not taking action.Read this to know more about the AIDA model for copy writing.
Mistake #7: Having outdated content or website
You don't boost your reputation and earn the trust of visitors when they can't count on you to give up-to-date information.60% of consumers feel more positive about a brand after consuming its content.Now imagine if your content is outdated? And in the words of Zig Ziglar:
''If people like you they will listen to you but if they trust you, they'll do business with you.''
Mistake #8: Having a slow page load speed.
This is a critical website mistake that can make you lose prospective customers a great deal and lot of sales.Online users have very little patience when visiting websites.They will quickly turn their attention to another site once your site does not load quickly.According to data from Akamai you could be losing nearly half of your visitors if your website takes longer than 3 seconds to load.Your site speed also affects revenue. Hubspot reports that if your site makes $100,000/day, 1 second improvement in page speed brings $7000 daily.Just 1 second!
Thankfully, google made two tools available that can help you check your site speed.testmysite helps you test your mobile speed,shows you how your site speed, shows you estimated visitor loss and compares your site speed with top performing sites. There are other tools though.like pingdom
Thankfully, google made two tools available that can help you check your site speed.testmysite helps you test your mobile speed,shows you how your site speed, shows you estimated visitor loss and compares your site speed with top performing sites. There are other tools though.like pingdom
The other is page speed insights that helps you check not just your speed but also site performance.
Mistake #9: Expecting visitors to scroll down to find relevant information.
Having your visitors to scroll down to find the relevant information for which they came to your site can easily push them away.People who arrive your site want you to be able to quickly answer this unspoken question.How relevant is this page?When you feature images on the landing page of your site that has little or no relevance to what the page is about,you are indirectly asking your visitors to scroll down and find what they are looking for.Unfortunately, not many have that sort of patience.90 % of consumers say that access to content however they want it is somewhat very important.59% say it is very important.
Mistake #10: Having a poor layout and and navigation.
According to a web usability report 1 out of every 2 visitors to your site will use the navigation menu to orient themselves about your brand.That is some scary data to consider which means navigation on your site should not be overlooked.
In a post by Kissmetrics, the following common navigation errors were highlighted:
Having a Non-standard Style:
It is best practice and makes for a good user experience to place horizontal navigation across the top and vertical navigation down the left side because your visitors expect to find them in those places.
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| Source : https://blog.kissmetrics.com/common-website-navigation-mistakes/ |
Too many Navigation items:
With too many navigation items on your page, visitors might skip vital information in the course of scanning through the page. Try to limit your navigation to 5 items.
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| Source: https://blog.kissmetrics.com/common-website-navigation-mistakes/ |
Using Generic Labels:
Labels like ''products'' or ''services'' are generic terms.Rather they should be descriptive.Describe what the product or service is about while considering their relevance to search engines because your visitors will not be searching for 'products' or 'services'.Other labels like 'who we are' or 'what we do' will not aid your your site's visibility by search engines.
Search for keywords related to your industry using Google's keyword planner.(If you just want to do just keyword research without providing credit/ debit card details, this step-by-step guide is perfect for you.). This is what descriptive descriptive labels that are search engine friendly look like:
Search for keywords related to your industry using Google's keyword planner.(If you just want to do just keyword research without providing credit/ debit card details, this step-by-step guide is perfect for you.). This is what descriptive descriptive labels that are search engine friendly look like:
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| Source: https://blog.kissmetrics.com/common-website-navigation-mistakes/ |
The Smith Bros site described their product and services as ''wellness products'' and ''manufacturing services'' respectively.
This is how a site with proper and easy navigation looks like.
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| Source: https://blog.kissmetrics.com/common-website-navigation-mistakes/ |
From The Independent Publishers Group website, you can see that their navigation is properly placed horizontally across the top.Their labels are quite descriptive and you can also see that they differentiated their secondary navigation from their primary navigation by highlighting them.
Mistake #11: Not having a clickable logo.
Now that may sound ordinary but you will be losing 36% of your visitors if they can't click on your logo to get back to the home page when they get to your site from referral sites.
Mistake #12: Featuring too many advertisements on your webpages.
If you come unto a web page and you are bombarded with too many adverts here and there, what will be your impression about the company and the website?You will perhaps think they are all about making money right and not satisfying their customers?You will not want to do business with them as a result.
Again, advertising too many products and services of other companies will only take the eyes of your prospective customers away from your products and services.It might interest you to know that in a 2016 survey, 91% of respondents agreed that ads are more intrusive than they were 2-3 years before then.
Again, advertising too many products and services of other companies will only take the eyes of your prospective customers away from your products and services.It might interest you to know that in a 2016 survey, 91% of respondents agreed that ads are more intrusive than they were 2-3 years before then.
Mistake #13: Not having a responsive site.
A responsive site is one that renders properly across various devices vis-a-vis mobile, tablet, desktop etc ie perfectly fits the various screen resolution without compromising content or design.Today's digital consumer is a multi-screen user.They want to have the same seamless experience across whatever device they are using to access your site.According to a report 83% of users say a seamless experience is somewhat or very important.
Mistake #14: Not offering free things on your website.
Who doesn't love freebies?I personally do.I bet you do too.The freemium model of giving free products to consumers in order to upsell them later is a very good formula for attracting leads, building relationship with them and consequently, turning them into paying customers.You can use your freebie or give away as a bait to collect contact information via your opt-in form, then you can engage and conect emotionally with them and turn them into paying customers.
Thing you can give away include subscription to newsletter, whitepaper, trials of softwares, case studies etc. This statistics from Mailchimp is staggering:On the first day that the company announced that it was going freemium in 2009, they had 85000 users.Slightly more than a year later, they grew their user base by 5 times ie 45,000 users.Since going frremium, they had doubled their average number of users per month.
Thing you can give away include subscription to newsletter, whitepaper, trials of softwares, case studies etc. This statistics from Mailchimp is staggering:On the first day that the company announced that it was going freemium in 2009, they had 85000 users.Slightly more than a year later, they grew their user base by 5 times ie 45,000 users.Since going frremium, they had doubled their average number of users per month.
Mistake #15: Not having a blog on your site.
The last but not the least.Running a blog on your site is key to brand awareness, customer retention and loyalty.According to a report, a staggering 82% of your customers enjoy reading relevant content from your company's blog, while 70% learn about a company through their blog and not their ad.Again, according to hubspot, companies who blog receive 97% more links directing to their site.This maybe what you need to give your brand some more exposure.
Now it's time to make those adjustments to your website if you can identify with any of those mistakes in order for you to retain your customers and acquire even more.Do not look at the cost implication even though some of them may cost you nothing because the benefit of making your website customer-centric will eventually far outweigh whatever investments you will be making.
Please comment, share on social media if this article has been of help.
Now it's time to make those adjustments to your website if you can identify with any of those mistakes in order for you to retain your customers and acquire even more.Do not look at the cost implication even though some of them may cost you nothing because the benefit of making your website customer-centric will eventually far outweigh whatever investments you will be making.
Please comment, share on social media if this article has been of help.
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