8 reasons why your site visitors are not buying from your website
We all know you have about 7 seconds from the moment someone lands on your website to convince them to stay, in other words first impressions do matter! A lot! So, other than having a super opening headline that explains what you do, who you do it for and what makes you different, how do you ensure that your site visitors hang around long enough to actually book your services or buy your product.
Here's a list of 8 common reasons why people leave your site without buying:
1. THEY CAN’T FIND WHAT THEY WERE LOOKING FOR
Have you ever hopped on to Google to find out what time your local supermarket closes at on a Sunday and find that you have to click and click and click again to eventually find the opening hours for the shop closest to where you live (within 5km anyway, during lockdown!) You sometimes end up on the head office website, struggling to find the opening hours for the Tesco in Dun Laoghaire. I don’t know about you but I find that super frustrating and I usually just give up and go looking for SuperValu instead, ()with that U2 song going through my mind!)
My point? Make sure that what your client is looking for is easy to find on your website. Your phone number, email (please don’t have a form and no email link, that’s super frustrating too!), customer support or prices…whatever it is, make sure your site visitor can find it easily, preferably without scrolling.
2. YOUR WEBSITE TAKES TOO LONG TO LOAD
If your website is slow to load, you can be pretty sure that your site visitor will quickly click away and go back to the Google Search Results page or search again. So how can you ensure it loads quickly?
it’s important that your images are resized and optimised for web before you upload them. Here is Squarespace’s guide to image sizes. If you are using the free images from Unsplash via the Squarespace image library, you don’t need to worry about doing this.
add thumbnail images to your videos in Squarespace so that your site visitor sees something straight away while the system loads the video url from Squarespace or Vimeo
keep your custom code simple. If the browser needs to read a load of custom code before it can display your content, this can slow things down. By all means use some custom code to make your site look a bit less ‘templatey’ - but bear in mind that it can have an impact on site speed.
3. CALLS TO ACTION (CTAs) THAT DON’T STAND OUT
If you don’t tell your site visitors what you want them to do on your website, they won’t do it! That’s the purpose of your CTA (Calls to Action). Use big, bold buttons that say ‘Contact Me’, ‘Buy Now’, ‘Reserve Your Spot’, ‘Get the Guide’ - whatever you want your site visitors to do. No page on your site should end without one, but use them liberally around the rest of your pages too.
It’s important to give them air too - by air I mean white space. The eye needs time to ‘breathe’ as it scrolls/skims down your website, so give your Calls to Action the space to stand out. Space is good!
4. YOU HAVEN'T MADE IT EASY TO BOOK OR BUY
You need to make it easy to do contact you, book you, buy from you, download your freebie or book that free consultation. Use your Calls to Action buttons, design good mock-ups for your free opt-ins to draw attention to them, leave plenty of white space. Make your forms short, take all obstacles out of your site visitors’ way so that before they know it they have paid for that item, booked the call or downloaded the free checklist - whatever it is that you want them to do on your site.
5. YOUR TONE OF VOICE IS NOT CONSISTENT
You are probably blogging on your website, creating posts on social media and maybe vlogging too. As part of your marketing and branding, it is important to main consistency of tone wherever your customers come across you. So, if you are writing serious articles on LinkedIn about the state of play in your industry and then use a totally different tone of voice on your website, that is going to jar for the site visitors who might be used to reading your content on LinkedIn. Keep it consistent with your personality and your brand values. Copywriters often use an exercise in determining tone of voice when working with clients and then write all their content in this tone. You need to use the same tone across all your marketing touchpoints too.
6. YOUR VISUAL BRANDING IS NOT CONSISTENT
So say you are a jeweller specialising in bridal headpieces. Your Instagram is chock-a-block with beautiful images of your designs. If a client falls in love with your designs on Instagram but then lands on a very corporate looking website, they are either going to wonder if they are in the right place or wonder if you are really that professional after all. Your website design matters, it’s your number one marketing tool. If your visual identity and branding is sloppy and inconsistent, your reputation will suffer. And remember, branding is so much more than just a logo! It’s your colour scheme, fonts, photography, infographics, graphics…everything we see on the page (digital or print!). It should be designed with intent and creative flair and your clients should recognise it whether they are on your social media, website or are holding your business card in their hands! (Remember them?!)
7. YOUR COPY SPEAKS TO THE WRONG PERSON
When you are writing your website content, first and foremost you must speak to your ideal client. They need to feel totally at home on your website. The tone, language and content will be very different for different types of client or customer. Indeed, what is important to consider is their motivation for want to buy from someone like you.
If you sell art classes online to other artists, your content might be ‘how to sell out your online art class’, whereas if you sell art classes to the man or woman in the street, your content might be ‘Where to buy the best art materials for beginners’.
Check out my other article on designing your website for your ideal client
8. YOU DON’T EXPLAIN THE BENEFITS OF WORKING WITH YOU/BUYING FROM YOU
People want to know how you are going to make them feel, how you are going to solve their problem, they want to know what’s in it for them. It is important to make this clear on your website, so that the customer knows what the end result will be after buying from you.
I hope you find these pointers useful! If you would like help designing your website, making you irresistible to your ideal client, get in touch!
