Ineffective Websites: 9 Reasons Your Site Is Not Getting Clients
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You’ve poured heart and soul into your website, yet it’s not bringing you enough clients. Why is this the case? In this post, we’ll look at 9 common causes of ineffective websites.
1. Your website doesn’t have enough traffic
Just like a physical store, there’s no selling if nobody walks into your website. If you’re not getting enough clients, the very first thing to check is whether your website has enough site visitors to be realistically expecting sales.
You can check the number of monthly visitors in a website analytics tool such as Google Analytics. The specific number of visitors you need will vary depending on your industry, service prices, and most importantly, where the traffic is coming from. Generally speaking, even if your website is optimized for conversion, you will need a few thousand visitors per month to expect a steady stream of leads and customers.
2. Your website attracts the wrong audiences
If your website has a healthy number of visits but no sales, the problem might be in the quality of your site traffic. Your website can only convert if site visitors are actually people who match your target client profile.
Use your analytics software to see where your website visitors are coming from and what expectations they have based on those sources. Here are a few examples of how you may unintentionally attract the wrong audiences:
Your business is local, but your social media content reaches everyone and most of them are not located in your services areas.
Your blog attracts DIYers instead of people who want to pay. A lot of how-to articles tend to fall into this category.
Your content focuses too much on people who are unaware of their problems instead of people who are ready to buy.
You change your business direction but still getting traffic from previous marketing efforts
For service businesses, the quality of traffic is actually much more important than the quantity. If you suspect your site hasn’t been attracting the right audiences, it’s time to slow down and refocus your marketing efforts.
3. Your website doesn’t have a unique value proposition
The third common reason for low conversion is not showing enough value. People only buy when they see the benefits outweigh the costs! Your website must explain the benefits people get from working with you.
A compelling unique value proposition secures your spot in prospects’ minds when they’re looking at several service providers. It gives them an excuse to choose and pays more for you.
Even if your services have a strong visual component (e.g. photographers, designers…), simply displaying beautiful artifacts will not be not enough to sell.
Think about what transformation or desirable outcome you can help your clients achieve? Why should they choose you over other alternatives?
Then made this information clearly visible and simple to understand on your website.
Useful resources: If you need a bit of help with writing website content, the book “Building a Storybrand” offers a simple framework and examples that can help you.
4. Your website goal is unclear
Visitors won’t know what you want them to do unless you tell them. Your website goal is the most important action you want users to take on your site. This could be booking a consultation, buying a product, or signing up for your mailing list.
Some common mistakes that make your website goal unclear are:
No call-to-action (CTA): Just having a contact page is not enough. You need to direct people to your contact page with CTA.
Subtle CTA: 79% of web users don’t read, they scan. If your CTAs blend in with other information, chances are people will not recognize it. CTAs are more inviting to click when designed as a button and with a high-contrast color.
Vague CTA: What the button says also plays a role in how well it converts. Where possible, replace generic labels like “learn more” with specific actions like “download now” or “get instant access”.
Too many goals: This can cause choice paralysis and lead to no action. You certainly can have multiple website goals, but don’t present all of them at once. Highlight the most important goal first, then guide users to the other options.
5. Your website doesn’t help to lower uncertainty
Uncertainty is the #1 reason people hesitate to take action on your website. As they consider you as their solution, you can hear their inner thoughts going through several questions:
Is this the right fit for me?
How long will it take?
How much does it cost?
What will happen next?
Can I trust this person?
What if I’m not happy with the outcome?
For service businesses, as you’re delivering intangible benefits, you can improve your conversion by showing your prospects exactly what they’re getting. This includes your deliverables, process, timeline, and testimonials that speak to the outcomes.
All these details will help your prospects feel more confident and lower their resistance to take the next step to work with you.
6. Your website doesn’t provide guidance
Imagine travelling to a city that doesn’t have any street sign. You’d be confused, or at the very least, not feeling confident to explore the city. Yet, many small business websites don’t provide navigation guidance to help users move from one page to another.
Navigation guidance requires more than a bar with links at the top. To lead users on a journey from learning about your business to taking the desirable action, you need to think through what the users might need at every page and section of a page.
For example, while reading one of your case studies, a prospect may want to view another case study, view all case studies, and they might be ready to contact you. Without any links and buttons, users have to figure out where to go all by themselves.
Navigational guidance is also helpful in helping users making choices. For example, if you have several offerings, it can cause confusion and choice paralysis for your website visitors. To make it easier, you can highlight the most popular option or provide labels that are easy to self-select (e.g. if you’re a [client type A], click here).
Your layout and visual hierarchy also need to guide user’s eyes to where you want them to look.
7. Your website doesn’t build enough trust
75% of website credibility comes from design. If your website design is messy, outdated, or unprofessional, people will exit faster than you can say hello.
Website elements that can make your website feel untrustworthy include:
Site not secure
Large links and buttons everywhere
Cheesy stock photos
Too many colors or fonts (inconsistency)
Typo or grammatical errors
No information about who is behind the website
No customer reviews or short, generic reviews that don’t sound like they come from real customers
8. Slow loading speed frustrates users
Online users are incredibly impatient. 40% of people will exit a website if it takes more than 3 seconds to load.
But website speed doesn’t just affect the bounce rate. It also affects how many people who stay on your site will end up completing your website goals. In fact, every additional second of load time results in a drop in conversion rate.
You can use tools like Pingdom or Experte Pagespeed to get your site speed. If you find your site loading very slow, consider reducing videos, compressing images, and removing unnecessary codes to speed it up.
9. Too much visual clutter
There is such a thing as overdesign. Too many visual elements can distract visitors from your main messages and make the site harder to use as it requires more effort from the brain to process information.
Here are some tips to ensure your website is clean and easy to use:
Use a consistent color palette and 2-3 fonts throughout the entire site
Remove busy background image that makes texts hard to read
Minimize images that are purely decorative and not adding meaning to the nearby texts
Use white space generously
Vary font size and weight to highlight the information you most want users to read
Keep emphasized texts (e.g. bold, red, underlined) to a minimum
Conclusion
There you have the 9 reasons that lead to ineffective websites. Once you’ve identified the problems, you can begin to improve your website.
If you’re looking to take your website to the next level, check out my Squarespace website design packages and book a free consultation!
