10 Resons why your website isn’t converting visitors into clients in 2023 and how to fix it

Introduction

Your main goal with having a website is to get more clients, whether you are selling a physical product, selling a service or just trying to get more people to visit your “brick and mortar” shop, this is why you are promoting your website/business. So why isn’t your website converting?

Typical conversion rates can be very low, statistically, if you are selling products online and asking people to pay by credit card, then your conversion rate (The percentage of visitors to your site divided by the number of sales) is very low, approximately 1%.

If you are trying to get more contacts, i.e. by getting people to call you, fill in a form or send you a WhatsApp, then the conversion rate is generally higher at 5%.

This means that for online shops, you need 500 visitors per week to get 5 sales and 100 visitors to your website to get 5 contacts.

Where are my clients and why aren't they converting?

This means that for online shops, you need 500 visitors per week to get 5 sales and 100 visitors to your website to get 5 contacts.

If you are not getting visitors, then you need to invest time in SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) or paid marketing such as Google Ads.

If you are getting traffic to your site but not getting clients, then here are the top 10 reasons why and how to fix it

Looking to get more visitors to convert on your website?

For more information and a free no-obligation consultation, book a video call with me today

10 Reasons why you are not getting clients from your website with tips on how to fix it

The following are the top 10 reasons why websites usually don’t convert their visitors into clients. If you follow the pro tips then you should see your conversion rate increase dramatically. Don’t forget to install an analytics program such as Google Analytics 4 to make sure that things are actually improving.

1. The wrong traffic

If you have a website dedicated to accounting but on your blog post, you may have a free guide which is generating a lot of traffic, but this guide may not be very commercially viable.

Another example is a plumber who has a fantastic video on their site about how to fix a kitchen sink.

Maybe this video receives thousands of visits but is so good that people manage to fix the sink themselves and don’t actually need to call the plumber!!!

PRO TIP

Make sure that you have Google Analytics 4 or another good quality analytics program installed on your site and check out where you are getting traffic from, which pages people are actually visiting and which pages are converting and which are not.

2. Security / Lack of trust

There are 2 types of protocol for websites, HTTP and HTTPS. If your site is still using HTTP or is accessible via the HTTP link. 

“HTTPS stands for “Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure”. It is a protocol used to provide secure communication over the internet. When a website is using HTTPS, it means that the data that is transmitted between the web server and the user’s browser is encrypted and protected from eavesdropping or tampering by third parties”

For Example: If you type in https://digitalmarketingspain.com (unsecured), you will be redirected to https://digitalmarketingspain.com (secure). If you do not have an SSL secure certificate, then visitors may be advised before visiting your site that your site is not secure and they shouldn’t visit

SSL Secure padlocked site

You need to make sure that when people visit your site, it has the padlock (as shown in the image) which indicates that the site is using an SSL connection and is secure

PRO TIP

Contact your web hosting provider and buy an SSL certificate, if they don’t provide one then change hosting provider NOW

3. Poor Navigation

Basically, your website is difficult to navigate, maybe you have pop-up windows that won’t close easily,  it’s hard to find your contact details because the contact is hidden in a hard-to-find menu.

Maybe you are using hard-to-read colours such as white on a yellow background.

 

PRO TIP

Get an honest opinion from a friend you trust, have a look at your site and ask them to carry out a few tasks such as searching for information about your most popular service/product or sending you an email direct from the page.

Just make sure that you ask someone who will give you an honest answer

Visitors not converting on your website?

For more information and a free no-obligation consultation, book a video call with me today

6. Social proof

Social proof is to quote the great Seth Goddin in his book This is Marketing, he states that

“People like us do things like this”.

When you put recommendations on your website, what is really happening is that a potential client thinks “Well if all these people like me living here in Spain are happy with the insurance that I have bought from this business, then I will be happy too”.

How many times have you read the reviews on Amazon before buying a product?

PRO TIP

Make sure that you include reviews from trusted sources like Google My Business, Trustpilot or Facebook. If you are using WordPress, then there are free plugins that you can use to automatically import reviews and display them on your website.

This tip can really help when converting visitors to your website.

4. Not Mobile Friendly

So you have a beautiful website that looked amazing when the designer showed it to you on their 30-inch screen, clear crisp colours, amazing photos and it looked perfect, Maybe it looks great on your shiny new iPhone 14 BUT what does it look like on smaller screens.

Not all mobile phones are the same and as here in Spain, on the Costa Blanca, many of your customers, be they ex-pats or tourists will be using a mobile phone to access your site.

 

PRO TIP

First run a mobile test on Google’s mobile-friendly checking page and ask a couple of friends what your site looks like on their mobile.

Mobile frientdly pages help when converting website visitors.

The above image shows the results for a website which is mobile friendly. If your site is not mobile friendly, the page will point out issues and how to fix them.

5. Speed

This is another big problem and very often a big problem on mobile. The big question is how long does your site take to load?

So if your site takes too long to load then users will probably just hit the back button and find someone else (Let’s face it, your competition can’t wait to get their hands on your potential clients)

  • According to Google, 53% of mobile users will abandon a website that takes longer than 3 seconds to load.  
  • A study by Akamai found that a 100-millisecond delay in website load time can decrease conversion rates by 7%.  
  • Another study by Google found that as page load time goes from 1 second to 5 seconds, the probability of a mobile user bouncing increases by 90%.
PRO TIP

First go to GTMetrix.com and test your website’s speed (Don’t forget to test from the nearest location, which is the UK in the free version). Another great site for testing all the pages on your site is https://www.experte.com/pagespeed, this site will give you a global view of how fast your whole site is.

If you are not receiving an A or a B rating, then it is time to contact your web developer. If you are using WordPress for your website, then there are many free and paid plugins to help speed up your site

6. Social proof

Social proof is to quote the great Seth Goddin in his book This is Marketing, he states that

“People like us do things like this”.

When you put recommendations on your website, what is really happening is that a potential client thinks “Well if all these people like me living here in Spain are happy with the insurance that I have bought from this business, then I will be happy too”.

How many times have you read the reviews on Amazon before buying a product?

PRO TIP

Make sure that you include reviews from trusted sources like Google My Business, Trustpilot or Facebook. If you are using WordPress, then there are free plugins that you can use to automatically import reviews and display them on your website.

This tip can really help when converting visitors to your website.

6. Social proof

Social proof is to quote the great Seth Goddin in his book This is Marketing, he states that

“People like us do things like this”.

When you put recommendations on your website, what is really happening is that a potential client thinks “Well if all these people like me living here in Spain are happy with the insurance that I have bought from this business, then I will be happy too”.

How many times have you read the reviews on Amazon before buying a product?

PRO TIP

Make sure that you include reviews from trusted sources like Google My Business, Trustpilot or Facebook. If you are using WordPress, then there are free plugins that you can use to automatically import reviews and display them on your website.

This tip can really help when converting visitors to your website.

Visitors not converting on your website?

For more information and a free no-obligation consultation, book a video call with me today

7. No Value Proposition

Your website or landing page doesn’t have a  unique value proposition is a message which describes the unique benefits of your products or services. It explains what makes your company different / better from the competition.

 

PRO TIP

At the top of the page use the main title to quickly show that your client has arrived at the right place and then have a short concise description below that along with a great call to action (see next point)

I.e I might have:

TITLE: FREELANCE SEO CONSULTANT ON THE COSTA BLANCA AND BEYOND

VALUE PROPOSITION: Improve the online visibility of your business with an expert SEO consultant on the Costa Blanca. Proven strategies for generating more traffic to your site

CALL TO ACTION: Contact me today for a free no-obligation video consultation

BUTTON:

8. No call to action

Your website clearly needs to state what you are offering, what the benefits are for the user, but also what you want the user to do. It is necessary to have Call To Action (CTA buttons) strategically located throughout your site. Make it really easy for people to buy from you or contact you at the click of a button.

 

PRO TIP

Try experimenting with different calls to action. For example, if you want to speak to your customer you could try having buttons like Get In Touch, Let’s Talk, Call Now or Book a Call.

Remember to keep Call To Action button colours consistent throughout the site.

9. Broken links

There is nothing more annoying (and Google really hates this) than a broken link, imagine a potential client is reading a fascinating blog post and there is a link to the exact product on your website, but you changed the page and didn’t update the link, so now they have to spend time searching through your site to find what they are looking for.

They may just go back to Google and search for it there.

 

PRO TIP

Use a free link checker such as Ubersuggest to check your site for broken links and make sure that you have a search icon within the menu, especially if you are offering a lot of products or services.

10. Irrelevant Content

If your blog section is crammed with irrelevant content that people are not actually searching for then, no matter how much content you upload, if no one wants it then it won’t drive traffic to your site.

 

PRO TIP

ind out exactly the type of information related to your business that people are actually looking for.

There is a free service called answer the public which allows you to choose your location, and enter keywords related to your business.

Answer the public will then scan Google and show you a list of questions people are actually asking about your product/service, and you can then answer those questions in a highly relevant blog post.

Visitors not converting on your website?

For more information and a free no-obligation consultation, book a video call with me today

Conclusion

Making your website profitable is a two-step process. Firstly you need to get the right traffic, there is no point in offering loads of free advice if the person can then easily do it themselves, so you need traffic and secondly, you need the user to have a great experience on your site, especially on mobile, you need to explain to the user exactly why they should choose you and make it really easy for them to get hold of you to find out more.

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