How do you measure the success of a site? Conversion.
You could have a lot of traffic going to your site, but those visits don’t really matter if you aren’t converting them into customers. The only visitors that matter are those that are adding to your bottom-line. All other traffic is essentially wasted.
Are you finding yourself with a lot of traffic, selling the right products at competitive prices, yet not with many paying customers? Then read on to find out why your site isn’t converting and what you can do about it.
Check Your Current Conversion Rate
First things first, you should know your current conversion rate. Whether you measure your conversions by product purchases, brochure downloads or email newsletter signups: you need to be measuring and tracking those conversions regularly. You can track your conversion rate using Goals in Google Analytics, or through any other analytics platform of your choosing.
So what's considered a good conversion rate? The ideal rate is between 2 to 3 percent. This rate could be higher or lower based on the value of the conversion (e.g. you’d have more difficulty converting customers if you’re selling products or services worth $10,000+). But if you’re having less than 2 percent conversion and your conversion value isn’t very high, then you might have a problem on your hands.
Here are five reasons why your site may be underperforming.
#1. You’re Providing a Bad Mobile Experience
If your website isn’t mobile-friendly, there is no way it will survive in these times. It isn't enough for your site to be responsive, it has to be designed specifically for mobile in terms of content and structure. Failure to do so would mean marginalizing a substantial portion of your customer base and in turn decreasing your conversion rate.
But what does designing for mobile entail?
- Using large and easily legible text
- Using short paragraphs
- Making sure that every key feature is just a tap away
- Having just a single call-to-action
The key is to keep testing your mobile site. Perhaps you should even ask customers and family members for feedback on your site’s mobile experience. Afterwards, you should review what is working and what is not – and address those issues.
As long as you do not ignore the importance of having a good mobile experience for your site, you can easily hone in on the reason(s) your site is not converting.
#2. No Call to Action
Your website could be user-friendly with engaging and quality content, but without a clear and concise call-to-action, you simply won’t convert. Users may want to convert but just don't have the opportunity or means to do so. Because you haven’t provided it.
Make your call-to-action clear, concise, prominent, specific and compelling. Provide all the information users need so they know exactly what you want them to do next. Create calls-to-action that are relevant and specific; and place them in a prominent place on every page of your site.
Whatever you do, make sure it is very easy for the user to convert when they are ready to.
#3. Your Users Are Annoyed with Your Website
You may be missing out on conversion opportunities if there is something off-putting about your site. Look at your bounce rate: if it is high, then you know there is something that is not appealing to users.
In such a case, you need to find out what the problem is – directly from the user. You may use heat maps and look at your user journeys via Google Analytics, but perhaps it will make your job easier to ask users directly (e.g. via a quick survey).
A few common annoyances on websites:
- You do not offer any useful information
- Navigation is too difficult
- You have too many ads or popups
- Your site doesn’t look good
These are all problems with a rather easy fix. Take your time investigating them and fix the errors as soon as you can.
#4. You’re Off-Target
Your website should be anything but general. A lot of website owners aim to please everyone – but they can’t – and end up isolating their entire audience.
Perhaps you’re writing for the wrong audience, perhaps you’re writing for a larger demographic than you should be; whatever the case, inaccurate targeting could negatively impact your conversion rate. Your copy, branding, marketing and site design should speak directly to a niche demographic.
Conduct market research to properly define and know your audience.
#5. You Have a Slow Site
We previously covered the importance of website load speed and provided tips on to speed up your site. When your website doesn’t load fast, your visitors leave and are unlikely to visit again in the near future.
There are many factors that can slow down your site, such as:
- A site that isn’t optimized for mobile
- Broken links
- Not using caching
- Messy code
- Images that aren’t optimized
- Flash and Java
- Average web hosting
You can check your current site speed via Page Speed Insights. If your site is taking longer than 3 seconds to load, you need to work on it. Studies show that most users quickly exit sites that take longer than 3 seconds to load.
Measure, Measure and Measure
This is actually a sixth reason why your site may not be converting. Measure, measure and keep measuring. If you’re not measuring, you’re guessing, and in turn, not really making any strides.
The problem most website owners encounter is that they are either not tracking their website traffic or that they are tracking but not reviewing their metrics. Some do know they should be tracking, but just aren’t sure what to look for or what to make of the results.
Well, you should always start with your goals in mind. Then you can identify which key metrics will help you to measure your progress towards those goals.
Once you start measuring, you can improve on those metrics; figure out what is working, what isn’t, and then fine-tune and optimize.
Wrapping Up
These five reasons are just a starting point to help boost your conversion rates. There are many other reasons why your site may not be converting. However, these are fairly common in under-converting sites.
If you find that any of these reasons apply to your business, simply make the changes and you’ll see a big difference or improvement in your conversion rates and bottom line.
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Good post! And if you sell stuff: no 6, another very important reason – No one wants buy your shit! Even if your homepage is optimized to fullest extent, you still need to sell something people wants to buy. But it’s a good idea to fix all technical issues first so you don’t need to question that there is something wrong with your products or price-setting
Hello Arnaud,
Thank you very much for the above insight. Meanwhile, many times sites have traffic but people may not be willing to sign up or convert. In that case, what can one do to get conversions if the site has already taken care of the above tips?
Thank you for your help.
Make sure you are actually offering your customer a valuable product that they need and solves any problem(s) they might be having and write your copy accordingly.
Hi Arnaud, I am new to affiliate marketing and have trying to get more traffic to my site. Your post gave me some new insights. I will work on them. Thank you very much.
Yes, I totaly agree… During my first year I was facing same issues and most probably the speed but then I resolved them and now my website myfaayda.com has improved a lot….
Thanks for any other fantastic post. Where else may anybody get that kind of info in such an ideal means of writing? I have a presentation next week.
Thanks you for this great post, it is a very useful article. Now my site is properly configured after I read your post.
My website has low conversion. Who can take a look and tell me what is wrong. There have been times I️ get a lot of sales and then most of the times I️t is extremely slow. Why?
Arnaud, thank you for your valuable information. I had a lot of problems with my websites. Now that those problems are solved, should I be seeing traffic? Can somebody look at my websites and tell me what is wrong?
Hi Dorcas, we’re happy to help. You can contact us here for more details about our services: https://aioseo.com/contact/
Nice work!
I don’t sell anything on my site… find that if google search ignores me I’m dead in the water. So no matter what… it always rests in the hands of the ol’ mighty one
Great article. Concise and to the point. I will take your comments under advisement. Thanks again.
Good info, this information is very useful, I am learning to develop my own website. I’ll wait for your next tips. Thanks.
Thanks for this valuable information.
I am a pediatrician. And I have a new website. I like to share new information about child care. I try to write new paragraphs daily and answer comments daily. Questions are not enough. I want to make it more interactive to gain more visitors. More questions, more answers about child health. Do I need also need to use Facebook, Instagram, etc.?
Yes, it should help. There’s a lot of the people you’re looking for on social media.
Good insights. Thank you for sharing them.
Thanks for sharing. These 5 reasons helps us re-design and make our website more friendly and eye-catchy.
Good article.
Thanks for the helpful article.
Thanks for this post, this is very helpful.
Step by step upgrading that all of us can apply. Great input.
Nice.
Hey, this was really helpful post. Keep it up.
I see the word “conversion”, what exactly is it to convert? I am new to having a website, much of the jargon is not understood. thx
Your other information was helpful. Getting traffic is another thing needing to be addressed, like I said, website is new – less than a month old.
Arnaud,
Great post. Nice and concise and actionable. Your advice, “Your website should be anything but general,” is something we’re paying closer attention to these days. Narrowing down the niches we serve and creating silos on the website for the page content, blog posts and landing pages that serve their respective silos.
Nice post. It seems my website is lacking in conversions. I have the traffic at 100.000+ visitors per day, and have reduced my pricing by half but still no buyers. My theme is used by other members throughout the internet but they are getting some sales and no page views. As for the plugins, only three were working when I purchased the site and now have thirteen including the new All in One SEO Pack. Maybe I need to switch to Yoast SEO.
Hi Robert, if you have more than 100.000 visitors per day, then clearly All in One SEO Pack Pro is doing its job. 😉 I’d carefully analyze and try to find out why your visitors aren’t purchasing anything. Are you offering value to them? Is the product still too expensive? Are you offering a solution to a problem? These are just a few of the many questions you should ask yourself.
Hi Arnaud,
I don’t sell anything on my site. I find that if Google Search ignores me, so how can I improve and sell stuff. I am very new and don’t know how to handle this all. Please help.
Thank you so much for the information. I feel that I learned something new today, but not enough to take care of the problem. I do appreciate your information.
Hey Arnaud
Awesome, informative content. It helped me to increase traffic on my site. Your plugin All in One SEO Pack plugin is also doing good job to enhance my site ranking.
Thanks a lot..
I publish and event listing site. I made it as user friendly as possible so that people can see at a glance what is happening where and when. They don’t need to stay on the site long or even click anything if they’re only looking a couple days ahead. The result is a high bounce rate and site that is not great for generating ad revenue, but it has a good Google presence and comes high in search results. If I want a higher “conversion”, I guess I need to add content like restauraunt and show reviews that people will spend more time on.
Thank you for sharing this. Is there a plugin for making a site mobile-friendly? I’ve been having traffic but nothing converts to a sale.
Good job. Thanks for sharing this useful article.
Thant’s amazing points. Probably it’s important to take care of all things mentioned above!
Thanks for the share!
I paid a lot of money to have someone develop a website for me. Then, just when it was to go live, she disappeared and I have no idea. Meanwhile, the site is not generating anything and I am at a loss what to do. It’s not up to date and images and links seem to have disappeared completely. Do you have any suggestions?
Hi Hans, we provide paid WordPress development and support services and may be able to help you with your site. Please contact us here with details of what you need – https://aioseo.com/contact/
I learned a lot from this post. Online traffic is the real answer, it’s the whole secret for any website. You can the most good looking site but if it gets no traffic, what’s the point of paying lots of money?
Thank you for sharing this comprehensive post. I appreciate the effort.
Nice Information. Thanks for sharing this useful article.
Thank you for the insightful information. Number 6 really seemed to speak to me since I am relatively new to the scene. I was wondering if you could expand on what I do need to look for to get results. My initial goal is just to get my website more traffic. Thank you in advance!
Hello, my name is Norberto and I have been a premium member for almost 5 months now, but for one reason or another, I have not been able to move forward with WordPress. I did a couple of posts but I know my website needs a lot of work. I can’t figure out the way of making my site visible to everybody. I don’t know how to make comments and responses from my posts and I insist in continuing with this online marketing training. Please, can anybody help?
Thank you
Norberto
Good post, thanks sir!
Thank for giving us valuable content, converting visitors is easy when we build trust, compare with competitors and boost every sales strategy with your own experience. Try, try and try until you succeed…
Thanks for telling me the 5 reasons, please tell me how to improve SEO for my website for ranking higher.
Thank you so much for sharing, really amazing article! 🙂
I feel it’s because my site is new, or am I wrong?
In my opinion the 5 reasons why your site may be under performing that you gave are so awesome! It’s amazingly clear! I can feel success is coming soon. Thanks!
Hi, great article. Thank you for sharing.
Superb useful information for new bloggers struggling for success of their website.
Hats off Arnaud…….
Hi! This is a nice post. I like it.
I agree with you.
Thanks for your effort. Nice article!
Good work
Great article, lots of ideas to delve into.
Hi, great post! It is very helpful for me. You explain a lot of concepts and ideas.
I thank you for your article. Very helpful indeed. I think I suffer from almost the 5 reasons. Besides, I also think my affiliate link does not appear and that I may be losing something. Is it possible to get an audit of my site by you?
Please contact us here https://aioseo.com/contact/ and we’ll send you details of our SEO Audit service.
Nice article! like a slap on the side of the head, it keeps me measuring!
Thanks
Hi
that’s nice info 100% agree with you good work keep it up
thanks
I can agree with the #4 one you’re off-target because I guess our website is off target hmm
I agree with this tropic.
Hi, Arnaud
Nice article. Thanks for sharing it, and I fully agree with you. Keep up the good work.
My site is new and slow, help me to make it profitable, i don’t know how please.
Good posts,
I’d say from your lists #4 is probably the most prevalent.
Targeting the wrong customer avatar.
“Your avatar is literally custom-built to be blown away by your product!”
Hi Arnaud,
Awesome post. I just recently started to build a website. Since last week, I have 177 subscribers with very weird emails. All I have to offer is content, no products or services as yet. Is this good or bad?
Thank you for sharing.
Your friend,
Maxine
Thanks you for this great article, it is very useful.
By the time,
Technology and science has covered up with more advance feature. Any website can hide and take moderation over their website.
Unfortunately there’s no magic bullet to fix a piece of writing that isn’t having the desired effect.
But if you start to tweak the things that you know are working against you, you’ll have a much better chance of success.
Thanks for the great article.
nice Article
Great article –
I would like to add:
#6 Your authors are not experienced on the subject and need more “real world” experiences
for example a pool guy cannot write about working on pools if he has never worked on pools.
Experience is the best teacher and also the best thing that makes you a good author
LOVE THE PLUGINS BTW – BEEN using SEO Pack since 2007
Joseph