Why Your Website Is Not Converting Into Transactional Customers

Encouraging potential customers to visit your website can be difficult enough, but it’s only half the battle. Once you have invested time and money into building a beautiful website and putting effective SEO strategies into place, it can be extremely frustrating if only a handful of visitors are converting into customers. If you’re in this situation, the chances are that you are making one or more of the most common mistakes amongst website owners. Here we will take a look at 6 reasons why your website is not converting visitors into paying customers and is affecting your online presence.

1. Your website is too slow

First impressions go a long way, and users can be impatient. For every second that your site takes to load, you lose potential customers. Ideally, pages should load in less than two seconds, and definitely under seven seconds. As well as driving away potential customers, slow loading speeds also affect your Google ranking, meaning that fewer people will open your site in the first place.

There are several ways to increase the speed of your website. If using WordPress, consider adding a caching plugin (there are free options available), compressing your images, removing unnecessary files you don’t need from your database, and reducing 301 redirects.

2. Lengthy blocks of text

As we mentioned above, site visitors are often short on time and patience. They want to get all of the necessary information as quickly as possible, without any waffle. Cut out any excess text and present the information in short paragraphs. Be clear and to the point and add subheadings where necessary. Bullet points can also be extremely useful for providing information quickly. In addition, surrounding your text with a good dose of white space can make it seem less daunting to read.

3. No calls to action

Calls to action make it easy for the visitor to see how to contact you, and how to purchase your products. Your phone number and email address or contact form should be easy to find, otherwise, visitors will give up and look elsewhere (on your competitor’s website). Furthermore, it reduces brand credibility within your brand if it is not easy to contact you. It’s also worth mentioning that once a customer has clicked the ‘contact us’ button, many will be put off by a lengthy contact form – keep it simple.

Similarly, ‘buy now’ buttons should be also easy to spot on eCommerce websites and online stores.

4. Lengthy checkout process

Just like with lengthy contact forms, customers despise long checkout processes. Consider what details you actually need from your customers and limit it to just the essentials. You may also consider allowing customers to checkout without creating an account. Of course, it’s ideal for customers to sign up as you can then build a relationship with them and send campaign emails straight to their inbox. However, many customers will be more likely to make a purchase if they are not required to create an account. Once they have experienced your products, they may be more likely to sign up the next time they visit your site.

5. Your popups are annoying

Whilst popups can be extremely useful for encouraging customers to subscribe to your newsletter, or providing them with additional information, they can be irritating enough to drive visitors away from your site if not done correctly. One of the most common mistakes is showing popups before the visitor has had a chance to look around your site – they don’t care about your website enough to see a popup yet. In addition, you should keep the amount of text on popups to a minimum, and avoid showing the same popup each time the user loads a new page. Have a look at the advantages and disadvantages of using popups on a website.

6. You’re using too many stock images

We get it – stock images are technically ‘good’ photos taken by a professional, plus they’re quick and easy to obtain. The problem is that many people can tell that it’s a stock photo, leading them to wonder why you haven’t taken your own pictures. They want to see your products, not something that looks similar. Gain the trust of your site visitors by taking your own shots of your own images or hiring a professional photographer, and they will be more likely to convert into paying customers.

How can we help?

We hope that you have found these tips useful and you can implement them into your own website. Equipped with a team of expert website developers, digital marketing is our bread and butter so give us a call if you’d like some advice on how to turn website visitors into more customers. Get in touch through our online contact form or call 03 9923 2712 for a chat.