Imagine this, a person just found your business in Google. They click on your website. After a couple of minutes of browsing, this person land on a product page. But when he/she clicks on a link, the page just loads and loads. This person refreshes their screen, but still, nothing changes.
After some huffing and puffing, this person decides to hit the x and leaves the site. This time, this person goes back to the search results page and clicks on your competitor. The competitor site offers them all of the information needed, no issues with the site and this person makes a purchase.
This scenario is one example of how a badly constructed website can affect your business.
When was the last time you navigated throughout your entire website? If you’re an e-commerce business owner, then you want to make sure your website offers a great user experience. This means offering value with your content and making sure your audience can navigate through your site.
If your website has issues loading and is not optimized, then you’re going to have trouble with getting new customers and keeping current ones. In this post, I am going to offer 7 essential mistakes you’re making with your website that may be causing people to fall off of your site.
By recognizing these issues, you can prevent people from leaving your site and optimize to increase your organic traffic.
Missing Headline on Homepage
Let this sink in, it takes about 50 milliseconds for someone to make a decision based on your website. When people visit your site, you want to address their issue. A headline on the homepage, above the fold, is essential to your business. Explain your offers and services that set you apart from your competitors.
Without a clear headline, your audience may be confused about your offerings which could cause them to jump off the site. Make sure you write a headline that captures the essence of your brand and hits on a pain point of your target audience.
Some things to keep in mind include: What keywords are they using in Google? What benefits can you solve with their issues? What do they do for a living? These are just some of the questions you should be asking yourself when writing a headline. Understanding your buyer personas is essential when writing content for your website.
No Clear Messaging on About Page
If you’re like most consumers, you spend money with businesses you connect with. According to Sprout Social, consumers who feel connected to brands will spend more with that brand. Your brand messaging on your About Page starts that relationship with your customers. Don’t overlook it.
Take the time to understand your audience and fill in the gap how you’re business is going to solve their problems. Consumers can sense BS, so be genuine with your content. If you’re unsure how to do write a compelling About page, hire a content marketing consultant to help.
Confusing Site Navigation
If you have an e-commerce brand, your site navigation is essential to how your consumers feel about your business. Great websites make it easy for consumers to find information. You don’t want to confuse customers with too many options in your navigation bar.
Your core content pillars and product pages go hand in hand. Organize your content and product pages based on their needs. For example, if your drop down bar is confusing and offers too many options, consumers may leave. Remember 38% of consumers will stop engaging with a website if the content or layout is unattractive.
Hidden Contact Information
My previous corporate job taught me many valuable lessons in marketing. But one of them was about the clear visibility of the contact page. The owner wanted the phone number clearly shown on the homepage of the website. I think by doing this, he welcomed customers and prospective customers. If your product or service requires education, it’s a nice touch to make the Contact page clearly visible.
Large Images
If your product images are too big then this could result in pages loading slower. This may result in your prospective customers leaving the site. Google states image size is the biggest factor in slower loading time, so make sure to compress and optimize your images.
Large images can take up too much real estate for a page. You can have a developer replace images or parts of images with HTML, CSS, or Javascript. Choose the right format and resolution for your images. There are many free sites that you can use to compress your images, which will go a long way for your website.
Make sure you optimize your images with alt text. This text is a short description of the image that helps individuals who are visually impaired. Screen readers will use alt text to help these individuals understand the overall content of the page. Don’t leave your images without alt text, it hurts your overall on-page SEO performance.
Too Many Popups
When someone visits your site do you want to scare them away? No. You want them to feel welcomed. You don’t want them to get hit with a popup as soon as they arrive.
It’s like going to a party full of strangers and someone asking for your phone number, before stepping foot into the doorway.
When people visit your site, welcome them and treat them as valued guests. Give them some time to look around, get acquainted with your content. Let them navigate the site. Then you can ask for information. Have manners with your site.
If you are patient, popups can be a great way to start your email list. Use the right words and CTAs in your popup to create a relationship with your visitors. What will you offer? Tips, offers, promotions? Ugly popups won’t encourage customers to sign up with your newsletter.
Bad Mobile Experience
Today we use our cell phones for everything. According to eMarketer, 90% of smartphone time is devoted to apps. Think about the experience of your site on a mobile device. Is your website offering a great experience as consumers navigate through pages? How fast are pages loading?
According to Outerboxdesign.com, 79% of smartphone users purchase online using their mobile devices. Now more than ever with the lasting effects of the pandemic, people are shopping more on their phones. Optimize your website for your mobile visitors.
Remember, 53% of mobile shoppers will abandon a website if it doesn’t load in 3 seconds.
Look at your website on your phone. Would you purchase from it?
There free sites where you can plug in your site to see where it ranks. Compressing your images as mentioned above, is a great way to help pages load faster, for mobile visitors.
Run a site audit to help identify areas of your website that a content marketing consultant and/or a developer can resolve for you.
Marketing consultants have tools such as SEMRush that can crawl your website and find errors that are preventing you from ranking well in Google.
These are the 7 mistakes you may have with your website. Remember that your website will always require maintenance. Optimizing and updating your content is part of your website maintenance. If maintained and optimized well, your site can bring in more traffic and sales in the future.
It may seem overwhelming, but you don’t have to do it alone. Many marketing professionals can help, so you can handle other areas of your business.
If you need help with your website content, feel free to email me directly at belinda@belindasanmiguel.com.