Have you ever asked yourself why isn’t my website generating leads?
In this article we discuss 8 reasons that could potentially be preventing your business generating leads from your website. But wait there’s good news.. Most of the problems are extremely quick and easy to fix! First things first, we need to figure out how trustworthy and user friendly your website is. Does your website prove yourself? Does it clearly demonstrate why prospects should use your business over competitors? Make sure you put a face to your business. People like dealing with people so try and take some professional pictures of yourself, your team and previous works for your portfolio.
Why Isn’t My Website Generating Leads?
Let’s dive straight in and identify potential reasons why certain people don’t trust your website and therefore don’t pick your business. Every person has a particular standard when it comes trusting websites, especially when it comes to spending a considerable amount of money. Our team of web designers have seen the same reoccurring problems that appear on hundreds of business websites. Here’s another great article that we’ve written teaching people how to get instant leads for your small business.
8 Reasons Why Your Website Isn’t Generating Leads (And How To Fix It)
1. Not Enough Information About You
It has been proven (and also a little obvious when anyone applies a little common sense) that the most successful small business websites work best when they have an about us page. But is just having an about us page enough? I don’t think so. Sure, the presence of an about us page can considerably help with conversions but ultimately you need to portray transparency and honesty. How to fix it? This is easy and will only take 20-30 minutes to complete. Try and write a compelling about us page connecting with your target market. Let people know exactly who they are reading about. Video works really well for this and is the BEST way to build trust and authority quickly compared to your competition (which probably don’t use video). If you don’t think video is for you don’t worry because you can take a few snapshots of yourself. Make sure you clearly display your full business name, personal name, address, phone numbers (landlines / office numbers work really well at building trust) and your business email address. Try to get a info@yourbusinessname.com email address to maintain brand identity. If you are unsure about how to do this then our team will be happy to help.
2. Inaccurate domain name / site name
Our team usually don’t recommend having a domain name or site name that doesn’t match your actual business name. However, there are some exceptions (mainly due to SEO or website objective). ou need to make sure your website is the same throughout. For example, you can’t have your actual business name on the home page but then on the portfolio page refer to your business your keywords. How to fix it? Don’t hide yourself behind words. You and your team are the business, especially when it comes to online marketing. Make sure your brand identity is the same on and offline. Your van sign writing, logo, colours, etc etc need to be the same as the website and on anything else such as business cards. For example, if you’re launching a leaflet campaign you need to make sure when someone searches your website from the leaflet it’s all the same. It can be confusing for customers if not and therefore diminish any trust. Here’s a great article on leaflet drops and if they work for small businesses.
3. Poor website content
If your business website has poor content it could be (arguable) the main reason why your website isn’t generating leads. Displaying vague information will kill your online presence. Customers will be able to tell if you’re website is full of the same old generic information plastered on every other website. How to fix it? Make sure you personally write the service sections or give the necessary information to your web design to write the content for you. People are a lot more likely to enquire if they can read into everything they want to know on your website. For example, if you own a building company then you could write a detailed “our process” section to help give customers a piece a mind about (what they think is) a confusing process.
4. Awful images
Pictures are probably the most important (and easiest) way to show customers how professional your business is. Having low quality blurry images on your website could give the impression your work is of low quality. Even if you have the best quality work in the world it’s pointless if no one can actually see the work properly. How to fix it? Simple. You need to invest a little time in taking better quality pictures and if you don’t know how learn to. There’s tonnes of great content online teaching you how to take better quality images. A quick Google search would suffice. It might be worth considering purchasing a good quality camera (or iPhone apps) to get the best quality images of work. If you can’t be bothered to take professional pictures then you could always organise for a professional photographer to come in and get some great shots. Before and after work an absolute treat depending on your business type. I know what you’re thinking, “who would want to see a before and after picture of a window clean?” Hmm. Well, I think your potential customers would.
5. Terrible web design
When was the last time your business website was updated? When was the last time your website was redesigned? Having a website that looks like it was designed 10 years ago will not help your online presence. Most people will make decisions based on the overall design and first impression of a website. As a result, having poor quality images, poor content, scrolling text, small text, flashing images, impossible navigation and harsh colours will all negatively effect a persons decision to trust your website and therefore, enquire to become a lead. How to fix it? I cannot stress the importance of getting an actual web designer to build you a business website. Why? Because there’s so called web designer out there who have spent years trying to learn how to build websites and still can’t. So do you really think you’ll be able to learn how to build a successful website whilst operating your current business? Probably not. If you are asking why isn’t my website generating leads but aren’t updating your website then you can’t complain. However, if you really are strapped for cash I’ve written an article teaching you how to rank your small business website higher on Google.
6. No frequent updates
Having pictures or customer testimonials that are dated from 10 years ago will probably not look good anymore. Styles change. Quickly. For example, the styles of building that people ideally would like to own have drastically changed over the last 10 years. So having your website content tailored around this outdated requirement may not be the best decision. How to fix it? Just think what do your customers want? Right, now put that on your website and update that content on a semi-regular basis. It doesn’t have to be every day or even every week. Once a month will do. You’ll soon see an increase in leads over time from just this alone. If you don’t have access to your website (meaning your web designer does) or you don’t know how, then our team offer affordable web design packages where we can totally revamp and manage your website for you.
7. Poor choice of location keywords
Now we know that keywords are critical when it comes to ranking on Google. However, sometimes it can become a little tricky. For example, we recently had one of our small business clients say that people were being put off because on his website he had his keywords based around a specific town. As a consequence, people who weren’t located within this town thought he only offered his services within the area, so didn’t bother contacting him. He was losing business. How to fix it? We quickly changed his location keywords to target the county instead. What happened? To no surprise the amount of leads increased by 18%. This may not apply to every website but as a general rule of thumb you should always target your website around the specific place your trying to get more business in. For example, if you’re a electrician and want to target Bristol, but you offer services throughout the whole South West of England, make sure you put something along the lines of “electricians in Bristol and surrounding areas”.
8. Long load time
How long does your website take to load? What’s your page speed? It’s been proven that if your website takes longer than 5 seconds to load people will probably click off and go to a competitors websites. Why? Because people are usually in a rush and can’t be bothered to sit in front of a computer (especially when they want something). Secondly, slow loading time can give the impression that the website isn’t trustworthy or inadequate compared to other similar business websites offering the same services or products. How to fix it? There’s quite a few things you can do to increase page speed. One of the best is to optimise your images by reducing the size and set up a caching so your customers only have to download your images once. If you are using WordPress there are tonnes of great plugins you can use to increase the page speed. Google “best plugins to speed up wordpress site” and you’ll find all the answers you need. Luckily for us Google has a FREE tool which allows you to see your website page speed / loading time and more importantly, precisely how to improve it. If you want to test it out for yourself then you can here.
Still asking yourself “why isn’t my website generating leads?”
If all of this information has confused you even more or opened your eyes to the amount of work involved in maintaining a successful business website then team can help. We provide affordable website packages where we actually manage and maintain everything for you.
