Why Your Website Is Not Getting Traffic
Analyzing the reasons why your website is not getting traffic can involve multiple factors, and below I’ve outlined some of the crucial ones to consider, including point #12 which you should review.
Many businesses primarily aim to showcase their products or services when establishing their online presence. However, simply creating a website is not sufficient. Several key elements must be incorporated for the website to effectively convert visitors into customers.
Nonetheless, it’s understandable that website owners may overlook these essential factors. I think it’s the responsibility of web designers to implement the necessary strategies that will captivate visitors and encourage them to engage with your offerings.
13 Factors That May Be Hindering Your Website’s Conversion Rate
If you have a website that is not converting, then you need to pay attention to the yins and yangs outlined below:
Brand Trust
In today’s online world, trust is the critical element when it comes to making purchasing decisions. In the past, establishing trust was relatively easy. However, presently, people are wary of the online market, and it’s not hard to understand why. Countless individuals have lost millions of dollars to fraudulent ads and clickbait schemes.
However, there’s a proven approach to building trust with your customers and compelling them to buy from you repeatedly. The most effective way to develop your online brand is to focus on providing value to your customers before attempting to sell them anything.
The problem is that many brands make the mistake of trying to sell first, treating online marketing like traditional advertising. When you ask your visitors to “buy now,” they will usually do the opposite if they don’t trust you yet.
Visitors have many concerns about online transactions, such as: “Do I know you?” or “How do I know this is legitimate?” The most successful online marketers follow the approach used by many YouTubers – create valuable content that teaches people something before attempting to sell to them.
For instance, suppose you sell beauty products, such as female wigs. In that case, it’s more effective to create a video or article such as “3 Reliable Websites That Sell Quality Wigs.” This way, you’re not only providing valuable information, but you’re also earning trust and subtly pitching your website as one of the most trustworthy places to buy quality wigs.
Remember not to push too hard – if a visitor is interested in buying from you, they will do so when they trust you. Building trust with customers is possible by adding value to their lives.
If you offer services online, you can also direct your visitors to case studies that demonstrate your expertise in your niche and prove that others trust you. Check out this video to better understand this marketing approach.
Poor SEO Strategy
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the butter to any website’s bread. Brands that understand how to do proper SEO achieve success faster.
SEO is “key” if you want to be super successful online. But the SEO game has become very challenging over the years, and it’ll keep getting harder, I’m afraid.
Years back, if you wanted to rank for a keyword; all you needed to do was to create a 600-word content, stuff your keyword in the post as many times as possible and voilà! You hit Google’s first page in a few weeks.
Fast-forward to today, creating a 2000-word article isn’t enough to rank you for your desired keyword any more.
According to MOZ, Google changes over eight search algorithms every day!
It means that you must be on top of your game if you want to rank on Google’s first page.
When trying to rank for a keyword on search engines, there are two things you must pay attention to — On-page and Off-page SEO.
On-page SEO is the art of tweaking your website to conform with search engine standards. Your site will look like jargon in the eyes of search engine spiders if your on-page SEO is not properly done.
To make sure your on-page SEO is “perfect”. Certain things must be put into place. You have to link your articles to one another, add image Alt attributes, meta description, and so on.
Off-page SEO, on the other hand, is what search engines think other people think about your website. That is; how many people are talking about your content and how are they engaging with it.
While it’s straightforward to do your On-page SEO, the latter is often the hardest because it’s the most important of the two.
Google wants to serve only the best content to its users. So they pay serious attention to the number of quality backlinks (Other websites in your niche linking back to your website) and engagements.
Google will most likely put you on the first page if many people are sharing and linking back to your article. Because they believe it gives real value to their audience.
So when you create great content that gives value, don’t be afraid to ask your audience or people in your niche to share and link back to your article.
Backlinks are crucial in your SEO strategy. Not having enough quality backlinks might be the reason why your website’s traffic is dropping.
No Call-to-Action (CTA)
Some people complain that they have a decent number of visitors coming to their website every month. Still, they are not converting into customers.
I mentioned above that you should stylishly recommend your product or service to your audience after educating them about a subject.
You’ll be surprised to know that many people just create content without actually telling their visitors to take any form of action.
You might think it’s obvious to the visitor that you want them to take action, but most of the time, they miss the point.
People are just too busy with their own lives, and our attention span is less than that of a goldfish. Not telling your visitors to take action could also be the reason your website is not converting.
Remember, don’t be afraid to ask your visitors to take action but make sure you’ve given value to them first. VALUE should always come first!
Too Many Distractions
As a website design company ourselves, we’ve had our fair share of hearing clients ask for something we know won’t benefit them or their audience.
We often hear clients say; “I want animations here and there” or “I want this to pop up”.
First, calm down. We’ve been in this game far longer than you, and you should never tell a doctor how to cut you open (*In my mind).
A lot of website owners focus on what they think is right instead of what their audience would love.
Having too many animations on your website, for example, distracts many of your visitors. There’s a principle we always follow when it comes to designing websites for clients.
We only want to K.I.S.S you! That is, we want to KEEP IT SHORT AND SIMPLE for you.
When your website is clean, short and very simple, it will convert way better than having images pop up here and there.
So when next you want to create a new website or redesign your old one, always have it at the back of your mind that it’s always better to KISS!
They are Missing the Point
We all know that content is king! And there’s no point whatsoever offering the best services or products, if your website visitors don’t understand you.
Humans are selfish beings, and we are always looking out for our best interests. You can’t argue with nature!
So, when communicating your offer to your visitors, you must explain how they will benefit from using your service or product.
You can’t just create mediocre content and expect people to understand your service is right for them. You must put serious time into communicating your offer to your visitors.
If you are not a copywriter, you can always hire freelancers or an agency like ours to help you sell your product in a hypnotic way.
Your customers must imagine and feel like they are already using your product just by reading your content alone. It is the primary ingredient of copywriting.
Information Overload
The fastest way to confuse your visitors is to give them too much information at once.
Don’t be tempted into giving them all the information at-a-go. It might have a reverse effect, and things might go sideways fast!
You don’t want to overwhelm your visitors with too much information on one page.
If you must explain everything about your service or product to your potential customers — make sure you separate the pages and give them the links to navigate easily.
Too much information on a page makes your website look complicated in the eyes of your audience.
Moreover, it’s always a good idea to withhold some information to create curiosity in your visitors’ minds. Giving too many details could be the reason why your website isn’t getting why your website is not getting traffic. So avoid that.
No SSL Certificate
As people become more knowledgeable about website security, they’re taking steps to safeguard themselves online. One crucial precaution is to only visit websites that display the padlock symbol in front of their domain name. Why? If this symbol is missing, hackers can potentially access your account or steal your credit card details.
To ensure that your website generates the sales you want, it’s essential to install an SSL certificate. If you’re working with a tight budget, free SSL certificates are available from Cloudflare or Let’s Encrypt.
Customers must feel secure before making a purchase from your website. If your domain lacks the padlock symbol or “https://” prefix, it’s likely that your sales will suffer. Additionally, Google won’t reward you with the search engine ranking you deserve without SSL certificates installed.
Poor Website Design
We’ve all encountered websites that are an eyesore to look at. They’re packed with too many colors and texts that don’t match their images. These websites are terrible, and you don’t want your website to fall into that category.
According to Search Engine Land, over 60% of searches now occur on mobile phones. This means that you should prioritize making your website as mobile-friendly as possible.
However, many websites still have subpar layouts despite this fact. These websites then complain about a lack of customers.
If you want to boost your online sales, it’s essential to ensure that your website looks fantastic on both desktop and mobile devices.
Unfortunately, many web design companies are more interested in collecting money from their clients than designing an effective website. Therefore, you must pay attention to your website’s layout as it could be one of the reasons your website isn’t attracting traffic.
No Social Proof
As mentioned earlier, establishing trust is critical to making sales online. Customers are more likely to purchase from you when they see that others have had positive experiences with your brand.
One of the most effective ways to demonstrate your trustworthiness to your audience is by using social proof. This could be achieved by creating a testimonial page where your past customers can leave reviews of your product or service.
By featuring genuine reviews on your website, potential customers are reassured that your brand is reputable and can be trusted. It also helps to address any concerns or objections they may have about your product.
It’s important to ensure that the reviews you showcase are authentic, concise, and address the concerns of your potential customers. This will help to build their confidence in your brand and ultimately increase your sales.
Too Many Options
There’s a famous saying that the “jack of all trades is a master of none”.
When setting up your online store or website, you should ask yourself; who exactly is my audience, and what do they really want?
Finding the right answer to those questions is what guarantees your success online.
Many business owners get it wrong by creating a store that has different products in various niches. Come on. You are not Amazon!
While you might make some money, the fact that there are other e-commerce giants out there doing what you do is a bad signal for your business.
You’d agree with me that it makes sense to sell to an audience you know, understand how they think, and exactly what they want.
It is also easier to find out about an audience in a niche compared to the general audience most people target.
Choosing to target a general audience could be the reason why your website is not getting customers too. It’s always better to focus on a niche you understand well.
Selling to everybody is a poor choice! You will not only burn out on time, you will also waste a lot of money on marketing too. So think about it.
Poor Marketing
Poor marketing is not just a problem you find online, it is quite common offline too. Many businesses don’t focus on marketing any more. Yet, they somehow expect a miracle to happen with their sales.
Coca-Cola spends around 20% of its entire profit on marketing alone. Yet, we wonder why Coca-Cola is everywhere!
If you want to grow your business, you need to focus on marketing, and Coca-Cola understands that.
Doing SEO is one way to market your service or product to people searching for it online.
But as explained above, doing SEO takes a lot of discipline, time and money, especially if you hire an agency like us to do it for you.
Another way to generate traffic for your website is to use paid advertising. It is by far the fastest way to generate sales for your business.
There are many options out there, such as social media marketing, native, push advertising, and so on.
So, if you want to make money online, you should consider paying for adverts for your business.
Slow Website Speed
Speed is critical when it comes to making money online. The average user waits about 7 seconds or less for a website to load before exiting the page.
If your website takes more than that to load entirely, then it’s one of the reasons why your website is not getting customers.
It is claimed that AliExpress reduced their load speed by 36% and recorded a 10.5% increase in revenue.
That’s millions of dollars in revenue!
You should know that people are very busy in their lives, and they don’t have the extra time for your website to load.
To know your website’s speed, you can use services like GTmetrix or Pingdom. But I highly recommend Gtmetrix.
Both of them show you exactly why your website is slow, but Gtmetrix goes a step further to provide tips on how you can improve your score, especially if you use WordPress.
You should know that there might be other reasons your website is slow.
While most of the time it’s due to poor website optimizations, your hosting company can be a huge factor when it comes to website speed. This is why we always recommend BlueHost as the best option out there.
You Don’t Tackle Objections
As mentioned earlier, building trust is essential to making money online. Every visitor to your website will have concerns, especially if it’s their first time visiting. By addressing objections beforehand, you can prevent potential customers from leaving your site.
To do this, pay attention to your customers’ complaints and questions. If you already have customers, conduct a brief survey using Google Forms to find out what their complaints are. Use the information you gather to create a FAQ page that answers popular questions.
If you haven’t yet sold any products, look at your competitors’ websites and curate the most commonly asked questions for your FAQ page. This will save you time and headaches while also building trust for your brand.
While not everyone needs a FAQ page, it’s essential for e-commerce stores. Addressing objections such as shipping times goes a long way in building your brand.
Conclusion
I hope these tips help you generate traffic on your website or blog. By implementing the suggestions outlined here, you’ll be well on your way to boosting your online sales.
To simplify, here are the top reasons your website may not be getting traffic:
- Trust issues
- Slow website speed
- Poor marketing
- Lack of social proof
- Poor website design
If you find these tips helpful or have any other suggestions, please leave a comment below, and I’ll respond as soon as possible.