Is your website “leaking” sales leads? You may notice sales leaks when you see that your site has rock-solid traffic numbers, but no conversions.
The good news is that does not mean you have an ineffective website and you have to invest in a re-design, or even blow it up and start over. In fact, you can typically plug these leaks for free. It simply requires the time it takes to find the problem, and knowing where to look for it.
Here are some of the most common places you will find sales leaks.
Problems Stemming From Cheap Hosts or Builders
Let’s start with the top level of your site. In today’s world of digital marketing, it doesn’t cost a lot of money to build your website on WordPress the right way to ensure it performs. However, you do need to spend some money. Otherwise, you may accidentally be creating leaks in your site during the planning stage before anyone even clicks on a link.
If you’re on a startup budget, you might be tempted to go with a cheap hosting company or a free website building tool. Do not do either of these things. Spend a little bit more money to get a lot more value.
Both of these cheap options are notorious for slowing your website’s load speed. And your site’s load speed is crucial to both your conversion rate optimization (CRO) and your search engine optimization (SEO). In fact, a 1-second delay can kill your conversation rates by 70% .
Your Ads Don’t Match Your Landing Pages
You could be leaking sales because your leads click on a social or PPC ad, and then think they have arrived in the wrong place. This causes them to leave and waste your PPC and social budget.
Why does this happen? Too many companies will create an ad that is too off-brand. This means that it doesn’t really follow the same look and feel as the landing page you send them too. The visitor feels like they’re the victims of a bait-and-switch, so they leave.
Your branding and your messaging need to be 100% on point on your landing page. The easiest way to ensure this is to create a dedicated landing page for every campaign. If your ad talks about a new promotion, say a free iPad for new customers, ensure that your landing page talks about that free iPad so the visitor knows they’re in the right place and their click isn’t wasted.
Unclear and Uninspired Calls-to-Action
Maybe some very simple changes to your calls-to-action (CTA) or microcopy can unplug your sales funnel.
First of all, make sure your pages have a clear CTA. If the visitor doesn’t have a clear next step to follow, their next step will be leaving you.
Also, make sure your calls to action aren’t simply the word “Submit” on a button . Give them something more enticing to click. Try to include a benefit that makes it clear what they’re getting out of the deal by clicking the button, like “Start my free trial” or “Download my copy.”
These perform much better than flat, one-word CTAs.
Of course, CRO is a massive and ever-evolving science. There are countless things you can do to help your conversion rates, and even more you can do to poison them. However, today we covered how to fix some of the most common mistakes, and these fixes will cost you almost no money .
Try them today and thank us later!
