4 Ways Your Website Content Could Be Costing You Leads and How to Stop the Rot

Whether you're investing in pay per click advertising or paying for social media content that sends leads your way, getting people to your site can be expensive. Nothing is more disheartening than shelling out all that money and getting no conversions from it. You might be wondering why it's happening, or you might have an idea that it's your website. Either way, we've gathered together some of the most common ways sites can let owners down and the solutions.

Way 1: Search engines are ignoring it

I’ve met a lot of organisations with great websites that are not getting seen by anyone because search engines are ignoring them. There can be a lot of reasons for this, but here are some of the most frequent problems and how to resolve them.

Way 2: Your site focuses on your business, not their needs

How many times have you entered a website and read the following before almost anything else? -

'We are Blandcorp. We do such-and-such a business. We are great at what we do. Click this button to buy from us'

It’s probably the most common piece of landing page content in the world, but it’s no good. Why not? Well, how many times have you opened a restaurant menu wanting to know who the kitchen staff are and what they do exactly?

 Never?

Thought not.

From entering the restaurant until your steaming meal is placed in front of you, you were thinking about the food, your hunger, and that tasty steak or curry or whatever. That’s why the menu talks about the food a whole lot more than the business or the staff.

Your website needs to be the same. It needs to talk about what you’re offering to the customer, what it does for them and why they should want it, at least on the main pages and sales pages. Save the self-obsession for the About Us section and focus on the customer.New paragraph

Way 3: Too much filler, not enough killer

“All Killer, No Filler.” – It was one of my favourite albums by Sum 41 back when I was an angsty teen. Twenty years later, it’s one of the mottos I live by where website content is concerned. 

Website content should aways be brisk, clear and to-the-point, helping people get to what they need quickly and stopping them getting bored. You can relax this rule a bit when writing blogs and articles. Ideally though, everything your website visitors read should do something for them or (very occasionally) for you.

End the irrelevant and flowery text

Don’t fill your site up with text that serves no purpose, and if part of it seems boring and irrelevant to your target market, get rid of it. When you have written some content for your site, go through it to see if there is anything that serves no purpose or that could be shorter. Describing words are big ones. It can be easy to fall into the trap of thinking flowery, decorative, delightful adverbs and adjectives make what you’re promoting seem attractive. Too many do the opposite. Brief sentences making active points about why the reader should buy the object, take a job etc. do much better.

Shorter words and sentences

Sentences and words are two more areas where cutting back can be a good thing. Keeping sentences under 20-25 words is good practice, making them easy to read. Long sentences lose people. Short words and a low reading age of around 12 are also beneficial. You are aiming to make sense to the person with the lowest reading age of all your readers. For good measure, assume they are tired and busy, too.

The Hemingway Editor app helps you shorten sentences and cut out flowery language brilliantly, making your writing compact and clear. It even displays a reading age using the US grading system where 12 years old = grade 6 – 7

Formatting to engage readers

Endless tracts of black and white text are not engaging. So, keep your paragraphs short like your words and sentences, and break up your writing.

Way 4: Your website is not taking people on a journey to your goal

The secret to getting people to do what you want on your website is to make your goal into theirs. Then you build a simple journey to it for them. Ideally, that journey needs to be by far the easiest way to go on the page, if not the only one. 

Too many marketers spend a lot of money to get users onto their website home pages, then simply leave the user and hope they will do the ‘right’ thing. This is totally the wrong approach and is probably wasting hundreds in unconverted prospects for many people.

Exit through the gift shop – The art of funnel building

Have you ever been to a museum where you’ve had to exit through the gift shop or coffee shop or some other money-spinning area. Actually … have you ever been to one where you haven’t?

You went into the museum because it interested you – my most recent visit was to the Hull Street Life Museum because I love being taken back to years gone by. Then, at the end, I got funnelled to the gift shop and bought a vintage toy for my daughter. This is exactly what you need to do with prospective customers: Attract them with interesting and entertaining content that’s relevant to them, then funnel them to a place where they can buy something they might like.

This process begins off your site, with a first step designed to attract people and make them aware of your offer. This usually uses social media, pay-per-click ads, emails or some similar form of marketing. The individual should then come to a landing page designed to sell this offer to them.

Conversion optimising your landing page

The landing page should be specifically relevant to the person who followed that ad. In fact, it can be good to call out to them exclusively, saying “Owners of tech businesses, pay attention”, for example.

Then focus on their needs and what they want. Right off the bat, make them an offer they can’t refuse; promise to solve their problems or provide something they can’t resist. Tell them exactly how your offer can benefit them specifically, then show them how to accept it.

Importantly, they shouldn’t be able to do anything but accept the offer, or at least move along the funnel to accepting it. Don’t include any other obvious links or even your site’s usual navigation bars. This part is important. Don’t worry – If you’ve sold the offer right, they won’t mind.

Free is the most valuable word on the web

To make your funnel more productive, offer the prospect something free in exchange for their contact details before you sell them anything. This is called a lead magnet, and it can be a free document, a service like a free teeth checkup, or a download like an app. Then simply use their contact details to make the paid offer. You can even build up to it over time or make multiple offers through a sequence of emails. This can boost your funnel’s conversions by 200-300% (on average) because people love free stuff. The lead magnet works best when it’s specific, clearly promoted, useful to the prospect and relevant to the final offer.

Solve your problems and enjoy those leads.

If you’ve had a problem getting leads to your site, I bet one of the ways outlined above will help your problem and give some useful advice for solving it.  Ensure people can find your site, ensure you’re focusing on them, interesting them and converting them, and you should be getting some real value. 

You may need some more personalised advice though, and we’re happy to give it for free. If you want some tailored attention to your leads, book a free site conversion assessment with us.