Website Mistakes: 6 Reasons People Are Leaving Your Website

Key Takeaways

what do you do if you're getting traffic to your site but people aren't sticking around long enough to convert we're gonna talk about the six reasons why people are probably leaving your site what you can do to fix it and we're starting right now if you want to transform your website into a customer or lead generation machine I'll show you all my best tips tactics and secrets to get there fast let's dive in hey guys I'm West McDowell web strategist at the deep end and if you're not subscribed to our channel yet you're not gonna want to miss out on any more videos so just click the subscribe button and the little bell icon so you never miss another video you need to succeed online okay so you've already gotten people to your site successfully that's half the battle the other half of the battle is keeping them around long enough to actually check out what you've got and get enough information to convert into a customer so today we're gonna talk about the six biggest reasons why people may be leaving your site and more importantly what you can do to fix it and the first reason is very simple they can't immediately see what it is that you offer now this is a very common problem it's still way too common just because you understand your business inside and out doesn't mean that new people coming to your site for the first time are going to get it right away some people try to get a little too clever with our headline they try to be funny or witty with it but really I'm gonna tell you that clarity beats clever every day of the week so here's what you do and it's actually really simple just write new very clear headline that says exactly who you help what you do and then maybe a sub headline that talks a little bit about how you do that now the next big reason is just a bad or outdated design now this may seem really obvious but it's still all too common maybe your website is from ten years ago and it's just not really doing anything to get that kind of trust that a more modern clean uncluttered website will get you and honestly there are a lot of elements that can contribute to a bad or outdated looking design photos being one of them maybe they're just really kind of blurry or amateurish like it looks like you took them with phone or maybe it's the complete opposite maybe these are obvious stock photos that people really gotten use to over the years like the image of the customer service rep or that really cliched boardroom handshake type photo you know people have seen these a million times over and over again and what they do is they really kind of can make you look like you're not even a real business with real people behind it or maybe there are broken elements on the page things aren't laying out correctly or things are just not there that are supposed to be there broken images broken links and these are also things that can really make your business look more amateur than it really is and maybe all these elements actually look really great on desktop but when people are searching on mobile it's a different story and things really aren't loading correctly there no I don't know if you know but over 60% of people browsing the internet right now are doing it from their mobile device and that number keeps growing all the time so you're definitely gonna want to make sure it not only looks great on desktop but on mobile as well so if it's any of those things they mentioned outdated photos blurry amateur photos or obvious stock photos maybe you can swap those out that might be the only easy fix here beyond that you're probably looking at a possible redesign but the good news is there are a lot of cheaper options out there you don't have to necessarily drop thousands of dollars there are a lot of really great-looking WordPress premium themes that you can easily customize for your business all right and number three you may be turning people off with a lack of visual content you know if you've watched videos on this channel before you already know that eighty percent of people coming to your site are really only skimming and they're not really reading the whole page so it's really a missed opportunity not to include plenty of visuals that not only look good and kind of break up the page but they can also act as you know visual cues telling people exactly what it is you offer so whenever you can illustrate one of your key points with a visual that goes along with it that makes it just really easy to grasp in a second that you should always try to do that so go ahead and add more visuals you know photos or icons are great and there are also ways of making your text more visual as well and skimmable so you know keep the paragraph short and use head lines and lists and you know use bold and italics to really emphasize key points when every possible okay this next one is a big one because it can mean people abandoning your page before they even ever see it and that is of course page load speed so I don't know if you know this but you know 40 percent of people will actually leave your site if it doesn't load in under three seconds so I want you right after this video to go to Google PageSpeed insights to test the load speed of your own site and see how it stacks up not only will it give you a basic score but it's also gonna give you a list of improvements you can make and don't worry they are gonna probably look technical so you may or may not be able to do those yourself you may have to give that list to it your developer or at least hire one on a website like upwork to kind of make those changes for you and remember this as well it's all about perceptions so when I what I mean by that is there are a lot of different ways that you can make your website feel faster than it actually is you know things like lazy loading where the elements at the top of the page actually load first and then everything down the page loads as you go down the page so there's not such a strain on the entire website to load all at once and it just ends up feeling much faster to your site visitor so it'll stay around longer and there's actually a free wordpress plugin called bj lazy loader that should help you accomplish this in just a matter of seconds there's actually quite a few free plug-ins for WordPress that'll help you speed up your page so maybe you try that first before you take that list to your developer if you want to save a little bit of money okay next on the list is clichéd or jargony copy if your copy doesn't connect with your customers in a meaningful way or if they have to try to decode it they're probably not gonna stick around long enough to actually figure it out so really resist that urge to try to impress by using the biggest words and don't also expect that your customers know as much about your industry as you do and there's actually a really simple fix for this just right the way you speak conversational copy actually works great across most industry unless you're you know heavy into the b2b medical or government space and even then I wouldn't get too informal with it but I would definitely try to write a little more conversationally than you think you should and I actually have a really actionable tip you can use to get more conversational copy and that involves record yourself talking about your business as if you're talking about it to a friend talk about what makes your business unique or special and why they should care about it then you can take that recording and use it as the basis for your copy and when you're actually writing that copy forget about all the rules you learned about grammar back in school you can use sentence fragments contractions and slang in fact it's gonna generally help you connect on a much deeper level with your customers then if you were to write your website like a term paper ok number 6 we have option overload now while you may think that your customers and site visitors want a lot of options the truth is providing too many options can really your sales and your ability to generate leads from your website so what you should do instead is really narrow down your focus into only the most important things that people are really going to need to know before they'll be interested in what you offer so include a short overview about what exactly your offer is three main benefits that they're gonna receive from your offer a list of features that show them exactly what they're gonna get and then some nice reviews and testimonials and then end it all with a really strong clear call-to-action telling them exactly what to do next you know people actually love to be told what to do next because it takes the guesswork right out and it makes the path forward very clear so I hope that shed some light on what may be going wrong on your own website and some actionable ways that you can take to fix it but now I want to hear from you and I want to know which of these tips are you most excited to put onto your own website I want to know all about it of course any questions you have or comments just put it in the comment section below I'll check them all out and I'll answer all the questions that I possibly can and I want to keep hanging out with you a couple times a week for these videos so you learn as much as you possibly can about your website so if you're not subscribed yet just click the little circle icon right over here to subscribe to this channel and if you're ready to step it up to a more strategic website like all the stuff we've been talking about today go ahead and schedule a free strategy session just between you and me you can get that by clicking this little box right over here all right guys I'm West McDowell for the deep end and I'll see you in the next video