10 Reasons Visitors Leave Your Site
Are you sending potential customers to the competition?
You purchased a domain and set up a basic website for your business. You added your logo, a few photos, and your phone number. Check that off the never-ending to-do list, right? Or maybe you hired someone to build out a site for you when you started your business years back and made some tweaks here and there throughout the years. It’s still fine now, right? Potential customers will find you and your business will grow, correct? Not quite.
Your website is so much more than a placeholder, especially now when having a strong online presence is so important. Your website is your online home base: it houses all of your information, is meant to be a high-functioning tool for you, and is the end of the trail that your marketing efforts flow to.
You go above and beyond for your customers offline when they are dining in your restaurant, visiting your store, booking a stay, or experiencing one of your services, correct? Your top-notch customer experience shows professionalism, care, effort, thoughtfulness, and quality. They are very clear on what your business is all about.
If you aren’t putting the same effort into making sure your website represents and serves you & your potential clients well, visitors won’t stay long (mere seconds); you could be sending potential customers right on over to your competition. If they can’t find what they are looking for and if it’s a frustrating experience, that is a poor reflection on your business and you are missing out on potential growth.
It should be easy for a visitor to immediately see who you are, what you offer, and how to work with you.
There are so many factors that determine if your website is working well for you. So, how can you tell if your site is appealing to visitors or not?
Here are 10 reasons your visitors are going to your competition instead of you:
They cannot find your business online
It’s like you are hiding. People seeking out your product or service have to be able to find you online. They will do a quick Google or Google Maps search, check social media, and review local directories. If you aren’t easy to find via those options, they will go to the businesses that are. This is why marketing and Search Engine Optimization are so important.
Outdated
You want to put your best foot forward online by having a beautiful, high-functioning website that best represents your brand and guest experience. If you are using an old, outdated website template with photos, visuals, content, SEO, and copywriting that isn’t current, you could be missing in searches or appear unprofessional to visitors.
Cluttered and complicated flow
It is very frustrating to be seeking information only to find a website that has a complicated menu or navigation flow and is overcrowded with clutter. The visitor shouldn’t have to make it through a maze of info just to book with you. If a website is cluttered with too much copy, advertisements, visuals, and content, the main messages of who you are, what you do, and how to work with you get lost.
Inconsistent
I see this happen often with do-it-yourself site design or with older websites that have had a lot of refreshes over the years, many times at the hands of a few too many designer cooks in the kitchen. Branding is all over the place, there is no strategy, far too many pages, random fonts & colors throughout, etc. The websites feel inconsistent and disjointed vs. coherent and concise.
Too Wordy or Too Little Info
Copywriting is an art and good copy is a major key to driving traffic to your site and keeping visitors engaged. There is a right balance to strike when it comes to how much copy you are using. Write too much and they disengage; too little and they’ll go searching for more info elsewhere. I challenge my clients to read their website out loud to themselves or print the pages & go at it with a red pent to see what could be cut. Hiring or taking a course with a Copywriter is a great solution too.
Low-quality Visuals
The imagery you use should be high-quality and represent your brand. They should go with the copy and should aid in helping the visitor understand what you are all about. Using old images that are blurry or clip art can make your business look unprofessional. You need to keep in mind too that if your photos aren’t the right size or format or are blurry, and have long names, they can slow your website down. High-quality stock images or hiring a photographer to shoot unique images for your brand are both great options.
Non-responsive website
A responsive website changes based on the different screens visitors are using. Content and images are resized to fit different screen widths (desktop, mobile, tablet). You want your website to display and function well on a variety of devices and if it doesn’t, it won’t rank well with search engines (so the visitors can’t find you). If your site isn’t mobile-friendly it will decrease the amount of time a visitor spends looking around. Look at your website on your mobile phone. Is the font hard to read? Do the pictures take up too much space? Are the elements functioning the same way they would on a desktop?
Missing key info
I cannot tell you how many websites I see that are missing the most basic and important information. Who, what, where, and how. Tell the visitors who you are, what you sell, where you are located, and how to purchase from you. A visitor needs to easily find your contact information; email, phone, social media links, and address. These get unintentionally left off so many times! They also should be able to quickly find your product or service overview, including menu, pricing, etc. Please make sure you are including ways for them to purchase or book with you too!
Difficult purchase process
If you make the process of booking or purchasing from you complicated, it will drive visitors away. People aren’t interested in a lot of back and forth communication, especially not over the phone. They want to book or buy online in minutes in just a few steps and if they have a question, they want to find the answer on your website or via a quick check-in via messenger or email with you.
Slow load time or broken
If it takes too long for your website to load or if pages and links are broken, you will lose them. This can happen when there are too many elements on a page, when visuals aren’t unoptimized, you are using a low-quality hosting service, too many ads, old link directions, etc. Remember, visitors only stay on a website for a few seconds so you want to make sure they can see everything quickly when they arrive.
If any of this is familiar and your website has become an embarrassment or burden, I highly recommend you switch up your current website strategy and/or start fresh with a whole new strategic website design.
A great place to start if you already have a website that you’d like to update is by having a website audit done. A professional website audit is a great way to improve your site’s performance and helps make sure your current website is attracting your target audience, engaging them once they land on your site, and converting them to customers. You can learn more about my audit offering and process here.
If you are looking to work with a professional on a whole new website design and are interested in the Squarespace platform, you can check out my package options here.
