33: 5 website mistakes that sabotage your sales - and how to fix them
Is your website helping your sales and conversions or hurting them?
In this episode of ill communication, I’m sharing 5 website mistakes that kill your conversions and sabotage your sales. These mistakes are likely causing potential customers to bounce away from your website or your sales page, but don’t worry. They are super easy to correct!
I was inspired to record this episode while I was doing a client website audit. This is an introductory service where I review a sales page or several web pages to assess what's working, and what's potentially limiting conversions or sales on the page. What stood out for me is both these clients made a couple of the same mistakes on their websites.
So I created this episode to help you make sure you're not making these mistakes also. And if you are, I’m giving you a couple of quick and easy corrections you can make so you're not going to lose any conversions or sales.
After listening to today's episode, you'll be able to open up your website and see if you're making any of these mistakes and you can take immediate action to correct them.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
Why the position of your social links could be hurting your conversions
How to find out if your website passes the five-second test
Quick ways to add personality to your website
Ways to improve the experience of reading your website copy
Why your sales page needs to look different than your website
There you have it! These are five easy fixes you can make to improve the sales and conversions on your website and sales pages this week.
If you want help with your website, you might be interested in the no-BS Copy Audit. It's an affordably priced service that gives you sales strategy and conversion copy reviews to help you attract more clients and close more sales.
It includes a video review and a super detailed report to help you find immediate ways to improve your copy and get more leads, more clicks, and more sales. Plus, you get a private 1-to-1 meeting with me to review the results. Check it out here!
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Welcome to Ill Communication, Copywriting, Tips and sales strategies for small Business. I'm your host, Kim Keel. I'm a copy coach, sales strategist and direct response copywriter. It's my mission to help women leaders and change makers amplify their voices through copy. It's why I'm dishing out all the juicy tips, writing prompts and sales formulas to help you generate more leads, book more calls, and get more high value clients on repeat. Sounds pretty good. It's time to ditch the overwhelm you might be feeling and find confidence in your copywriting so you can get your message out there and attract more soulmate clients. Let's get started. Hello. Hello and welcome to episode 33 of Communication. Today I'm sharing the five website mistakes that kill your conversions and sabotage your sales. And for the Beastie Boys fans in the crowd, I hope you'll appreciate the sabotage reference. Anyway, these five website mistakes are very common. These mistakes are likely causing potential customers to bounce away from your website or your sales page. And I promise you these mistakes are super easy to correct. After listening to today's episode, you'll be able to open up your website and see if you're making any of these mistakes and you can take immediate action to correct them. Now, I was inspired to record this episode because in the last week I reviewed a couple of my clients websites, which is really nothing new because in the Joy of Copy Club on any given Tuesday, I'll review a home page, an about page or a sales page for copy club members.
But this past week I also provided a no BS web copy audit for a new client. This is an introductory service where I review a sales page or several web pages to assess what's working, what's potentially limiting conversions or sales on the page. And what stood out for me is both these clients made a couple of the same mistakes on their websites. So here I am recording this episode to help you make sure you're not making these mistakes also, and if you are giving you a couple of quick and easy corrections you can make so you're not gonna lose any conversions or sales. Mistake number one, your social icons and links are in the upper navigation bar of your website. Now I get that this is a little counterintuitive. So many websites have the links to Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn or YouTube in the upper navigation or the top portion of your website. And yes, you should have your social links on your website, but please do not put them right up at the top. Here's why. When someone new lands on your website, you want to keep them on your website, you want them to engage with your content, visit different pages and get to know you. But humans are naturally curious, and if your social icons and links are up in the top navigation, your readers will likely click on them.
And when they do, they've left your site and launch their own social media accounts where they'll see they have messages to read and funny reels to watch. So instead put your social links and icons in the footer of your website and add them to your Contact Us page. So here's your action for today. Open up your home page. Check to see if your social links and icons are in the upper navigation bar. If they are, relocate them to the footer and to your contact page. A mistake. Number two is that your website doesn't pass the five second test. Listen, in today's fast paced online marketing world, you have to convey to your reader what you do in five seconds or less, which means if you're not uber clear in that hero section or the top part of that homepage about what you do and who you help, your readers will leave. We just don't have time to figure out what you do. We don't want to invest the mental labor to understand what you do. You need to tell us. So you must be very, very clear at the top of your page. Now, how often have you come across a site that says something pithy and generic, like quality and pride of ownership or achieve better business results? Or here's one I found on a law office responsible, reliable, reasonable. These headline statements could be applied to any kind of business case. They don't tell you who the ideal client or customer is.
They don't clearly explain what the business actually does. So you want to be ultra specific, ultra clear and ultra compelling in the top headline or hero section of your website and sales pages. Now, for the point of example, let's take a look at one of those pithy headlines. Achieve better business results. Let's make it way more specific. So a possible headline could be we help dental and medical professionals become more profitable and a sub headline to make it even juicier. We provide business consulting and team development to mid-sized medical practices who want to make and keep more revenue. You see how that headline and the sub headline instantly tell me who you work with, how you help them, and what the promise or outcome is. So your action open up your home page or your sales page. Now imagine you are a complete stranger to your business. Can you understand in five seconds who you help, how you help them? And a big promise or outcome. Is your headline unique to you, or could any other business put it up on their website? And does your hero headline answer the question the reader is asking What's in it for me? If it's not very strong, spend a little time brainstorming at least a dozen different headlines and subheadlines. Aim for specificity and clarity. It is so much more compelling and effective than something cheesy and pithy that could be a headline on any other business website.
Go ahead and do this today and update your web copy right away. Mistake number three that could be sabotaging your sales is that your website lacks any kind of brand voice or personality. Now, listen, it drives me absolutely crazy when I see a brilliant and talented businesswoman with a totally bland website. You know the kind it reads. Very stiff and cold, very bland. The copy might sound something like Smart Company optimizes team talent for better profits or book Smart company for all your photography needs. This is so boring and bland. Please infuse a little of your personality. Help me get to know you and your brand by adding in more personable, less stiff copy. Now here's why it's so important. Your website is one of 2 billion websites that exists on the Internet today. If you don't infuse your site with a little personality and brand voice, your website is going to be lost in the endless sea of boring websites. And whether you work with individual consumers or you do business with other businesses and corporations, you have to remember that a human being is reading your site. A human is going to make a decision about working with you and your business or agency or buying your product. So write as though you're actually talking to another human. And don't be afraid to infuse a little bit of personality into your copy and your web pages. So here are a couple of quick ways you can add personality, and some of them are really no brainers.
The first one is to include photos of you in an audit I recently did for a client sales page. She only had two tiny photos of herself on the entire page and she was looking down in one of the images. It makes it harder for a reader to connect with her as a coach, so please include great photos that capture the personality of you and your team. This is a very easy way to add a little more personality. Now, another tip is include a little personal detail here and there. So for example, on my site, I have a tiny little sentence where I'm inviting people to book a call with me. The whole paragraph reads, After you book your meeting, we'll meet on a video call. You'll share your growth goals and challenges. I'll suggest some solutions. If you're excited about the ideas, then we'll hop on a call to discuss our next steps. Or we can just chat about our favorite cocktails. Mine's a dirty martini with three olives. You would not believe the number of people who have hopped on calls with me and said, I love dirty martinis too. Or they share a different favorite cocktail. Now you don't have to talk about your favorite beverage of choice, but maybe there's some other little isms that you can infuse into your copy. And a final tip to add more personality is to write in first person.
Nothing screams boring professional website more than writing in the third person. So make sure you write in first person. Use you, your and yours when you're speaking to your reader. Use is and we when you're talking about yourself and just a note of caution there is no need to go too crazy with personality just infuse a little more personality imagery and a unique brand voice and it will go a long way to help you connect more with your ideal customers and have them pre-sold to want to work with you. Okay, Mistake number four that could be killing your website sales is that the copy is physically difficult to read. Now I see this mistake all the time and it is such an easy fix. If your copy, like the actual words on the screen is difficult to read, people won't read it. You could have the most amazing copy, but if it is hard to read, it won't matter now. Anything in a superscript font or super cartoony font can be very difficult to read. It's also difficult and fatiguing to read copy that spans the full width of the computer screen. You want to make sure your copy falls within the center of the web page, so you want to make sure you have some decent padding in the left and right margins. When font or the experience of reading are difficult, your readers will bounce. Our brains will look at the page and be like, This is too confusing to process.
I'm out of here. Readers won't even necessarily know what's wrong. But if it's not pleasant or if it's too much work to actually read the words, they'll leave your site and find another website that's more pleasant to read. And if they leave your site, you've lost a chance to connect and make a sale. Your action is to open up your website or sales page. On a desktop and check to see if your copy spans the entire width of the screen or if you actually have some pretty decent left and right margins that allow the copy to fall comfortably in the middle of the screen. Look at the font. Do you use font that's difficult to read, like very scripted or artistic font? That's actually not very legible. If so, pop into the back end of your website and add in some spacers to the left and right margins and choose a font that's easier to read or work with your web designer to make a couple of quick updates for you. And now mistake number five is that your sales page looks like a regular web page. Now, what I mean here is if you have a signature offer, like a coaching program or you have an event that you want someone to sign up for, like a webinar, a masterclass or a five day challenge, you want it to appear on the web without any additional headers and footers.
So often I see business owners promoting an offer on a regular page on their website where you see the top navigation bar, the Contactus bar and the footer bar. The problem here is that if there are other buttons or links to click, readers will click them. If you want someone to sign up for your event or a premium offer, you only want links on that page to lead them to that desired action. Whether it's to book a call, buy now or save a seat to increase your conversions and sales. Make sure your sales or landing pages don't have the distracting website navigation at the top or the bottom. And definitely no social media links. You can either create a custom page on your website where it doesn't display the website navigation, or you can build your sales and landing pages on a different page. Builder like funnel, gorgeous lead pages, Clickfunnels or Unbounce. There's so many of them, you can just choose one. The exception to this rule is if you are a product based or an e-commerce business where you probably sell multiple products that people can add to a cart. You don't need to worry so much about the navigation because primarily for these consumer products, you want people to be checking out multiple products and adding them to your cart. But if you're a service provider like a coach who's selling a premium offer or a package or if you're having a free event and you want your reader to opt into that specific event, open up that page.
See if the headers and footers are visible and if they are, you may wish to work with your designer to remove the headers and footers to create a sales page that's free from distraction. And this is especially important if you're running ads to your free opt in to your free event or to your premium offer. You definitely want to get those headers and footers out of there. So, my friend, these are the five mistakes that could be killing the sales on your website and how to easily fix them. So make sure you check your site for these five mistakes. Number one, your social media icons and links are in the upper navigation bar. Number two, your website doesn't pass the five second test. Number three, your website is physically difficult to read. Number four, your website and copy lack personality and a unique brand voice. And number five, your sales page is hosted on a regular web page with distracting headers and footers. These are five easy fixes you can make to improve the sales and conversions on your website and sales pages this week. By the way, if you want help with that, you might be interested in the no BS copy audit. It's an affordably priced service that gives you sales strategy and conversion copy reviews to help you attract more clients and close more sales.
It includes a video review, a super detailed report to help you find immediate ways to improve your copy and get more leads, more clicks and more sales. Plus, you get a private 1 to 1 meeting with me to review the results and get some laser focused feedback. I'll drop the link to the no BS copy audit into the show notes so you can check it out and book one if it's a right fit for you. Thank you so much for joining me today on the 33rd episode of L Communication. I'll see you next week. Hey, would you like to hang out with me and other women business owners doing rad things in the world just like you? Then you should join the Joy of Copy Club. It's a group copy coaching experience where you receive access to all my sales templates, writing prompts and copy recipes. So you're never wondering what or how to write once a week. You can pop into my open office hours where we'll live, review and edit any kind of copy you've written. Seriously, you can bring a social post, an email or even some edits to your home page and I'll help you optimize it before you send it out into the world. The Joy of Copy Club gives you the tools and the confidence to get your message out there so you can grow your impact and your revenue. Find out more at Kim Slash Copy Club. I'll see you next week.
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