It’s a troubling thought, isn’t it?

That website you designed over a year or so ago,

It’s giving you misery and making you think.

You’re sure that you will call off the whole thing one day.

For starters.

Up to now, it seems no-one knows that your site exists,

And those who visit your Homepage leave quickly,

And to make it even worse, no one contacts you or buys from you.

Sounds a bit harsh, but statistics show that about 80% of all new websites fail just after a year.

In this article, I will try to show you why your website is not giving you the results you want (plus ways you can fix it).

Ok, so here we go

Reason 1: Lack of Clarity

If there’s one thing I’d love for you to take away from this blog post. It is this quote by marketing experiments.

The chief enemy of forward momentum is confusion

When people visit your website, they are trying to solve a problem or pain point that they are experiencing.

They either search for information or plan to buy something to solve their problem.

But then they are greeted by this:

I know,

A brave soul might try digging around a bit.

But I bet most people get frustrated and look for information elsewhere.

It’s a lost opportunity, all because of confusion and lack of clarity.

According to research conducted by marketing experiments

The simple, yet powerful way to drive customers deeper into your web page is by being clear.

And if you want to be clear, here is how you can go about it.

Ask yourself, what is my customer thinking as he lands on my website?

According to marketing experiments. The three questions customers think about each time they arrive on your web page are:

1. Where am I?
2. What can I do here?

3. Why should I do it?

Look at how Wistia leaves us in no doubt about what they do.

Straight to the point.

As soon as visitors land on your website, do they know what you do and what you offer?

If not, then follow Wistia’s example and be clear about your value proposition.

If you aren’t clear about what you do, you risk attracting a crowd of

1. chancers, and hangers on,
2. time-wasters, tire kickers,

You know, people who will not bring any real benefit to your business.

As they say in life.

If you don’t aim for something, you will fall for anything.

Reason 2: You don’t know who you want to speak to

Do you know your target customer?

Do you know where they live, what food they like to eat?

Now, identifying your target audience might feel like such a chore.

But doing so could mean a serious uptick on your bottom line.

Unfortunately, sometimes even the big Fortune 500 companies get this audience targeting thing wrong

Kellogg’s is one such example

Kellogg’s. A huge breakfast cereal company you might have heard of…

Now, rewind with me a couple years back in Kellogg’s timeline,

So the situation is like this:

1. Sales of breakfast cereals are down 5%.
2. Share/stock prices have followed suit and tumbled.

Now, remember 5% is a big deal for a heavyweight like Kellogg’s.

So, here’s how Kellogg’s handles this dire situation…

They hurriedly fire and replace the head of the cereal division. Twice.

In addition, they recruit 150 extra sales staff to work on bigger and better grocery store aisle displays.

Anyway…

The real reason behind the 5% decline in sales was neither the grocery store displays nor the poor managers who lost their jobs.

It turned out Kellogg’s target market had shifted away from Cornflakes in the morning…

They were now eating Greek yogurt and fast-food breakfast sandwiches.

Apparently.

The moral of the story?

Well, to prove the importance of knowing who your customer really is.

Of course, sophisticated audience tracking requires time, financial budgets, and technical resources.

So what do you do when you don’t have the budget to perform audience tracking?

A bunch of things actually.

For starters

Communicate with your customers. Learn more about them all the time.

This establishes rapport and quickly builds trust. Your customers will know they are in the right place.

You’ll likely be the first to know when their preferences change.

Second of all. Drop the business jargon.

Speak the way your customers speak.

Adidas nails this one. Take a look at this screenshot from their website.

Just gathering from the picture above.

It appears Adidas is running after young, active city folk below the age of 30 years. Or 35.

Check out the urban slang that Adidas slaps all over their website.

• UNLIMIT YOUR RUN • ESCAPE THE GRID

• GREATER EVERY RUN.

You can do the same for your website so your customers know you understand them.

The best way in my opinion: Start with a piece of paper.

Then decide who do you want to reach, what language do they speak, where do they live…and so on.

You can add more details as you go.

You could ask your existing clients to provide that information.

Or whenever you have visitors on your website, ask them to fill out a two-minute survey.

If you are the visual type, you can use MindMeister to map out who your target customer is.

Check out this map of Adidas’ target audience on Mindmeister.

Reason number 3: Not capturing leads

Are you spending money posting ads on Facebook and buying traffic from Google?

This is a great idea

But remember that about 96% of people who drop by your website for the first time are not yet ready to buy.

Some people are still busy researching.

On the other hand, a good number want to buy but they plan to return at a convenient time.

However, remember that around 70% of people who visit your website for the first time will never come back.

Ouch.

Let’s say you sell eyewear on your website.

One way to make sure that first time visitors return to your website would be to entice them with a 40% discount if they join your mailing list.

Then, after a week or two, e-mail them and invite them to check out even better deals.

Here’s how Evernote uses e-mail offers to persuade me to switch to Evernote Premium.

Check the image below:

Reason number 4: You are not blogging

Let’s get the statistics out of the way.

According to Hubspot, businesses that blog 16 times per month acquire 4 times more potential customers than businesses that blog only 4 times a month.

Blogging allows you the chance to attract your ideal customers especially when they are busy researching online, or making price comparisons.

But we all know blogging can be a slog.

And you are not alone if you believe that generating potential customers from blogging is not guaranteed at all. Or is it?

How to Blog for business

One guy who has really nailed the magic formula for blogging is Marcus Sheridan.

Marcus Sheridan lives and swears by his proven blogging formula “They Ask, You Answer.”

That formula “They ask, you answer” simply means that the best way to blog is to answer all the questions that your potential customers have.

Nothing more. Nothing less.

Marcus has the results to prove his formula

His swimming pool installations company turned from near bankruptcy to millions in revenues through the sheer power of blogging.

But there’s a Caveat…

It’s sad, but true.

So many people have found themselves pushing out tons of blog posts, but they have never generated a single customer from their efforts.

Seasoned sales expert, Ian Brodie, points out that blog posts that convert are the ones that inspire a change.

Ian Brodie argues that your (potential) customers have learned to be comfortable with their pain.

They do not see the need for change and so they continue in their old ways.

It is up to the blogger to show the reader that the pain of staying the same is worse than the pain of change.

It is up to the blogger to show the reader that the pain of staying the same is the worse than the pain of change. Click To Tweet

Show your readers what they are losing by staying the same.

Unravel the devastation that lack of change is causing.

Reveal how mediocrity is nibbling them to the graveyard of irrelevance.

When you do that.

Then you are most likely to get them to pick up the phone and make that call.

Reason Number 5: You don’t have a call to action.

After people land on your website, what action do you want them to take?

For example, you may ask them to

1. Download a book, 2. View the pricing page, 3. Leave a five-star review,

4. Make a donation.

Checkout how Skype does it.

If you don’t ask for the sale, then you are leaving money on the table.

Remember your visitors might also be wondering in their heads what is it you want them to do next.

So don’t leave this to chance.

Here’s how Nature Air increased sales by 591% just by basically asking for the sale,

Here is what their page looked like before they added a call to action (CTA) button.

Now check out the call to action that they added in the next image.

591% increase in conversions!

Just because they asked for a sale.

The results are unbelievable and this alone should encourage you to

• Boldly ask for the sale, • Ask your web visitors to see the pricing page,

• Ask for a donation…

Reason number 6: You are offering too many choices.

Okay,

I would be scared to enter my credit card details and buy from this site.

But that’s not the only point.

It has been proven lots of times that if people are faced with too many options they end up doing nothing.

An excess of choices can lead to fatigue and can make people feel dissatisfied with the experience, or even worse, abandon the process altogether — Nielsen Norman

I mean, look at that image again…

Just a simple glance will give you some stress.

Remember to simplify your design and make it easier for people to do business with you.

Decluttering:

VWO helped a Finnish company (called Taloon) achieve 11% more sales just by trimming down unnecessary clutter from Taloon’s product pages.

Here’s how Taloon’s product page looked like before the cleaning up.

Do you see those innocent looking social sharing buttons?

Apparently, those buttons were scaring people away from buying.

Here is the page after the spring cleaning

Cleaner.

No buttons.

As a result, 11% spike in sales! Not too bad, methinks

In conclusion.

You want your website to do better, no doubt. But sometimes it’s hard to know where to begin.

If you desire to know how to get started, here are a few questions from Chris Brogan to help you fix your website.

1. Is it easy to do business with you?
2. Do people know what you intend to do for them?
3. Do people know how to reach out to you?
4. Are you really clear about what next steps with you look like?

Sounds much more doable, right? Without all of that jargon, too.

Great then.

Let me how it goes.