that conversion rate number in analytics is low let me guess you've watched a ninja video where we've been talking about conversion rates of 5 10 45 da your conversion rate seems really low in comparison it's making you mad what i understand today we're gonna find out why so buckle up for eight reasons your conversion rate sucks all right your conversion rate is one of the most important digital marketing metrics in all of the world and here's why your conversion rate is the percentage of visitors that land on your website which take the action that you want them to do so become a lead become a sale click on the thing you know whatever the defined action is on your website the reason your conversion rate is so important is if you have a high conversion rate you get more leads and sales with your website traffic if you have a low conversion rate then you need to get much more traffic onto your site to get that same number of leads and sales so conversion rate has a big big impact on how profitable and successful your digital marketing is now conversion rates vary massively from 0. 001 to 45 plus there are loads of things which define what your conversion rate is but we wanted to share this video with the eight most common reasons that your conversion rate might be frustratingly low so before i give you the eight reasons i'm assuming that your website is actually designed to convert visitors okay if your website isn't trying to convert visitors then that's probably something to start on so this isn't really a basics of conversion video we have loads of those on the explosion ninja channel so go and check out some of those this is more like a troubleshooting video for people that feel they've got the basics in place but they can't figure out why their results aren't better reason number one that your conversion rate might suck is that you're attracting the wrong type of visitor to your website now this is fairly common then the process goes something like this someone will have a look at some keyword search volumes and see oh there's loads of search volume for that particular phrase i want to make some content on my site or i want to target some ads or i want to get my page ranking for that particular keyword they then do that they get lots of traffic for that keyword but hey guess what it turns out that none of that traffic is particularly relevant let's look at a couple of examples the first one is on this site now 8x8 is a voip phone system so if you want a kind of virtual phone system for your entire company solution providers like 8x8 can do that now the biggest ranking pages on their site for non-branded terms i. e people that aren't already searching for 8x8 are these area code blog posts so what they've done is they've identified loads of the most common blog posts in the us and they've written these blog posts about them now these blog posts are pretty good nice well-written article beautiful photography loads of information about the 919 area code but what's the problem with this the problem is that the majority of people searching for this aren't even going to be in the market for eight by eight services they might be someone who've just had a missed call and they're trying to figure out where their call came from they could be all sorts of people but the chances of them actually looking for a voip system are really really small to make matters worse once they get on this page there is no information about what 8x8 is at all all we've got is gobbledygook in the right hand sidebar here that doesn't give me any introduction whatsoever so what's going to be happening here is this page will get a huge amount of traffic because it's ranking very well but almost none of that traffic is going to convert in fact potentially none of that traffic is going to convert because they don't actually have very clear calls to action throughout the post here's another example on the livechat.
com website now livechat. com is obviously a live chat software that you can use and they've written this really informative guide on how to successfully get started with email marketing well that's great and it's a really in-depth piece with loads of useful information but the trouble is someone who's just getting started with email marketing isn't necessarily anywhere near making a decision about a live chat provider so whilst this might be a topic that the target audience would be interested in it's actually potentially really far away from the pain point that the live chat software is actually fixing so again the conversion rate on this type of thing would be really low but attracting the wrong target audience starts even further before that in the traffic channels that you're using which segues us beautifully into reason number two your conversion rate might suck is that you're using the wrong traffic channels to pick up your target audience now we've talked before about how conversion rates can often be very different according to different channels for example let's take the example of someone who is looking for a locksmith and they go onto their phone because they're stood outside their front door it's pouring the rain the keys just snapped off in the log they type in locksmith and they click on the first ad the conversion rate from someone like that is going to be really high like potentially 20 and upwards whereas someone who's scrolling around facebook and happens to see an organic post from a locksmith company and clicks through to the website their conversion rate is going to be much lower because they're not in the time of need so your conversion rate can vary massively per channel but we're not really talking about that here what we're really talking about here is spending time marketing on the channels that your audience aren't really on whatever the trendy new channel is often it's mostly populated by younger people if we take at the time of making this video tick tock now if you've been on tick tock you'll see loads of middle-aged people trying to do these cringy dance routines in order to build a big audience on tick tock and that's fine maybe they'll build a big audience of people that are into dance on tick tock totally cool but unless you're serving the typical audience that's spending most of their time on tick tock typically you'll get a much higher return on your time by spending time posting content on other channels so it's really important to understand in your target audience's typical day where are they putting their eyeballs are they google searches are they bing searchers bing searchers apparently they do exist which social channels are they spending their time on because yes whilst you might be able to build a big following quickly on tick tock by posting dance routines the chances of the traffic from that turning into customers for you at this time until there's a more productive use case for tick-tock for small and medium-sized businesses is relatively low what i'm not saying here is that tick-tock is a complete waste of time for the right business is absolutely right and at some point we would expect tick tock to become way more relevant for the vast majority of businesses once there is a more compelling business use case that isn't featured around dancing and pranks but for most small and medium-sized businesses their time and money is a very finite resource so it makes the most sense to go right to where your audience is reason number three your conversion rate might suck is your website doesn't have what people want now in some ways this is the most difficult reason to identify because as businesses we are so wrapped up and we're so absorbed in what we sell that it's very difficult to see what we sell from an audience's perspective we ask friends and family what they think about our product or service and they say yeah great it looks awesome but then we run ads and we get qualified traffic to the site and the traffic says now sometimes it's not actually about the fact that people don't want what you sell it's about the fact that you're not bringing out the benefits and the things that they actually do want in what you sell on this site which was submitted to us for one of our digital marketing teardowns it turns out that this business has loads of really compelling advantages they sell training to young people that are trying to pass their 11 plus exam when you come onto the site though you don't really get too much of a sense of the benefits and the authority behind this business but dig a little bit further and you find that actually the tutors for this business are really well qualified they are super high authority the founder of the business is a really compelling front person for the service that they offer and a great case study of why this method works but none of that is visible when you land on the website for the first time so a site like this could have a low conversion rate initially because it's not actually positioning what people want when they land on the page reason number four your conversion rate might suck is you're using the wrong offer for the stage of the sales funnel that your visitors are at basically too much too soon let me explain last time you bought a car you probably found one online and you clicked arrange viewing what didn't happen is the dealer then immediately sent you an invoice for the car and asked you how you'd like to pay right too much too soon sometimes websites go in for the kill too early as well particularly if you're selling something that involves a bit of a consultative sale using the wrong wording in your call to action can kill your conversions debt if you use something like start now or sign up now before the customer is ready to take that leap you can really reduce your conversion rate so think about how you can ease people gently through your sales process in a series of safer smaller steps for example watch this video download a guide talk to someone inquire today these are very soft calls to action that can work well if your audience is a little bit scared and not yet ready to commit now this is most important if we think about traffic that's coming through your blog whether that traffic is coming from social media or organic search or whatever traffic that comes onto your blog is typically looking for information so they're very rarely ready to take a commercial step immediately and buy something so what you might want to do is have an email capture on your blog which offers people a chance to get more tips or to get a downloadable guide something like that can help you increase your conversion rate of your blog traffic which tends to be fairly low otherwise because you might be saying here are 10 tips for smooth skin buy this expensive face cream let's imagine that a furniture business has a blog post something like 10 clever furniture ideas for small living rooms so what they might then do is list some of their products in those 10 ideas and that might be a great thing to do and that might get them some sales but if we think about the position in the sales funnel of somebody searching for furniture ideas for small living rooms what they're probably not doing is shopping for furniture right now because they're looking for ideas so they might be a stage before that now at some point they're probably going to buy some furniture but if you're trying to sell straight away you're going to get some but you're not going to get many so what can work really well for people at that sort of early stage in the sales funnel can be offering them some downloadable guide or information that helps them get closer to their goal for example download the ultimate guide to interior design for small living rooms what you can then do is capture that person's email address and communicate and send them more information about this knowing that they have a small living room and then you can be present with them through email marketing or through retargeting them on social as they're moving through that sales funnel until they get to the point that they're ready to buy think about making your sales process a slippery slope rather than a bam straight to earth okay reason number five that your conversion rate might suck your website looks bad oh you want something bad you're upset it's bad it's bad okay sometimes it just has to be said it's not uncommon for us to be sent a website and we can guess immediately that it's been homemade now sometimes a homemade website can actually increase conversions and it can be endearing now sometimes a homemade website can work really well like if you're really good at building websites but if you're in a competitive space against other sites which are really nicely designed then it's only going to make your site look worse the standard of website design changes fast back when i started exposing engine 2012 i had no issue building websites myself today i wouldn't even design a feature blog post image the standard of design online has increased and is increasing rapidly as mobile device photography improves and services like canva allow people to design things really simply that look good people's expectation of what they see when they're on their computer or their phone is continuing to increase and that means that the homemade amateur looking site looks worse than ever now in particular there are some really key issues which can absolutely kill your conversions for example a website that isn't mobile friendly and by not mobile friendly we don't just mean it doesn't resize we mean that things like buttons are too close together or things disappear or the menu system just works really weirdly sometimes websites use colors that are really really difficult to read or very low contrast difference another key mistake is that the site has been designed to look good on one particular screen size but anything that's slightly bigger or smaller or much bigger or much smaller it starts to look terrible another issue is that the imagery on the site looks massively generic it's just completely just taken from stock photo sites it doesn't make you look bigger it makes you look smaller or that product imagery is low resolution low quality links don't look like links buttons don't look like buttons and so on and so on here's the thing about websites people are judging the quality of your business by how your website looks because they really have nothing else to go on the first time they land on it so first impressions mata people judge books by their covers get your website looking good okay slight variation of that number six reason why your conversion rate might suck is that your website isn't trustworthy now one of the things that builds trust is a good-looking website sure but there are other trust signals that you can use as well things like review stars testimonials case studies examples of social proof for example the little proof boxes in the bottom of the window that says billy from arkansas has just bought the whirly gig now building trust is important for every business but the more high risk your offer or your product or service is perceived as being for your target audience the more important this kind of trust building element comes into play now i love to study things like personal injury claims sell your house quick viagra all these types of difficult markets where there's a lot of competition and they maybe sometimes don't have the best reputation because all of these sorts of businesses if they're gonna succeed if they're gonna do well they have to build trust and credibility here's the national accident helpline website and look at some of the trust signals that they're using on this site firstly they're using a phone number in their header menu what does this do it shows that you can reach them they've got long opening hours as well which actually builds a lot of trust for people because if you've got a question you know that you're going to be able to get in contact with them they've got review stars above the fold and a massive number of reviews which is a really great way of building trust if you don't have that many reviews you can substitute the number of reviews for your average rating or even some specific testimonials from people that you feel alleviate some of your potential customers biggest fears then they've got these three benefits statements we're supportive every day we help hundreds of people building social proof experience over 26 years of service again building social proof rated excellent by thousands on trustpilot in fact if you look at all the information above the fold on this page what is it designed to do everything on this side is designed to build trust everything on this side is designed to generate the conversion as a case study you couldn't really do any better reason number seven why your conversion rate might suck is that your website loads too slowly walmart found that for every one second decrease in page load time they saw a two percent conversion increase now the one thing that's worse than a website that looks ugly is a website that looks ugly and takes ages to load as people are more and more relying on mobile internet the speed that your site loads is becoming more important now whilst 4g and 5g promise faster load times still increasingly we're noticing higher bounce rates on mobile than we are on desktop for sites that load slowly you can check your site speed in analytics or using the page speed insights tool which also tells you if your site passes the core web vitals test which is going to become part of ranking signals from may 2021 heads up on that if you're watching this after may oh my gosh core web vitals is already a ranking signal somehow i think the world will still be turning before i give you the final tip if you've had any value from this video whatsoever even if it's just a mild temporary distraction from the carnage that is this year then please do consider subscribing giving it a like and also let me know in the comments what's your biggest website pet peeve what really turns you off a website more than anything because i think actually we could get some good infos here which would help fellow viewers and if you're really struggling with a terrible conversion rate and you just can't figure it out or even if you've got a great conversion rate you just want to slam that sucker with more traffic then check out the free website and marketing review from exposure ninja go to exposureninja. com click that big button fill in your details about your website and your marketing goals for the next 12 months and one of our team will record you a 15 minute video showing you how to improve the conversions from your website but also to generate more traffic through traffic channels like social media organic search paid search paid social email marketing and they'll also have a look at your competitors as well see what those little slime balls are doing and see what you could copy so go to exposure ninja.
com to request your free website and marketing review today final reason your website's conversion rate might suck number eight is your website is stale now staleness can take a few forms on websites firstly it's a good idea to keep your design kind of being refreshed every so often because designs change if the site's already two years old sometimes things change button sizes might need to be a little bit different try testing a different font maybe jazz up those pages a little bit play with the amount of white space make it look current but most often staleness is found on websites in the blog right if you've got blog buyer's guides that reference last year or you haven't posted anything for a while or you've got links to stuff that's broken or things that don't really exist or you're referencing o.
