Six content mistakes that kill your website conversions
Nemo / Pixabay
Due to the magic of the internet, I managed to present a webinar to photographers in the United States this week. While I slept.
The webinar was all about content and the various platforms it can be used for, and then I had some fun critiquing five websites that had been provided earlier.
Putting aside the awesomeness of technology these days, I really enjoyed having a look over these websites I would normally never have seen and I hope the photographers I was with in spirit enjoyed it as much as me.
But the exercise – along with a major website rewrite I am in the middle of – did raise some issues I see time and again with website content so I thought it was time to talk about six of the most common mistakes that people make with the content on their website.
1. No prominent contact details: You have about 8-10 seconds to get someone’s attention when they come to your website. Make sure that in that time, they can see at least a phone number, if not also an email. It should be on every page – and not just in the footer.
2. No call to action: What do you want people to do once they arrive at your landing page? Buy a product? “Add to cart”? Make a phone call? Send an email? Read blog posts? Check out your portfolio? Whatever the goal of your website is, you need to make it clear to visitors. This is one case where not only can you lead a horse to water, you can totally make it drink.
3. It’s not about you: So many websites are written in a way that appeals to the business owner. But you already know how great your stuff is, so it’s your ideal client you need to appeal to. The content has to speak to his or her emotions, desires, wants and needs. And make sure you address any objections, and solve your target audience’s problems – even those they didn’t even know they have. Check out my FAQ’s to see how I have answered potential concerns.
4. Burying the USP: Buried deep in one of the photography sites I visited was this sentence “XXX and XXX have been in photography since 1975”. Holy longevity batman! In an era where every stay-at-home mum with a camera fancies themselves a photographer, this experience is a huge selling point. Many of us operate in very cluttered marketplaces, so it’s vital to give people a reason to buy from you rather than a competitor. You need to make sure that your unique selling point is clear to your audience.
5. No on-page SEO: There’s nothing I hate more than keyword-stuffed rubbish, but that’s not to say that on-page SEO is a no-no. You should at the very least have one keyword identified, and used in content, headings, meta tags and more. And you should also be doing some internal linking into pages that you want people (and Googlebots) to visit. Like my link above to the FAQs and this one to my services page. See more about simple SEO copywriting in Kate Toon’s fabulous guest post. (Oh look, another internal link!). And you can pick Kate Toon’s brilliant brain via the link at the top right of this page.
6. Too many technical details: This website rewrite I am neck-deep in is for a company that operates in a very specialised and technical field. The problem is the site itself is very technical and wordy. When I started there was 100+ pages, which has now been culled to 60-odd and I am simplifying the language. There is nothing wrong with showing your expertise, but try not to a/ bore people to tears and b/ give away all your secrets. You want people to email or phone you, that way you can capture their contact information and work on converting the lead to a sale. If you want to show how brilliant you are at your subject matter, then think about writing white papers, or research papers, and upload them as PDFs. You can optimise an upload just as well as you can a website, so don’t panic about losing Google “juice”. And it means people can choose to click, rather than be bombarded by reams and reams of words.
My challenge to you is to check the health of your website regularly to make sure your content isn’t killing it.
Till next time,
Nicole