- (sighs) 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%.
Your conversion rates seems really low in comparison.
It's making you mad. 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.
And 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 Exposure 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 though.
The process goes something like this;
Someone will have a look at some keyword search volumes
and say, "Oh, there's loads of search volume
"for that particular phrase.
"I wanna make some content on my site,
"or I wanna target some ads, or I wanna 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 8*8 is a VoIP phone system.
So if you want a kind of virtual phone system
for your entire company solution providers like 8*8
can do that.
Now the biggest ranking pages on their site
for non-branded terms,
i.e people that aren't already searching for 8*8
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 8*8 services.
They might be someone who've just had a missed call,
and they're trying to figure out where the 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 8*8 is at all,
all we've got is gobbledygook in the right hand side
by here that doesn't give me any introduction whatsoever.
So what's gonna 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 gonna convert.
In fact potentially, none of that traffic is gonna 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
will 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
cause they stood outside their front door,
it's pouring with rain,
the keys just snapped off in the lock.
They type in locksmith and they click on the first ad.
The conversion rate from someone like that
is gonna 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 gonna 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 TikTok.
Now, if you've been on TikTok
you'll see loads of middle-aged people
trying to do these cringey dance routines
in order to build a big audience on TikTok and that's fine.
Maybe they'll build a big audience of people
that are into dance on TikTok. Totally cool.
But unless you're serving the typical audience
that's spending most of their time on TikTok,
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 searches?
Bing searches? 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 TikTok 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 TikTok
for small or medium sized businesses is relatively low.
What I'm not saying here is that TikTok is a complete waste
of time for the right business is absolutely right
and at some point we would expect TikTok 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 or 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, "nah."
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 tear downs.
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 dead.
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 wanna 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 gonna buy some furniture,
but if you're trying to sell straight away,
you're gonna get some, but you're not gonna 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.
Your website is bad. Your website is bad.
It's bad, blah.
Okay. Sometimes it just has to be said.
It's not uncommon for us to be sent to 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 gonna make your site look worse.
The standard of website design changes fast.
Back when I started Exposure Ninja in 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 colours 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 matter,
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 just bought the whirligig."
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 then 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 gonna be able to get in contact
with them.
They've got reviews 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 customer's
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 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 2% 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're 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 gonna 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 info's 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 wanna 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
to see what those slime balls are doing
and see what you could copy.
So go to exposureninja.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 a 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 referenced 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 OJ Simpson's heroics,
then you really need to think about updating your content.
Quite often, we find the lowest hanging fruit
for many websites is actually just going back
to old successful blog posts,
giving them a bit of a fresh lease of life,
tidying them up,
adding some more relevant tips,
playing with some of the tags,
adding a bit more detail in some areas
can do wonders for your ranking,
but also your conversion rate
because they show your visitors that you're alive
and vibrant.
And this is a really important thing.
You don't always need to be pumping new information
onto your site.
If you've got a good back catalogue of blog posts,
tab owing those can be some of the best use of your time.
So don't just think that because you've written something
and you've posted it a long time ago,
it's now completely dead and it's never gonna do
any better.
Good posts are written great posts are rewritten.
Who said that? I don't know, I'm taking it.
Good post are written great posts are rewritten.
So I hope you found this useful
and I hope it gets you out of your conversion rate funk.
If you've enjoyed it, subscribe to the channel.
We post new videos every week.
Sometimes they're better than this,
sometimes they're worse than this. I don't know.
So subscribe and then you'll get the next one
and we will see. (laughs)
See you soon.