5 Common Website Mistakes Keeping You From Generating More Leads
Website performance tips from an ex-digital marketer turned web designer.
If you're a service based business with a website, you're going to find this blog post super valuable, and you can start taking steps TODAY to make these changes.
My past life in marketing
I worked in digital marketing, specializing in performance (maximizing engagement and sales) my entire career until now. I successfully optimized hundreds of websites and landing pages for conversions by making simple changes that are super impactful.
Hi. I’m Shannon Gallaher.
I own City & Sea Creative, a boutique branding agency for home & lifestyle brands. I have over a decade of digital marketing experience in addition to my design experience, so I take performance, growth, data & analytics and strategy VERY seriously. It drives every design decision I make.
Maximizing your website for performance
Applying these changes will help decrease your bounce rate (the amount of people exiting fast), increase your conversion rate (the amount of visitors that turn into leads), increase your average session duration (the amount of time people spend on your website before leaving), and decrease your exit rate (the amount of people who exit without taking action.)
Here are the 5 mistakes I see all. the. time.
Your images are huge: Large images hurt you for a few reasons. 1) Your website will load slower and people are impatient and don't have time to wait 2 extra seconds for that image to show up. 2) Over time this will harm your SEO performance because it tells Google your website sucks. Yes, seriously. We always optimize images so that they are 500kb or lower, while maintaining quality as much as possible.
Your menu bar is overwhelming: Too many options on your navigation menu causes decision fatigue, which causes people to exit out before they’ve digested the information they need. Our best performing websites only have 4-5 options in the main menu bar. Home > About > Services > Blog > Book Now. Boom.
Your mobile experience sucks: 99% of the clients that come through our door have websites that perform terribly on mobile. Images are covering buttons, text is stacked on top of each other so you can’t read it, blocks of huge text require you to scroll endlessly to get through one section. It sounds cheesy, but your website should feel peaceful and enjoyable to scroll through. People who find you on Instagram will be looking at your website on mobile. People who are anywhere but at their desk at home who look at your website will be looking at it on a mobile device. Prioritize this.
CTA’s are not strategic: Your website visitors shouldn’t have to look around to find a BOOK NOW button. These CTA’s should be strategically placed to basically read the minds of your visitors as they’re scrolling. Regularly test your buttons to make sure they are working properly and not leading to nowhere or to the wrong page.
You’re saying too much: Say what you need to say, then cut in half. Then cut it in half again. Life is busy, people are moving faster than ever and consuming content and information faster than ever with the last amount of patience they’ve ever had. They’re not going to read large blocks of texts on your website, no matter how interesting you are. Say what absolutely must be said and move on, or your exit rate will stay high because they’re losing interest. Do your selling during the discovery phase. The goal of the website is to get people to inquire.
These tips just scratch the surface of the most common mistakes I see when I audit service-based websites, but these pack the biggest punch.
Curious how you can improve your own website?
I do offer a website audit service!!
Before you commit to a full rebrand and website overhaul, I’m more than happy to take a deep dive into your website performance and give you a report of actionable steps you can take to increase your performance. If you do decide to book a larger package with us, the cost of the audit will go towards your project.
Let’s fix your website and watch your business grow!
