Why Most Websites Fail and How to Make Yours Stand Out

Your website is the cornerstone of your online business. It’s where your audience comes to learn about you, browse your offerings, and ultimately, take action. But here’s the hard truth: most websites fail to deliver the results their owners hope for. Why is that? What makes some websites stand out and convert visitors into loyal customers, while others fade into obscurity? Today, we’re diving into the top reasons most websites fail and, more importantly, how you can make sure yours doesn’t just survive—but thrives.


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Chapters

• 0:00 Why Most Websites Fail
• 11:22 Maximizing Website Conversion and Success

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:34

Your website is the cornerstone of your online business. It's where your audience comes to learn about you, browse your offerings and ultimately take action, just like they would if you had a brick-and-mortar store. But here's the hard truth Many websites fail to deliver the results their owners hope for. So why is that? What makes some websites stand out and convert visitors into loyal customers, while others fade into obscurity? Today, we're diving into the top reasons why most websites fail and, more importantly, how you can make sure yours doesn't just survive but also thrives.

Speaker 1: 1:10

Welcome to the e-commerce made easy podcast. I'm your host, keri Saunders. When we started this business, all I had was a couch, a laptop and a nine-month-old. My main goal To help others. Now, with over 20 years in the e-commerce building industry, and even more than that in web development, I have seen a lot. I love breaking down the hard tech into easily understandable bits to help others be successful in their online business. Whether you're a seasoned e-commerce veteran or just starting out, you've come to the right place, so sit back, relax and let's dive into the world of e-commerce together. Welcome back to the e-commerce made easy podcast.

Speaker 1: 1:46

Today, we're talking about why most websites fail and how you can avoid these mistakes to create a site that truly works for your business. Whether your goals drive sales, book consultations or grow your email list, the strategies we're covering today will help you take your website from underperforming to closer to unforgettable. So the number one reason that websites fail is there's no clear purpose. It is the main reason, and one of the things we talk about in our converting website course is creating your purpose and finding that, and we go deep into how to do this. But let's talk about some high level areas of that. So when visitors land on your site, they should immediately understand what you do, who you serve and how you can help them.

Speaker 1: 2:34

If your website feels confusing or unfocused, visitors won't stick around long enough to explore. So there's some simple ways you can make your website stand out. You can provide clear message so you can clarify your message. Make sure your message is very simple, it's direct and explains exactly what you offer and how it benefits your audience. For example, instead of saying innovative solutions for modern problems that's pretty big right, I mean, think about what does that actually mean? Let's say something closer to we help small businesses increase their sales with custom marketing strategies. Very clear, right? Such a stark difference between those two statements. Also, we want to have a clear, single goal for each page and I talk about this a lot in our course too is we want to have generally one call to action and one clear goal for each page on your website. It's very overwhelming if there are too many options for a user when they're looking at your website, and if you're on there on a page that has way too many options, they're going to be confused and not know where to go. So we want to focus on one primary goal per page to avoid this overwhelm of your visitors.

Speaker 1: 3:53

And then reason number two is a poor user experience. This can be another very common pitfall for websites and again, it's something else we go over in our converting website course too in detail, and we talk about some of these subjects on the podcast quite a bit. And there's a reason for that. Number one, we need to make sure we optimize our website for speed. We can use free tools like Google Page Insights, and we'll link to that as well as our other podcast episodes on optimizing your speed, but we want to make sure that our website is optimized and fast for both mobile and desktop. We want to make sure our images are the right size. We have some tips on that as well. We'll link to, and it's just really important because one Google penalizes you if you're too slow, and users aren't going to be patient enough to wait around too if it's very slow. And then another simple user experience that you can work on and optimize is simplifying your navigation. We want to create a clean, intuitive menu structure that makes it easy for visitors to find what they're looking for, so we want to avoid overwhelming them with too many options, like I alluded to a little bit earlier in the podcast. And then we also want to ensure mobile responsiveness. We want to make sure it works on all mobile devices, because most people browse mobile first anymore. So this is super important to make sure that we are doing this, and we can have some tips and actually, in our course, quite a bit on how to test for mobile response. In this, you can actually use your website browser. In Firefox and Chrome, there's this option that you can pick to emulate a mobile device, and you can pick different brands like iPhone and Android and test it out that way, and that's a decent way to test it, but it's also great to just ask some friends, find somebody who has a different style phone as you and test your website on it. I bet you guys will both have some fun doing that.

Speaker 1: 5:55

And then number three lack of trust and credibility. This is again something we talk about a lot on the podcast because it's so important. If visitors don't trust your website, they're not going to buy from you when you walk into a retail store if you still do that, because I know most of us shop online anymore right, but when you did, or if you still do you start to gain a sense of trust just from interacting with the staff and the owners because you can talk to them. If you can hear crunching noises, that is one of the cats in the office deciding to chew on some cardboard right now. Anyway, let's keep going.

Speaker 1: 6:37

Okay, so trust, and we were in a retail store, so if you're in a retail store, you can get a good sense of who the people are that are serving you there. It's a little bit more of an easier way to get an intuitive trust factor going. So on a website, we need to recreate that, and we need to recreate that in several ways, and we can do that a few. The first way is testimonials and reviews, you can showcase real feedback from your clients and your customers and people who know you and showcase their point of view as to why they love working with you or buying your products or however it's appropriate to what you sell. Something a little bit less common anymore is using trust badges, but this could be very important if you're a coach and you do have some certifications. So some trust badges or certifications when it's appropriate for your business style is a good idea.

Speaker 1: 7:38

And then we also want to make our website accessible, so we want to include clear, easy to find contact details I talk about this a lot such as your email address, phone number or even a live chat option. This reassures people that when they're on your website, if they have trouble, they can reach you if needed. I know I've given an example on the podcast before, where I was looking for a template for our podcasting website show notes and I really wanted this one podcast style template and I contacted them where no, I couldn't find contact information. Now I'm trying to remember. I couldn't find contact information, but I really wanted this template, I really liked it and I actually kind of regretted getting it because after I purchased it it was really hard to contact them and I needed. I had a question for them and it was really hard to find contact information. So making sure that's very easy to find is a great way to build trust on a website.

Speaker 1: 8:43

And then reason number four is an ineffective call to actions, and I'm going to refer back to our previous podcast episode, episode number 80. We will link to it in the show notes because we go even more detail in call to actions there. But we want to make sure that our call to actions are effective and really stand out. So how we can do that is we want to be specific. So we want to avoid vague language such as learn more or click here. Those are some examples I know I've given before. So instead we want to use action-oriented language that highlights the benefit For example, get your free consultation or start saving today. So those give you some clear actions on what they're going to be doing if they click on it.

Speaker 1: 9:29

And we want to make sure it visually stands out as well. We want to use bold buttons. It does want to match your brand, you know we want to make sure it does, but we need to make sure it's contrasting colors and stands out and is easy to find. So we want to make sure it doesn't blend in with the rest of your colors on your website. So pick one of your brand colors that kind of stands out and use that as your call to action color for that and your brand colors for everything else, and then we want to also place them in various places throughout our website. We definitely want one above the fold, and then if you have a long sales page or a long page, we want to have one at the end of the page at minimum, and sometimes in the middle too, depends on how long it is. So you want to make sure it's easy for them to do that call to action when they're ready as they're going down your page.

Speaker 1: 10:19

All right, and so the final reason that we're going to talk about today is lack of ongoing optimization. This is something that I say on the podcast is pretty important. We need to be regularly going through our website. It's not a set it and forget it, just like a retail store. If you had one, you don't just leave things as they are on the shelves, right, people pick through them and you know things can get messy. It's similar on a website, even though people aren't literally pulling things off your website, it does need updated and refreshed because things change in the background, so things change as far as, like, what Google is expecting, what users are expecting. So we need to make sure we stay up to date, and we can do that by making sure we're refreshing our content, analyzing it, making sure it's still working, and also test and adjust when needed.

Speaker 1: 11:16

All right, so let's go over a brief summary of what we talked about in today's podcast episode.

Speaker 1: 11:22

So, first off, we want to make sure that we are clarifying our messaging.

Speaker 1: 11:27

This is how we can prevent a website that is not converting. Well, make sure we're clear and not clever on our messaging and focus on one goal for each page. And then we also want to next, optimize for speed, mobile responsiveness and seamless navigation. This helps the user experience. And then we want to build trust with testimonials, security badges if appropriate, and make sure contact information is accessible. And then, fourth, we want to create a strong, visually compelling call to actions that guide visitors to take the next action that you want them to take.

Speaker 1: 12:03

And then the last one is continually monitoring, refreshing and improving your website to stay competitive. This is something I stress and I know it's really easy to have this fall to the wayside because we're busy. We're busy entrepreneurs, but it really is the lifeblood of our business and we'll reap benefits in the long term. Thanks for joining us for this week's episode of the e-commerce made easy podcast. We hope it was very helpful and if you have any questions at all, you can drop us an email at podcast, at bcsengineeringcom, and, as always, you can find our show notes and your podcast app, or you can go to our website at e-commerce made easy podcastcom. Again, that is e-commerce made easy podcastcom, and we will see you next week.