People all over the world love scary movies, thrilling horror stories and haunted houses. They generate thrills and make you want more.
But no one really wants to be the one being harassed by a poltergeist, a sewer clown or a chainsaw enthusiast. In everyday life, we just want to get what we need - and as quickly and easily as possible. This is especially true when it comes to using websites.
We want websites to perform tasks as effortlessly as even a murderous child's doll could.
If you have a low conversion rate, it could be a sign that your website is unintentionally scaring your customers away and driving them away - or at least driving them back to Google search results.
Today, we're going to explore the factors that affect conversion rates and highlight 15 dangerous website mistakes that are hurting your leads and sales.
What is a good conversion rate?
There is a general consensus that a conversion rate of 2 to 5 % is healthy for «most» business websites, which is regularly reiterated by agencies such as MailChimp, WordStream and BrightEdge. Any business that achieves a conversion rate of 6% or more is probably pretty happy, regardless of their goals.
But conversion rates have many nuances that make their success (or failure) unique to each of us. Here are eight key factors that can affect your website's conversion rate:
- Number of actions that are counted as conversions
- Type of actions that are counted as conversions
- Your industry
- Design and strategy of your user experience (UX)
- Your customer service
- Average order value of your offer
- Easy direct access via other websites or search engines
- Targeted traffic
What does a poor conversion rate mean?
If you generally assume that 2-5 % is healthy and 6 % or more is really good, then a conversion rate of less than 2 % is logically a cause for concern. For many companies, however, anything below 5% is not good enough.
A good or bad conversion rate depends on what your business needs to stay profitable and grow. You can set your conversion rate requirements by using your own financial metrics for average order value, revenue per visitor and other metrics.
Low conversion rate: What are your customers shying away from?
Are you ready to face the plagues of purgatory and other monstrous conversion killers that could be lurking in your content and web design? Let's get started...
1. dark and gloomy images!
There are few things in life that scare our team more than seeing a great web design ruined by crappy images.
Kitschy stock photos. Blown-up, coarse-grained images. Images that have been stretched in the wrong direction to fill a room as if they were lying on a medieval rack. These days, any smartphone can take pretty good photos, and there are tons of royalty-free stock websites with a wealth of imagery. There's simply no excuse for putting low-quality images on your website.
Look at this group of white people in forced poses pretending to be mesmerized by the screen. Bonus point for the misspelled capitalized «our» in the text. Do better.
The next website belongs to a web design company and is one of the worst I've ever seen. The text is way too long and full of errors, and then they use a stock photo to illustrate their individual design skills...! This is madness.
2. zombified lateral speeds!
We've all visited a website that didn't load immediately. What do we do then? Normally, we immediately return to the search results and click on the next page in the list.
Who knows what was on that first page? Maybe it was a great company with great products. But that doesn't matter. There are many other websites offering the exact same thing - and these companies are doing everything they can to make their websites work well so they can make sales. If even a few of your sites are performing like zombies, take the time to analyze and improve them!
The example below has a huge video in the banner and a lot of theme code and plugins that make the page take 16 seconds to load.
3. the abandoned hotel of contents!
Nothing says «we don't care about the details» like a company that sets up a blog and then abandons it, leaving only a bleak, empty shell on the side of the website. It's even worse if the last blog post on your homepage is more than six months old.
If you can't manage to publish even one new blog post per month, you should ask yourself why you have a corporate blog at all. If you can't maintain it properly, you should give it up (with appropriate redirection, of course).
4. Franconian grammar!
The odd typo is forgivable. We are all human. But a multitude of spelling mistakes, awkward sentences and SEO phrases tacked on to every part of the page will cast a long shadow of doubt on your company's credibility.
All of your customers have already used AI tools for content creation, from the standard spell check and grammar assistants in writing apps and our phones, to robots like ChatGPT trying to take over the world. The problem is that your customers know how easy it is to correct text, so mistakes on your website make you very suspect.
5. paranormal accessibility!
The owner of our agency, Shawn Johnston, once observed a blind user testing one of our websites using only a screen reader and tabbed navigation on the keyboard. This experience was shocking and changed the way we create and test websites.
If you haven't thought about website accessibility yet, you should do it now. Making your content accessible to people with physical, mental, cognitive and other disabilities and impairments will soon be a legal requirement.
Accessibility factors that negatively impact your conversion rate include unclear labels on CTA buttons, illegible text, tactile elements that are too close together, the inability to navigate with the keyboard, and the lack of alt text to describe images.
6. slimy sales texts!
Nobody likes to be bothered by pushy salespeople in stores. This is a major conversion killer in the B2B sector.
The days when websites were used like brochures and the term «above the fold» applied to web design have thankfully sunk to the bottom of the Black Lagoon. However, we still see companies trying to close a sale or attract a prospect on every element of the website.
If your website is targeting or demanding conversions way too early in the user journey instead of showing the benefits, it probably smells like desperation - and a little like swamp fertilizer.
7. nightmare navigation!
You know that dream where you can't complete a task and keep failing until you wake up in a panic? A poor user experience can trigger similar feelings of frustration, anger and fear in your customers.
If you have a low conversion rate, go back and look at the path to conversion. Is it cheerfully lit and lined with flowers or a winding path that leads to darkness and certain death?
Analyze potential navigation issues such as too many menus, too many options in each section, hidden menus or an unfamiliar structure, unclear menu and button labels, unclickable buttons and links, or content buried in places where your target audience can't find it.
How many clickable options are there on the screen below?
8th invasion of the personality eaters!
I like to tell our brand strategy clients that exploring their website should feel like a face-to-face conversation with their sales team. If the text, visual elements, or overall color psychology of your website make visitors feel like they're saying «no,» they definitely won't convert.
Watch out for copy that doesn't match your professional voice and tone, especially if it's promotional content like ads or social media posts that sound and feel completely different from the page visitors will land on.
And please, for goodness sake, make sure your brand personality matches your offering. Beware of the consequences of mistakes like trying to be too cool, too stiff, too light when your audience is likely to be excited or stressed, or too quiet.
9. mummified design!
Does your website look like a modern company or a shambling relic from another era? Your website represents your business and your offering 24 hours a day, 7 days a week to people who may or may not want to give you their money. It needs to be your best-dressed salesperson.
If you have broken images, ugly and intimidating walls of text, an outdated design, outdated branding or missing content because it's too difficult to update your website, you should consider a website redesign.
10. a shadowy apparition!
Who are you? No, seriously - if it's not immediately clear from the content of the first visible parts of a page who you are and what you do, visitors won't stick around long enough to find out.
This is a trap for overly minimalist web design, but we've seen it many times with all sorts of designs and structures. If you use too many buzzwords or jargon to describe what you do, if you use unusual words for labeling, or if you get too creative or clever with your copy, you're not only hurting your conversion rate, but also your search engine optimization.
11. stories from the grave of responsiveness!
We live in a material world and we are material people who expect websites to work perfectly on our phones. If your website doesn't have a responsive mobile design that looks good on devices of all shapes and sizes, it might as well retire to the vault.
Test your website on different cell phones and tablets to make sure it's easy to navigate - and that you achieve your goals.
Errors that affect conversions include pages that need to be scrolled sideways, clickable elements that are too close together or too small to be tapped, menus and dropdown filters that are difficult to use, or text that is too small to be read. Google Search Console warns you about all these things and much more.
12. crazy pop-ups!
When you're trying to use a website, there are few things more annoying than pop-ups. The more pop-ups and other intrusive ads appear, the more likely I am to leave the site.
You can use pop-ups as long as they do not significantly affect the user experience. Some examples of pop-ups that are not well done are: Pop-ups that are placed too early in the journey, pop-ups that place multiple pop-ups in one session, pop-ups that hide the ability to close the pop-up, pop-ups that use misleading wording that implies it is wrong NOT to log in, and pop-ups that block the entire page.
I will never stop shaming Neil Patel for his intrusive interstitials (don't worry, he's rich and doesn't care what I think). The screen below is the top of a blog post - you can't even see the first line of the article. There was a full-page pop-up window that I had to close several times when I switched from his homepage to this blogpost.
13. spooky cash register labyrinth!
A high checkout abandonment rate is really scary for business owners. If your checkout process resembles a maze (with or without an angry Minotaur or axe-wielding Jack Nicholson), you will suffer from a low conversion rate.
Many tools can help you analyze the key abandonment points in your checkout process to find out where you're going wrong. Other mistakes in the checkout process that lower conversion rates include an unclear path to checkout, hidden fees, the need for an account, too much information or fields to fill out, and too few payment options.
14 The trench of evidence!
More than ever, people want to buy from companies that have a good reputation and share their values - but they need to see for themselves. Whatever your product or service is, it will be much harder to get conversions if your website is a dark dungeon with no evidence.
The more convincing you are, the more likely you are to sell. This means you need to provide evidence of trust and credibility (overview page, case studies or projects, client or partner logos, author biographies, contact information, security badges) and social proof (reviews or testimonials, user-generated content, media mentions, influencer recommendations),
15. lights out!
I've saved the most obvious conversion killer for last, and I speak from experience because it happened to me recently with my own website. No one can convert if the website is down.
Many issues can cause downtime, such as server-side issues, hosting issues, DNS issues, cyber-attacks, code errors due to incompatible plugins or theme issues, too many customers flooding the site during a sale, and more.
If you don't check your website or analytics regularly, you run the risk of hearing from disgruntled customers that your website is down. You have no way of knowing how many leads or sales you have lost in the meantime.
This concludes our guide to conversion rate killers. I hope you found it spectacular.
The key takeaway is that you don't have to call the exorcist if your website has a low conversion rate. The problem can be easily fixed without having to redesign your entire website. It's best to identify the possible causes and start testing remedies. Give each solution time to achieve results.
If you need a redesign, we will be happy to help you.
