Nine Reasons Your Website Isn’t Driving Sales

One of the biggest mistakes that companies make is to set up a website and simply leave it floating on Google. You need to realize with the changes that have happened recently with Google search algorithms, you need to make your website an extension of your sales staff, create content that educates visitors and helps convert them into leads. Serving is the new form of selling.

You website needs to work hard for you and just like a good sales rep, if should help to generate and nurture leads by educating prospective clients.

Traditionally websites usually were all about your company and what it could do or offer clients. The language was technical and there was little or no information about how to solve problems that your would be clients were experiencing by using your products or services to resolve the issue they are experiencing.

If your website is not helping your business generate and nurture leads, it could be because of some of the reasons we have listed below:

Reason 1:

You haven’t defined goals you want your website to achieve

One of the main goals of any website is to attract people and invite them to get more involved with your business, whether or not you sell directly to them online. Think about the questions we will pose to you now and answer them truthfully.

• Ideally you would like site visitors to stay on your site and explore all your services and products?
• Have you sat down and identified the primary goal of your site?
• Or secondary goals?
• What action do you want site visitors to take when they land on your site?

Reason 2:

Your website content hasn’t changed in years

If your site isn’t continually evolving and updating, it becomes a static brochure for your business. If you don’t have regularly updated content, such as a blog, you aren’t creating new pages for Google to index. Remember, the more content you create, the more traffic and leads your business will get.

Reason 3:

You aren’t creating momentum

You can change this by creating a path for your customers to get more involved with you. To move them along, include relevant calls to action or “triggers” on each page of your site, not just on your homepage. That means on every blog post or any other piece of content you produce. It may sound obvious, but many companies simply don’t embrace the opportunity to create a easy to navigate experience for the web surfer and ultimately loose out of sales.

Reason 4:

You don’t have customer interaction

 Incorporating a blog or other social content into your online presence gives your customers a sense of who you are. Use these tools to speak to your customers directly, honestly and in your own (human) voice. This is an enormous opportunity both to educate them on how you can help and why they should rely on you–and to hear what they have to say to each other in the forum you’ve created. Regularly updated content that has a sense of personality and purpose builds trust with your would-be customers, and that’s a beautiful place to begin a relationship.

Reason 5:

You can’t update your site without the tech guy

Can you update at least some elements without calling IT? This is where blogs and other social platforms come in handy, because you can update them yourself. Why is that important? Because you need to update at least some parts of your site frequently and easily, both to save budget and to create a more immediate flow of content–for potential customers and for search engines.

Reason 6:

You sound like everyone else

Most companies spend more time worrying about site design than about the words on the page. But the most memorable sites convey personality and perspective in their homepage content, which immediately sets them apart.

Reason 7:

You didn’t optimize 

Can search engines find your site? Does your regularly refreshed, updated, readable content contain search terms that relate to your proficiency? How well are they attracting customers to you? One easy way to boost your search rankings is to continually link descriptive keywords back to related pages on your own site. Doing so helps search engines understand what your site is about.

Reason 8:

You aren’t measuring anything

• Do you know how your website is converting browsers into buyers?
• Have you identified what paths they typically take?
• Do you know which pages perform best for you?
• Or what content visitors are interacting with the most?
• Are you using analytics tools to measure the traffic to your site, to track online conversions and to measure ROI on your marketing campaigns? Free tools like Google Analytics are a great place to start.

So how about your website performing? Is it generating leads by serving potential customers, or is it just sitting around and waiting?