Why Your Website Isn't Converting Customers

Take advice from experts to create a clear plan on launching or improving your website.
 
10 experts in the fields of web design, SEO, copywriting, marketing and usability give reasons why some websites succeed while others fail.

1. Solve problems

“Most websites are written around how great you are and not what problem you solve," says Chris Brogan, New York Times best-selling author.

2. Focus on results, not features

“Instead, tell your potential customers the benefits that your product or service will do for them," says Jacob Cass, who runs the popular design blog JUST Creative.

3. Focus on your customers, not yourself

“Instead of focusing on what you do or what you sell or why you’re awesome, instead focus on why your customers should care. How do you help them? How do you shoulder their burdens? Ease their pain? Make their lives better/richer/smarter? That is your story.” Says Ann Handley, author of the Wall Street Journal best-seller "Everybody Writes: Your Go-To Guide to Creating Ridiculously Good Content".

4. Provide real value, right now

“Companies spend far too much time trying to make their site ‘pop’ and stand out -- and often forget that they still need to build a solid product or service offering in order to provide something of true value to the customer.” Says Pippin Williamson who established Sandhills Development.

5. Just focus

“When potential customers land on your site, you want to push them toward your most important objective, which is usually selling them something. So stop inviting them to subscribe to your newsletter, follow you on Twitter or read your blog. Those can all be secondary goals, but they should be eclipsed by your primary goal: turning site visitors into paying customers.” Says Preston Lee, founder of Millo.

6. Get mobile

“Your site doesn’t work on mobile. Everyone’s on mobile,” says Dann Petty, a web and app designer who started Freelance.TV.

7. Build your brand

“People are more likely to buy from you if the quality of what you sell is matched or surpassed by the quality of your brand identity,” says David Airey, author of "Logo Design Love: A Guide to Creating Iconic Brand Identities."

8. Attract the right crowd

“For example, if you sell surfboards and your traffic is mostly llama herders, no amount of conversion tactics will pay off.” says Paul Jarvis, who writes about the intersection of creativity and commerce for Fast Company, Newsweek, Forbes, LifeHacker, and BuzzFeed.

9. Improve the user experience

“One of the biggest challenges websites face today when trying to bring in and retain customers is the user experience on the site,” says Jacob Gube, who founded the all-about-web-development blog Six Revisions.

10. Make it usable first, then beautiful

“I've seen some beautiful sites that look unique and like a lot of time has been put into them, but I can't even figure out how to find the restaurant's menu or the contact us page.” Says Julie Joyce who owns Link Fish Media.

Customers buy products and services because they want to fill a need or solve a issue. So paint a picture of how the benefits of your product or service will help get them closer to solving there problem and make there life easier, from there you have to execute and deliver on what you promised your customer.