Website Content Mistakes that affects CONVERSION

Mistake 1: You write for your peers and not for your customers.

Forget about industry jargon and proving to your competitors that you are knowledgeable. Write for your customer. What do they want to know?

Mistake 2: Your website content is not easy to scan.

Most website visitors do not read web content word for word. That means you need to write short paragraphs, include bullet lists, use bold and italics to emphasize key phrases, incorporate plenty of subheadings, and add images to make your web pages easy to scan.

Mistake 3: Grammar, Spelling and Punctuation

Maybe you saw this one coming: but when you’re actually creating your web content, what seems to be the easiest-to-avoid error can be your downfall.  Many websites have web content with 20 or 30 run-on sentences.  Make sure you don’t just write the web content; you need to proofread it as well to avoid this #1 common mistake.

Mistake 4: Writing for search engines

Writing for the search engines and stuffing keywords. While “barking dog instant stop” might be an excellent keyword phrase according to searches, there is a reason why there are not very many exact matches. When this phrase is in your title and 7 more times in the article, it makes for a pretty awful reading experience for your viewers. You are writing for search engines and stuffing keywords which can get you in trouble with Google.

Mistake 5: Too many ads

There is nothing wrong with trying to monetize your site, but please don’t stuff it with ads to the point where it looks like one giant classified. No one wants to read around a dozen ads when visiting your site to find one piece of information. It looks incredibly spammy, pushes your own branding below the fold and has a negative impact on the overall user-experience. Your content and messaging is much more important!

Mistake 6: No call-to-actions

Is no one filling out your contact form or signing up for your company newsletter? Have you tried asking them? Too often site owners worry about creating the perfect lead form, hoping to find the magic word count that will inspire thousands to fill it out. If you aren’t incorporating call-to-actions in your content, how will your visitors know what you want them to do? Ask and ye shall receive!

Mistake 7: Pricing Info

Pricing info is again on the list of content mistakes that don’t have a consensus. Some businesses will not have pricing info, thinking that they don’t want to turn off any customers. Here are the top reasons why it makes sense to always include pricing:

·         The first question on people’s mind after they are sold on your product is how much will this cost me? Can I afford it? If they can’t find that info, they will look it up elsewhere, probably on a competitor website in which case your competitor has won.

·         Putting your costs and pricing out there weeds out the customers who cannot afford your services or products. It increases conversion rates, helps to save your time and theirs as well.

·         It creates an atmosphere of transparency and trust, both essential for marketing on the web.

Mistake 8: Not Incorporating Social Media into Your Content Marketing Mix

Research shows that customers prefer to interact with brands through social media channels and that while other forms of contact such as contact forms, emails, phones are still relevant, social media is quickly becoming the number one choice of customers especially for customer service and queries. It’s no surprise that having social media icons on your site greatly increases conversion rates.

Mistake 9: Opening with an Ad or Flash or Survey

Visitors to your site are likely seeking information. Splash animations and Flash ads stand between them and the information they want. Yes, you can include a skip button, but why risk annoying visitors as soon as they get to your site. You want to create a favorable impression, not turn them off. Also, Flash significantly slows down site and people have too many options to wait. Instead, grab attention with well-crafted copy.

Mistake 10: Too much clutter

We have all been conditioned to think that more is better and that the more choices available the better. But that is not true. It can be confusing for visitors to have too much content on a page and too many options. Break up information into short, digestible chunks. Use short, clear sentences, single thought paragraphs, and lots of bullet-point copy. You want to make your copy easy to scan.