Why your website isn’t converting, and what UX can do about it
Problem: You’re getting traffic, but you’re not getting results.
If you’re a marketer, this scenario might feel painfully familiar.
- You’re posting regularly and getting reasonable engagement with your organic.
- You’re investing in ads, in SEO and PPC.
- Website traffic is steady, or maybe even growing.
- But you’re either not seeing conversions, or they’re flatlining.
The question is no longer “how do I get people to my website“, it’s “why aren’t they doing what I want when they get there?”
We see this all the time, and the truth is this – you don’t need to be driving more traffic or ramping up any of the efforts you’re doing listed above. What you need is a better, more optimised journey once your ICPs are getting to your site. You’re already doing the hard work of getting people onto the site, getting them in front of your ‘conversion door’ – but if it’s hard for them to actually get through that door, then they’ll walk away.
That’s where UX comes in.
So what is UX – and why should marketers care?
In case you don’t already know, UX stands for user experience – and it’s all about how easily your audience can navigate your site, find what they need, and take meaningful action – and how you align that meaningful action with something that you want as an outcome. UX is often conflated with a ‘pretty design’, but it’s so much more than that – and if you’ve got a website that looks beautiful but isn’t converting, then you have very likely fallen into this trap.
Good UX supports your marketing objectives – it makes your website successful, keeps your ‘conversion machine’ oiled and, so long as you continue pushing traffic to it, the leads will continue rolling in.
On the other hand, bad UX will quietly undermine your marketing objectives – you’ll get visitors to your website, but you’ll see them bounce off, your conversions will be low or dropping – and overall you’ll be leaving money on the table as a result. Sometimes, a significant amount of money.
In fact, according to Forrester, a well-designed user interface could raise your website’s conversion rate by up to 200%, and a better overall UX could boost conversions by 400%.
Common UX issues that kill conversions
Let’s look at some of the common issues that we typically see on websites that are ‘conversion killers’ – and what we can do about them. And remember, if you need help with any of these, or aren’t sure if they apply, then you can always reach out and we’ll get you sorted with a free UX audit which gives you a report highlighting the pain points, along with a plan showing how to resolve them.
1. Poor Information Hierarchy
Information Hierarchy is how you lay out information on your site – the strategic importance that you place on certain information, and why. This includes prioritising certain elements, grouping related information, and creating clear pathways for users to achieve their objective (and by extension, for you to achieve yours). If your website has poor information hierarchy, visitors don’t know where to go, what to click, or what matters. Naturally this means they’ll either go off on tangents from the core user journey for that customer profile, or end up bouncing off the site altogether.
How do we fix it?
Start by thinking deeply about user intent. To do this, you’ll need to have a good understanding of your ideal customer profile – what they want to achieve and why they want to achieve it. You should map out those existing journeys through your site and then structure the content around their goals. Heading, subheading, and adding visual weight to important elements will all help to create a cohesive visual hierarchy that mirrors the priority of your messaging. We also recommend reading Wisepod’s article on understanding your customers better to help drive your understanding that underpins fixing the information hierarchy.
2. Confusing CTAs
Are your calls to action (CTAs) clear, contextual, and compelling? If you’ve got “Learn more” or “More information” on your CTAs, then this is likely an issue for you. Having more clear and compelling CTAs will naturally invite users to click and engage. Furthermore, avoiding vague CTAs like “Learn more” naturally leads to better accessibility support on your site, which then leads to stronger SEO rankings (and that’s on top of being ethically better, and allowing more potential customers to meaningfully interact with your site!).
How do we fix it?
Adjust all of your website’s CTAs to be specific and value-driven. Tell your users exactly what they’ll get and match the CTA to the intent of the page – especially underpinned by your customer profiles and information hierarchy from point #1 on this list. For example, ‘Request a Quote’ is a great CTA for a pricing page, but if you’ve got an ideal customer profile you’re driving to your pricing pages that have a specific problem, tie your CTA to the outcome – for instance, ‘. Furthermore, be precise and purposeful with your placement of CTAs – so place them early and often, at key decision-making points (top of page, mid-scroll, end of article).
3. Slow load speeds and poor performance
Even the most beautifully designed website with the best conversion pathways is going to fall flat if it loads like it’s on dial-up. According to Pingdom, bounce rate soars when pages take longer than 3 seconds to load. To find out if this is a problem for you, you should run Google’s PageSpeed Insights tool against your website – it’ll quickly highlight what’s wrong and where for you – and if you’ve got enough visitors, it will give you a snapshot of the average across them all.
How do we fix it?
There’s a lot of tactics you can use here – and typically the best approach is to get under the hood of the site to identify why page load times are high in the first place. However, an easy win is to start using a CDN (Content Delivery Network) with caching, if you aren’t already – Cloudflare is a great option for this. Combining this with additional optimisations such as image compression, lazy loading, and reducing bloat on the site will all go a long way towards reducing your page load times. While these tactics do deliver quick wins, it’s still very important to look at the root cause of your load speed problems though, and that’s where you need to get technical input – be it from your internal IT team, an existing digital partner, or by asking us to consult.
4. Poor mobile optimisation
Mobile-first is a term that seems overused but is so much more than just a ‘buzzword’. It means prioritising mobile devices when designing before considering the larger screens like desktops. This is important for two reasons. First, it is typically easier (in our experience at least!) for mobile designs to perform well from a UX perspective on desktop designs, as opposed to the other way around. Second, the majority of web users are now on a mobile device – so prioritising a mobile-first design also means prioritising a segment which represents the majority of your customers. In fact, according to Exploding Topics, over 60% of website traffic comes from mobile devices, so there’s a very strong case for adopting mobile-first as your strategy.
You can identify if poor mobile optimisation is impacting you by looking through your GA4 – and reporting on traffic from mobile devices to identify if there’s a higher bounce rate, or lower conversion rate, than expected. This will give you the bigger picture of mobile traffic as a wider snapshot. You could also visit your site on your own mobile device – try to get through the conversion journey – and note how the experience makes you personally feel, and any frustrations that surface. Do be aware though that just looking at the site on your own device may not surface anything that’s impacting on a wider scale.
How do we fix it?
In the short-term as a ‘quick fix’, you should audit the site experience on a range of mobile devices to surface any areas of concern. For the long-term view, if you aren’t already adopting a mobile-first mindset, then you should. Ensure that those responsible for your site are designing, developing, and testing everything with a mobile-first approach. Even better, there should be automated tests and checks in place to ensure the website experience remains consistently good on a range of devices, especially including mobile devices. We adopt all of this in our approach to website design & development, as a baseline for our clients, so it’s worth checking to make sure that’s what you’re getting now too – and if not, you can always reach out and ask us for more information.
5. Lack of Trust Signals
If you don’t have social proof – like testimonials, case studies, certifications – then visitors will question your credibility. Trust is a solid conversion multiplier, so putting these signals in place will persuade visitors that you are reputable, solid, worth doing business with – and that will lead to more conversions. Bonus points here if you’re able to use social proof that’s external to your control – for example, embedded Trustpilot reviews with links through to the Trustpilot site directly – as internal-only trust signals leave a hint of cynicism and doubt (“are these testimonials actually real?” or “the reviews are on their site, so they control them, are the reviews fake?“).
How do we fix it?
Consider what is appropriate for the content – and for the customer profile you’re targeting – but generally you should be displaying logos of clients or partners you’ve worked with, and showcasing case studies that highlight both good feedback and measurable, tangible results. The feedback should reinforce the measurable results, too – nobody will buy from you based on a testimonial that says you were “really great to work with” and no/weak reference to what you achieved for them. If you’ve got trust badges that you can display, these should go in key, strategic places on a conversion-focused page, as well as across the site in a global element like the footer. For example, any ISO certifications, secure checkout symbol, and so on – all things that reinforce you as a reputable provider that’s worth doing business with because you’ve made the investment in quality, and in doing things the right way.
Final Thoughts
In spite of misconceptions, UX is not an aesthetic decision, or even a design decision. It is a strategic investment, a business decision, which will yield tangible results.
Remember, “a better overall UX could boost conversions by 400%”
If your website isn’t currently converting, and you are getting traffic, don’t throw more money at ads or ramp up on organic efforts. Instead, focus on UX. Fix your journeys – and then fuel the growth, scaling up your website’s new role as a conversion machine.
Know that UX is holding you back, or just not sure?
We’ll get you sorted with a free UX audit which gives you a report highlighting the pain points, along with a plan showing how to resolve them.
Pop your details, including the website address, in the form below and we’ll be in touch with your report.