It’s the age-old dilemma for small business owners: why do I have a low conversion rate despite a high amount of traffic?

A website typically converts 2% to 5% of its visits into leads or sales. If you’re not getting results in this range, it’s time to examine your website and see what’s going on. 

But don’t worry. There are a number of reasons why your website may have a low conversion rate, and many of them are pretty simple fixes.   

Let’s cover seven of the most common reasons below.

Why It’s Important to Increase Conversion Rate

Before we dig into the reasons why your conversion rate is low, let’s define what it is and why it’s important.

The conversion rate of a website is the percentage of visitors that take the desired action. This could range from subscribing to a newsletter to downloading an eBook to making a purchase.

Conversion rates matter because they reveal how well your website is at meeting its objectives. If your conversion rate is low, it means that the majority of visitors to your website leave without taking some kind of action.

Why Is Your Website’s Conversion Rate Low?

Some of the most common reasons include:

1. It’s Hard to Get Around Your Website 

Let’s say you are looking for small business phone solutions for your business. You search for “small business phone solutions” and select the first result. Once you’re on the site, it’s evident that finding what you’re looking for will be challenging.  The primary navigation menu is missing, the body text is small and hurts your eyes to read.  After a few minutes of some irritated clicking around, you give up and return to Google to try again.

This is a common issue that can be easily solved by making sure your website is user friendly and it’s easy to find what you’re looking for.

Here are some suggestions for making your website more user-friendly:

• Include a primary navigation menu
• Use text that is clear and easy for the eye to follow 
• Use visual cues to guide users
• Add a search bar

2. Your Website Isn’t Made for Mobile Devices

In today’s world, having a mobile-friendly website is more essential than ever. Statista estimates that there are approximately 7.26 billion active mobile users! And the numbers are only anticipated to grow.

So, if you want to stay competitive, your website must be optimized for mobile devices. If it isn’t, you’re going to lose a substantial portion of your prospective audience.

Make your website more mobile-friendly by doing the following:

• Upgrade to a mobile responsive design
• Use Google Fonts that are large and easy to read
• Use big buttons
• Integrate mobile navigation

Depending on your website’s age and platform, it could be as easy as installing a simple plugin or as complex as starting over using a more modern and updated design approach. 

3. Your Website Loading Times Are Too Long  

A slow-loading website is another reason for low conversions. Users expect websites to load virtually instantaneously in today ’s hyper-paced society. If it takes more than a few seconds for your site to load, you’re probably losing visitors – and potential customers.

If a website takes longer than three seconds to load, 40 percent of users will simply give up and go elsewhere. Yes, you read that correctly: 40 percent of your visitors could be gone in 3 seconds, and you may never see them again.

There are several ways to increase the speed of your website. This includes:

• Making use of a Content Delivery Network (CDN)
• Optimizing images
• Reducing HTTP requests
• Having less redirects
• Turning on browser caching

4. You Still Aren’t Using Popups

Pop-ups are one of the most successful ways to convert website traffic into leads and sales, with an 11.09% conversion rate.

The key to success using pop-ups is to make sure they are targeted and relevant to your audience. Assume you’re offering an automated phone system to small businesses. In that situation, your pop-up could offer a free consultation to assist businesses in determining the best phone solution for their needs. 

If you’re selling women’s clothing, your pop-up might give 25% off their first purchase.  Popups play a huge role in getting the right content in front of the right person at the right time.

5. You Aren’t Taking Advantage of Video

Images are great, but video can do even more for your website’s conversion rate. This is because videos are a very strong tool for capturing attention, conveying information, and building trust.

Assume you’re attempting to market your digital workplace platform to small enterprises. You could make a clip demonstrating how your platform improves company communication and collaboration. This is much more likely to be engaging and successful than a large block of text explaining the same thing.

Other ways you can use video include creating a compelling explainer video that talks people through your product or service or video testimonials from delighted customers to convert your visitors into leads.

6. You Don’t Have a Clear Call-to-Action

A call-to-action (CTA) is content that motivates website users to take a certain action. A CTA could be a button that says ‘Sign up for our newsletter’ or ‘Download our e-book,’ for example.

CTAs are an important part of every website since they guide visitors to the intended action.  Without clear CTAs, visitors may be unsure what to do next. 

When creating CTAs, be sure to:

• Keep them brief and sweet: anything more than five words is excessive.
• Use action terms such as ‘Download,’ ‘Sign up,’ or ‘Watch now’ to ensure visitors understand what you want them to do.
• Make your CTA buttons stand out from the rest of your content by using contrasting colors.
• Put them in a prominent spot: Don’t bury your CTAs at the bottom of the page or in a sidebar. They should be front and centered – in the spotlight.

7. You Are Not Testing and Optimizing 

Finally, one of the most significant things you can do to improve the conversion rate of your website is to test and optimize on a regular schedule. The only way to tell what does and doesn’t work is to constantly experiment with various approaches and evaluate the outcomes.

A/B testing is a terrific technique to track different aspects of your website to see which ones work best. A/B testing involves creating two versions of a page (Version A and Version B) and sending traffic to both to evaluate which performs better.

Summing Up… 

These are just a few of the many reasons why, despite getting loads of traffic, your website has a low conversion rate. But the good news is that in many cases, making even minor improvements here and there can make a huge impact on your conversion rate.

Keep in mind that not all of these modifications are quick or simple to apply. Some necessitate a great amount of time, effort, and expertise.  If you want a more “hands free” approach to boosting your conversions – connect with us today! 

Voice search is quickly becoming the norm.

Voice search might seem like it’s just getting started, but devices like Amazon Echo and Google Home are the most advanced voice assistants that people have ever used. Voice search isn’t just shaping up to be the next big thing.

It is the next big thing. 

Conversational AI is the driving force behind voice search, and it is constantly being refined. According to Google, its word recognition accuracy has increased from 80% to 95%. This level of growth is only possible if the use of voice assistants increases, and devices become easier to use and interact with.

Voice search will continue to be a platform for brand and consumer engagement for as long as smartphones, mobile devices, and social media platforms are mainstays of this digital world. In fact, 48% of consumers now use voice for “general web searches.” If you want your brand to remain relevant and visible to consumers, you must incorporate voice search into your marketing strategy.

Why Should You Include Voice Search in Your Marketing Strategy?

Today, voice has become the new touchpoint for consumers. Voice search is appealing to customers because it is faster and more convenient than typing a search phrase into a device. Voice search facilitates hands-free multitasking because the majority of customers use multiple devices at once.

On the other hand, since voice is a new technology, its impact is only going to grow. For marketers, this means that voice search will change the way you do search engine optimization (SEO), drive traffic to your digital profiles and website, show your products to consumers, and communicate with your customers.

SEO and Voice Search

Voice searches are becoming increasingly popular, and as a result, search engines like Google are shifting their attention to optimizing results for voice searches.

Because voice search and traditional search are not the same, the factors that influence your website’s ranking may differ.

Tips For Improving Your Voice Search Strategy

• Since voice searches are typically longer than text searches, you should include longer keyword phrases in your content. Customers may type “Bars in New York” when looking for a bar, but when speaking aloud, they may say “What are some of the best bars in New York?”
• Similarly, voice searches are typically phrased as full questions rather than short phrases or keywords. As a result, include relevant question keyword phrases.
• When people use voice searches, they only see the top result, which is different from text searches. This means that, while a consumer can choose to move on to the next option via a voice assistant like Siri, the likelihood of your brand being chosen is slim to none if you are not actively pursuing position zero. You should concentrate on optimizing your featured snippets.
• Create a FAQ section that answers frequently or frequently asked questions by customers.
• Use structured data markup with rich snippets, breadcrumbs, and site links.

Google’s Focus on Local SEO

Given the explosive growth of voice search, it has a significant impact on how local businesses are discovered. The majority of people who use voice search today do so to find local content or information.

“Approximately 22% of all voice searches are for local information” -From Search Engine Land

If you own a local business, you should capitalize on this opportunity by incorporating a local voice search optimization strategy into your marketing strategy. 

By incorporating local business schema into your website, you increase your chances of being discovered via voice search. It allows search engines to easily crawl your website for information about your company. This, in turn, increases your website traffic and sales.

Insider Tip: Use a schema generator tool to quickly create a local business schema, upload it to your website, and optimize for local SEO.

Voice Search Gives Priority to Micro-Moments

Google has been urging marketers to consider micro-moments. The definition of micro-moments is “intention-driven, decision-making, and preference-forming moments that occur throughout the whole customer experience.” If a consumer asks, “What is the best bar in New York?” you can’t give 100 different answers. 

As consumers increasingly use their mobile devices or voice search to find answers, you have an opportunity to be there and deliver that information. By being available to the consumer, you can give your business a competitive advantage.

As a brand, you must improve your voice strategy for micro-moments because:

• The majority of consumers are not loyal to a brand. They are unsure of the brand they want to buy from when they look for information online.
• Smartphone users are more likely to purchase from a business other than the one they intended to purchase from because the brand was able to provide information when they needed it.
• Being present and visible in mobile searches can increase brand awareness by 46%. Furthermore, 51% of smartphone users discovered a new product through a smartphone search.

What’s Next? 

Voice search is expected to have a significant impact on how consumers search for information on the internet. As a result, it is essential for businesses to actively optimize for voice search as part of their marketing strategy in order to rank better, be present for the customer, and increase their visibility on Google. 

If you’re in charge of SEO or social media for your business, I hope you’re aware that Google now indexes your social media posts. Google monitors the biggest social media platforms, from Twitter and Facebook to TikTok and Instagram. 

Google indexes social media posts to keep people on its platform and give users information that is useful to them.  Now, you can index your social media posts in order to rank higher in Google searches and generate more sales and revenue.

But what does indexing mean? How can you use it to get more views, traffic, and engagement? We’ve cracked the code. Keep reading to find out how to use Google’s post indexing to get the most out of your social posts.

What Exactly Is Google Doing When It Indexes Something?

What is Google crawling? Google will pull results from social media sites like Facebook and Twitter based on what you search for and then show you anything it thinks is relevant to your search, from Facebook pages to tweets themselves.

As Google continues to add social media to its search results, social media will have a huge effect on rankings and visibility.

Google is making changes to how its platform is used and wants its users to see results from Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, Pinterest, and other platforms instead of just websites. By indexing social media posts, Google’s goal is to remain the best search engine for all generations, even those who use social media for most of their searches.

Indexing social media posts simply means that Google crawls your social media sites (much like your website) for keywords, themes, and content. When people search for something, like “Best BBQ in Los Angeles,” their search results will include Yelp reviews that mention best BBQ in Los Angeles, Instagram posts from restaurants that rank for the key phrase “BBQ Restaurant” and a Twitter thread about LA’s best places for BBQ.   

Even though things don’t look exactly like that right now, we think that’s where Google is headed as it starts to index posts from TikTok and Instagram.

It Drives Traffic To Your Business

What does Google’s algorithm have to do with you?

It’s easy to act like the changes in Google and social media algorithms don’t affect your views, engagement, and bottom line.

Ignoring one or two algorithm updates isn’t going hurt your business too much. Google is also a business, after all. If there were too many changes at once, people would stop using the search platform. And, with increased competition, Google can’t afford to annoy its users. But Google is slowly but surely making changes to how its algorithms work.  

By integrating social media with Google’s platform, it makes it easier for people to find what they need on Google instead of going “off reservation” to other websites. Google is always improving and coming up with new ways to give its users the best experience possible. In a time when TikTok is trying to be as useful of a search engine as Google, it’s time to start integrating social media.

Businesses that don’t take social media seriously will eventually drop in rankings or risk losing their online visibility altogether.  So, the takeaway for today’s article is that investing in social media is the smart move if you want to keep those coveted rankings on Google.  Start indexing your social media posts to ensure you continue to dominate local search!

How To Get Google To Index Social Media Posts

So, how can you make sure that Google reads your social media posts? The answer is simple: use the same SEO techniques on your site that you already use.

If you already have a plan for local SEO, use the same methods on your social media accounts. Here’s what it looks like to have good SEO hygiene on social media:

Use Hashtags And Keywords That Are Important To Your Business

Relevant keywords and hashtags will depend on where your business is and what it does. There are a lot of tools, including the social media platforms themselves, that can help you find relevant hashtags.

You should focus on keywords and hashtags that describe your business and help Google figure out where it is. A vegan bakery in New York City might use the hashtags #nyceats, #nycvegan, and #veganeats, for example.

Use keywords related to your business to find social media posts on Google. Writing captions and posts with lots of keywords will help you rank higher on both Google and the social platform. You can also add keywords and key phrases to the bottom of your post on sites like Instagram. So, you won’t sound like your content was written by an AI.

Make A Bio With Important Details

Fill out your page’s “about” page with correct, up-to-date information. Be detailed and informative, because the about section shows how you rank for certain keywords.

Link To Your Own Website

As always, having the same information about your business all over the internet helps Google classify it correctly. Even if you don’t want to, you should link to your website in your social media bios. So, customers can easily find their way to your website and come to your store more often. Just make sure your website is responsive and works well on phones.

How Social Media And Your Google Business Profile (Formerly Google My Business) Can Change The Customer Journey 

Sixty-seven percent of searches don’t need a second click. That means that all a customer sees of your business are snippets of posts, tweets, Google and social media profiles, and your website or listing pages before deciding whether or not to buy from you. Every good piece of content counts, especially when a consumer is just skimming the first page of search results.

Customers are more likely to buy from you if they search for your business and see that you are active on your Google Business Profile and other social media sites. In fact, 53% of consumers say they prefer to buy from brands that are active on social media.

A stronger web presence inspires client confidence and reassures them that their satisfaction is your top priority.

What’s The Takeaway? 

In the end, having your social media content indexed by Google will improve your ranking, make your customers happier, and bring in more revenue.

Customers love active, visible companies. And as Google changes its algorithm to include more social media in search results, it will be important to make sure your social media posts are SEO-friendly.

So, you’ve got your website up and running, the design is sweet, your page speed is breaking the Google speedometer, and social media plugins are enabled. You’re all set to start creating content, but there’s a problem…   

If you’re suffering from writer’s block and not sure what to write about – stop stressing, because we’re sharing five fresh content ideas that your audience is guaranteed to engage with.  

The Mistakes We Make

“The one mistake I made that nearly cost me my business.”

No, that did not happen to me. But, if it did and I wrote about it, wouldn’t you be interested? Everyone makes mistakes, especially in business; mistakes happen often, but you learn something new with every mistake you make.

So, write about your screw ups!   It’s a great opportunity to demonstrate how you’ve evolved and kept up with the times… and how you’re even better than the competition, because they are still making the same mistakes that you’ve been able to avoid. 

What Is Going on Around You Locally?

Is there a fair coming to your town? How about a trade show? Is Journey performing the following week? Is your town likely to produce the next Voice winner? You don’t even have to limit yourself to local issues or debates; feel free to comment on national or global issues, debates, and happenings.

People frequently become stuck on blog ideas that are solely focused on their industry or, more specifically, their business; this is not how things work in the world of content generation and promotion. Find a way to connect your business to what’s happening around you by blogging about it. I’m not saying it’s simple, but it’s not that difficult either. All you need is a bit of awareness of what is going on around you.

Make Use of Instagram

The number of businesses that do not use Instagram is shocking. Insta (yeah, that’s what the cool kids call it) has a huge following, because it’s simple to use and easy to create and curate content for. All you need is a compelling image, a couple of relevant hashtags, and a line or two, and you’re done! In less than five minutes, you have content ready to publish.

Give it a shot; you’ll be happy with your results. Put an Instagram-spin on your company—anything goes here: How Jake rocked his new sport coat, what lunchtime looks like at the office, Kaitlyn’s heavenly lava cake bites, the most recent award your business received, the pizza guy who saved the late night meeting. Once you get started, you’ll find Instagram to be a compelling and easy-to-use content generation tool as well as a social media platform. It will also contribute significantly to humanizing your brand.

Secrets and Confessions

Everyone enjoys a good confession now and then. It’s perplexing and captures the reader’s attention.  I’m not saying you need to write a “tell all” that  reveals every trade secret. You can often write humorous pieces disguised as confessional or secretive posts, but sharing a few little juicy tidbits is always the most appealing.

How many times have you seen a headline that said something like “The #1 secret to shedding weight in 4 weeks now revealed!”  Of course, you have caught on by now, but you’ve been duped before because those headlines work. So, you must back it up with good content that adds real value for your audience.

Pro Tip: I just revealed the most important blogging secret of all time: “Write Epic Headlines.” Yes, it’s that simple; it’s your headline that will entice the reader, and it will be visible across social media and wherever else your link is shared.

Lists

Here’s why I like lists, also known as Listicles, for content purposes:

1. Lists appeal to a wide range of people.
2. They are one of the most popular types of content; obtaining a large number of views and shares is relatively simple.
3. The formatting is standardized and straightforward.
4. Lists are easy to skim. People can skim your list quickly and read it more thoroughly if they like what they see.
5. Opinions create engagement. People always debate things like how point number two should not be on the list or how another point has been missed altogether. Etc.

So, there you go. Five fresh content ideas that we believe your audience will appreciate. If you use these suggestions, please let us know how it goes!