Common Website Mistakes That Kill Conversions

Common Website Mistakes That Kill Conversions

Your website could be reliable, eye-catching, and seemingly polished. But if it contains any of a number of seemingly benign errors, you could be letting countless potential customers and clients slip through your fingers. These mistakes will kill your conversions. They include ineffectual ad copy, unnecessary features, and off-putting security.

Ineffectual Ad Copy

At the birth of modern advertising, most advertisements merely informed the audience of the product’s existence. At best, they would explain the product’s benefits in a verbose or generic manner. Your ad copy needs to do more. Consumers have long been resistant to these ancient tactics; a visitor won’t turn into a customer unless they are inspired to. Bland, overly long, or unexciting ad copy is a conversion killer. Ad copy should grab the audience on an emotional level and quickly spur them toward a specific action. Of course, ad copy should not sound bossy or overtly manipulative. Certain products or services demand more subtlety than others. However, strengthening your ad copy with more appealing calls to action can turn this conversion killer into a conversion winner.

Unnecessary Features

The more options a website offers, the better, right? Not always. Studies show that when potential customers are given too many options to consciously compare, they feel overwhelmed and are less likely to buy anything. Having too many options, and presenting those options poorly, is a conversion killer. Only give users the options they need when they need them. Don’t drag them away from a shopping cart checkout page with distracting advertisements. Don’t give them a butt
on to reset a modestly sized registration form. Don’t make them jump through hoops to get what you both want. Decrease the customer’s cognitive load and give them the options that matter in an intuitive format. The conversion rate will show it.

Off-Putting Security

What if your grocery store cart vanished whenever you took more than two steps away from it? Don’t put your website customers through a similarly frustrating ordeal with unnecessarily expiring sessions. In many cases there is never any need to forcibly log users out. Where money or highly personal information is involved, it may make sense to log users out after a period of time. In these cases, however, the website should save all form information the user has entered so far for their next visit. If users see your website pour their efforts down the drain, they will become irritated and mistrustful. Nothing could kill a conversion faster.

27 thoughts on “Common Website Mistakes That Kill Conversions

  1. True Carrie, more features which we feel is good may look confusing to our potential customers. Presenting our customers too many options can draw them away instead, so we have to be thorough on this feature.

  2. I dont agree completely with Carrie, since it really depends what type of site you are running. If you are running your own webshop you will be right, but if you make money on a CPM or CPS basis I wouldnt agree with you.

  3. All these points are true. mostly people add useless features for their readers or customers just to attract them but i makes your design more complicated. so its better to add those features which are for your use and your customers use only.

  4. I’ve found i’m always most eager to buy when there are just 3 options (eg. begginner plan / normal plan / advanced plan).

    Easy to compare and understand.

  5. As a shopper, I am overwhelmed when may products are presented in a single webpage especially when they are almost similar to each other. Each webpage should only present at least one product and its features so that buyers like me will not be overwhelmed or confused on what to buy.

  6. Like and appreciate your work, really that was very interesting and informative post, thanks for sharing the above post.

  7. I disagree with the security aspect.

    In today’s day and age, there is no such thing as “too much security”

    If I saw a website flushes my private information away, into a void, never to be seen again…assuming that information was, I dunno, CREDIT CARD INFORMATION…I would be happy, knowing that nobody else can get that. information.

    Considering the fact that if there was a malicious cyber attack on a website, the security certificates would change. When the certificate changes, the end user is informed by most decent web browsers, like Firefox.

    With super-uptight security that never saves information, and makes “a shopping cart vanish”, this could make the difference between identity theft, and walking away unscathed.

  8. It’s continuously cool to arrive along a site like yours that has this kind of topics to scan about. Totally enjoyed and can undoubtedly be returning often.

  9. I like this senetence” the fact that if there was a malicious cyber attack on a website, the security certificates would change;”

    Thanks for sharing!!

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