Introduction – Why Many Business Websites Suck!

Do you own a website but feel that it’s underperforming?

For some reason or another you know you’re not getting enough leads, customers or meeting your monthly targets.

You’re far from alone.

According to a survey by Hubspot (a popular online marketing company) 78% of businesses are unhappy with their conversion rates (your conversion rate is the percentage of site visitors that are converted into paying customers).

20 years ago, when I built my first website for a client, websites were considered something of a novelty and very few businesses depended on them for their success. But a lot has changed in the last 20 years.

In 2021, virtually everybody uses the internet to find the products and services they need, and most businesses rely almost 100% on their website or other online marketing strategies to find new customers.

Therefore, if you want to have a successful business without the continuous stress of worrying about where you’re going to find your next few customers then it’s vital to have an effective website and online marketing strategy.

But the truth is, a lot of websites are nowhere near as effective as they could be, and the primary reason for that may surprise you a little.

The shocking truth is that most web designers don’t understand what an effective website is either.

The problem is, many web designers are either graphic designers with a bit of tech knowledge, or they are tech experts with some design skills, but they are rarely marketing experts as well.

And you can’t build an effective website if you don’t have a solid understanding of effective online marketing strategies.

In fact, I believe there are many web designers out there who are partly, or even mostly, responsible for a lot of businesses either failing or not being as successful as they could be.

The fact is business owners usually put a lot of trust in web designers because they themselves don’t know much about the subject.

But here’s the thing, web design is a completely unregulated industry. Absolutely anybody can call themselves a web designer, and using modern easy-to-use tools like WordPress, virtually anybody can learn to create websites that at least look professional.

However, it requires a lot more skill and know-how to create an effective web site that has a high conversion rate. And it’s not rocket science, it’s not complicated. But a lot of web designers haven’t developed those skills.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying all web designers are bad. There are many skilled web designers out there who really know what they are doing, but often they (quite rightly) charge a lot of money.

And unfortunately, a lot of people starting out in business, quite understandably don’t have piles of cash, so they cut corners and do things as cheap as possible.

So they hire one of the cheapest web designers they can find, or they do it all themselves using Wix, and then 6 months later they’re left wondering why they’re not getting many new customers from it.

And if they’re not getting enough customers from using other promotional or marketing methods, then before long they’re out of business and wondering what the hell went wrong!

One of the things that likely went wrong is that their website didn’t do its job properly. For a variety of reasons, the website wasn’t converting enough visitors into customers for the business to be profitable.

There can be dozens of reasons why websites fail to convert visitors into customers but in the following pages, I’m going to outline what I consider to be the 9 main reasons why your website might be failing you and causing people to click away instead of call you.

So, without further ado, let’s get in to it!

The 9 Ways Your Website Is Losing You Customers (click the button below to access the next chapter).