“Why aren’t customers coming back to my website?” 4 common problems to fix

So, you’ve finally brought your business online and created a website, but just not seeing the results you were looking for? From poor design to tricky navigation, there are a few key things you should investigate to make sure your website is working as it should – bringing you customers and not driving them away.

Perhaps you’ve invested time and money into developing a website to promote your small business but your visitors aren’t being converted into paying customers. Even worse, some of your potential customers are leaving without even exploring what you have to offer. What can you do?

Here are four of the most common problems that cause people to leave your website without making a purchase, and how to fix them.

1. Bad website design

First impressions count! If a potential customer finds their way to your landing page and they don’t like what they see, they’ll leave.

A bad website design can include:

• Unprofessional design: If the layout of your site looks extremely amateur or unfinished, visitors are going to have a hard time trusting you. This can include gaudy colours, mismatched branding and broken links or features.

• Difficult to read fonts or too much text: Ensure that headings and body text are big enough that they can be read easily. Sometimes people want to communicate everything at once and this can be intimidating to viewers. Remember, less is often more.

• Browser plugins: These can be annoying; they slow down the page load speed and often crash because of compatibility errors. Ditch old browser plugins for new technologies which are cross-platform, load faster, and more versatile.

• Autoplay video media: This can feel very intrusive and often seems spammy. Video content is great, but it can be a nicer experience to let users choose whether they want to play it or not. If your homepage is engaging, chances are your audience will want to play your video of their own accord.

• Too many ads: Ads can be malicious, inauthentic and often interrupt a viewer’s browsing, so people have learned not to click them. If you carry revenue generating advertising, keep it minimal and unobtrusive.

2. Confusing website navigation

It should always be easy for your visitors to find their way around your website. If it’s not, you need to rethink your layout immediately.

Some of the key navigation issues for websites are:

• Non-responsiveness on different devices: These days you need a website that automatically adapts to the viewer’s device, whether it’s a smartphone, tablet, laptop, or desktop computer. This is important so that your information is presented in the most accessible layout for your visitors.

• No call to action: Sometimes people have great websites that tick nearly all the boxes, but they have forgotten to entice the customer to reach out and take the next step. Is your call to action obvious?

• Broken page links: Due to the ever-changing nature of the internet, pages often get moved. The problem with this is that if you have content that points to a page that has been moved, the link will be broken and the user will be unable to find what they are looking for. This can also affect your search engine ranking. Make it part of your business practice to run a broken link checker frequently, and learn to use URL redirects to ensure older content can still be found.

3. No personal touch

If you don’t make it easy for users to contact you, most people will leave frustrated and give up. It is not enough to offer a single contact method these days either. Customers are diverse in age, language, disability and technological ability so you need to offer multiple methods they can use to reach you.

You need to ensure that you engage with all of these methods and offer timely responses, not just automated replies. Contact methods you can consider include online enquiry forms, email address, contact phone number, online live chat form and social media links.

And don’t forget to let your customers know who you are – people don’t do business with businesses; they do business with people! Use your website, marketing and social media platforms to connect with both existing and potential customers by showing the authentic face behind your business.

4. Information and content issues

Nothing annoys customers more than false claims. Be honest about your product. Don’t surprise your customers with hidden costs or hide information. If you charge for shipping, be upfront about this. Many have abandoned the shopping cart when they realise that there’s a $40 shipping charge they weren’t aware of.

It’s important to focus not only on product features but also the benefits for your customers. Help customers understand how this product will make their life better. Tell a story.

If this way of writing about your products doesn’t come naturally to you, it may pay to hire a copywriter to assist with this. They can also help insert short and long-tail keywords into your text to help your content rank higher in SEO (search engine optimisation).

This post was originally published in 2017 and has been updated for 2022.

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