You’ve got traffic.
People are landing on your site. Maybe hundreds a month. Maybe thousands. But they’re not buying. They’re not booking calls. They’re not filling out your contact form.
Your analytics show visitors, but your bank account tells a different story.
This isn’t uncommon. Research from Invesp shows the average website conversion rate across industries sits around 2.35%. That means 97 out of 100 visitors leave without taking action. For every 1,000 people who visit your site, only 23 might actually convert.
That’s money walking out the door.
The good news? Most conversion problems are fixable. They’re not mysterious. They’re not about luck. They’re about specific, identifiable issues that you can address once you know what to look for.
Your Value Proposition Is Invisible
Here’s a test. Go to your homepage right now. Can you explain what you do in five seconds?
If the answer is no, that’s your first problem.
Visitors don’t read websites. They scan them. You have about 3 to 5 seconds to communicate what you offer and why it matters. If your headline is vague or your messaging is buried under corporate speak, people bounce.
Look at your homepage with fresh eyes. Better yet, show it to someone who’s never seen it before. Ask them what you do. If they can’t tell you immediately, you need clearer messaging.
Many businesses make the mistake of talking about themselves instead of addressing what the customer needs. Your homepage shouldn’t be about how great you are. It should be about how you solve their problem.
Agencies that specialise in conversion work, like Creative Tweed, typically start by clarifying this message before anything else gets designed or written.
Your Site Is Too Slow
Page speed matters more than most business owners realise.
According to Google’s research, 53% of mobile users abandon sites that take longer than three seconds to load. Three seconds. That’s barely enough time to blink twice.
Every extra second your page takes to load increases bounce rate. If your site takes five or six seconds to load, you’re losing half your potential customers before they even see your offer.
Test your site speed using Google PageSpeed Insights or GTmetrix. Both are free. If you’re scoring below 70 on mobile, you’ve got work to do.
Common culprits include oversized images, too many plugins, poor hosting, and unoptimised code. Sometimes it’s as simple as compressing your images or switching to a better hosting provider.
Speed isn’t a nice-to-have. It’s a requirement.
You’re Asking for Too Much Too Soon
Think about how you behave online.
When you land on a website for the first time, are you ready to hand over your credit card? Probably not. You’re still figuring out if you trust this company. You’re comparing options. You’re reading reviews.
Yet many websites ask visitors to take massive leaps of faith right from the start. Big forms. Immediate purchase requests. No intermediate steps.
People need time to warm up. They need to build trust. Your website should offer multiple conversion paths for different stages of the buyer journey.
For someone just discovering you, offer something small. A helpful blog post. A free checklist. A quick calculator or tool. Let them engage without committing.
For someone who’s researched you and is more interested, offer a consultation or demo.
For someone ready to buy, make the purchase process as frictionless as possible.
Not everyone who lands on your site is at the same stage. Your conversion strategy should reflect that.
Your Design Is Working Against You
Bad design kills conversions.
I’m not talking about whether your site looks pretty. I’m talking about whether it’s easy to use. Whether buttons are obvious. Whether the navigation makes sense. Whether there’s too much clutter competing for attention.
Here are the usual suspects:
Too many calls to action on one page. When everything is a priority, nothing is. Pick one primary action per page and make it obvious.
Tiny text that’s hard to read. If your body copy is below 16px, you’re making life harder for your visitors. Readability matters.
Colour contrast issues. Light grey text on a white background might look elegant, but it’s difficult to read. Use tools like WebAIM’s contrast checker to ensure your text is legible.
Mobile unfriendliness. Over half of web traffic now comes from mobile devices. If your site doesn’t work well on a phone, you’re alienating a huge chunk of your audience.
Hidden contact information. If people want to reach you and can’t find your phone number or email within seconds, they’ll leave.
Design should serve function. Every element on your page should have a purpose. If it doesn’t help the visitor take the next step, remove it.
You’re Not Building Trust
Nobody buys from a business they don’t trust.
If your website looks outdated, has spelling errors, or lacks social proof, you’re sabotaging yourself. First impressions are formed in 0.05 seconds, according to research published in Behaviour & Information Technology. That’s faster than conscious thought.
Trust signals include:
Real customer testimonials with names and photos. Generic praise from “John S.” doesn’t cut it anymore. Full names, companies, and faces make testimonials believable.
Case studies showing actual results. Numbers matter. “We helped Company X increase leads by 127% in six months” is far more compelling than “We helped Company X grow their business.”
Security badges and certifications. If you handle payments or personal data, show that you take security seriously.
Professional photography. Stock photos of people in suits shaking hands fool nobody. Use real images of your team, your office, your products.
Clear policies. Privacy policy. Returns policy. Terms and conditions. Having these shows you’re a legitimate business.
Awards and media mentions. If you’ve been featured in publications or won industry awards, display them prominently.
Trust isn’t built through claims. It’s built through evidence.
Your Forms Are Too Complicated
Every field you add to a form reduces conversion rate.
People are lazy. They don’t want to fill out long forms. They especially don’t want to answer questions that seem irrelevant to what they’re trying to do.
Look at your contact form. How many fields does it have? Name, email, phone, company, job title, industry, budget, project details, how did you hear about us?
That’s eight fields. Each one is another reason for someone to abandon the form.
Do you really need all that information right now? Can’t you collect some of it later, after they’ve engaged with you?
Test reducing your form to just three fields: name, email, and message. You’ll likely see an immediate increase in submissions.
The same applies to checkout processes. Amazon’s one-click ordering exists because they know fewer steps mean more sales. Every additional page in your checkout is another opportunity for someone to change their mind.
Make it easy. Remove friction. Ask for the minimum information necessary.
You Have No Clear Call to Action
What do you want visitors to do?
If the answer isn’t immediately obvious on every page of your site, you’ve got a problem.
Your call to action should be impossible to miss. It should use clear, action-oriented language. And it should appear multiple times throughout longer pages.
Weak calls to action sound like this: “Learn More.” “Click Here.” “Submit.”
Strong calls to action sound like this: “Get Your Free Quote.” “Start Your 14-Day Trial.” “Download the Guide.”
The difference is specificity. Tell people exactly what happens when they click that button.
Also consider the psychological weight of your call to action. “Buy Now” feels heavy and final. “Start Free Trial” feels low-risk and reversible. Match your language to the level of commitment you’re asking for.
And make your buttons look like buttons. Don’t hide them. Don’t make them the same colour as your background. Don’t use text links when a button would be clearer.
You’re guiding people towards a decision. Make the path obvious.
You’re Not Testing Anything
How do you know what works if you never test it?
Most businesses launch a website and leave it unchanged for years. They never experiment with headlines. They never try different button colours. They never test whether a video performs better than an image.
This is leaving money on the table.
Small changes can have big impacts. Changing a headline might boost conversions by 20%. Moving a testimonial higher on the page might add another 15%. Testing button copy might add another 10%.
These improvements compound.
You don’t need fancy tools to start testing. Begin with simple A/B tests. Change one element at a time and track what happens. Did more people click? Did more people buy?
Keep what works. Discard what doesn’t. Repeat.
The businesses that convert best aren’t the ones who got everything right the first time. They’re the ones who continuously improve based on real data.
Your Site Isn’t Actually About Your Customer
This is the biggest mistake of all.
Most business websites talk endlessly about the company. “We’ve been in business since 1987.” “We’re committed to excellence.” “We offer quality products.”
Nobody cares.
Your customers care about themselves. Their problems. Their goals. Their challenges.
Your website needs to speak to those things first. Before you talk about your awards or your team size or your mission statement, address the question every visitor is silently asking: “What’s in it for me?”
Structure your content around customer benefits, not company features. Instead of “We use cutting-edge technology,” say “Get results in half the time.” Instead of “We have 20 years of experience,” say “We’ve solved this exact problem for 500 companies like yours.”
Shift the focus. Make it about them.
What to Do Next
Converting website visitors isn’t magic. It’s methodical.
Start with one issue from this list. Fix it. Measure the impact. Then move to the next one.
Maybe you begin with speed. Or clarity of message. Or simplifying your forms.
Don’t try to fix everything at once. That’s overwhelming and makes it impossible to know what’s actually working.
Pick the biggest problem. Solve it. Track the results. Move forward.
Your website should be your hardest-working sales tool. If it’s not converting visitors into customers, it’s not working hard enough.
The good news is that you now know where to start looking.
