Seven reasons your website looks fine and still does not convert

A site can be beautifully designed, technically sound and completely ineffective. When that happens, redesigning the visuals rarely fixes it — because the visuals were not the problem.

1. It describes the company instead of the visitor

Homepages that open with company history are answering a question nobody asked. Visitors arrive with a problem and thirty seconds of patience. Lead with their problem, not your founding year.

2. The next step is ambiguous

Five equally weighted calls to action is the same as none. Every page should have one obvious primary action, with everything else visibly secondary.

3. It never addresses the real objection

Your sales team hears the same three hesitations every week. If the site does not answer them, every visitor has to become an enquiry before they can be resolved — and most will not bother.

4. Proof is asserted, not shown

"Trusted by industry leaders" persuades nobody. Named clients, specific numbers and attributed quotes do. Vagueness in a proof section reads as an absence of proof.

5. The form asks for too much

Every additional field costs completions. Ask for what you need to make the next contact, and collect the rest in the conversation that follows.

6. Mobile was an afterthought

If most of your traffic is mobile and your layout was designed at desktop width then squeezed down, the experience your majority audience gets is the one nobody designed.

7. It is slow where it matters

A hero image that takes four seconds to render on a mid-range phone on a weak connection loses visitors before the design has a chance to work at all.

Check your analytics before your aesthetics. The exit pages will tell you more than any opinion in the room.

Where to start

1. Find the top three exit pages in analytics
2. Ask what the visitor was trying to do on each
3. Establish whether the page made that action possible
4. Fix that before commissioning anything visual