Stop Sending Traffic Away from Your Site!

Back in April, I talked about four different reasons that your web site may have a low rate of returning visitors. Today, I would like to discuss a similar subject. Let's look at five different ways you may be hurting your conversion rate by sending away your visitors:



Too Many Choices or Options: Although your web site should give your users some different options to choose from, you shouldn't present so many different choices that they start to feel overwhelmed. The best web sites find a way to present different options, but in reality they are actually guiding visitors to exactly where they want them to be (without the visitor actually realizing it). By creating a web site that limits distractions (see Mike's post on thinner web sites converting better) but still giving your visitors a sense of freedom, you will be able to minimize the amount of traffic that you accidentally send away.

Worrying Your Visitors: If you have a web site that is trying to sell something (whether it be a product or service), you need the people that come to your web site to be able to trust you. That being said, if your visitors aren't able to easily find contact information like contact names, phone numbers and a mailing address, chances are they are going to be hesitant to send any money your way and will probably end up giving their money to one of your competitors.

Creating Lengthy Forms: Collecting contact information such as email addresses is an essential part of internet marketing. However, forms on your web site should not look like a college application. People are normally hesitant to give out any type of personal information over the internet, so keep your form requests to a minimum if you want anyone to actually fill them out.

Content That Isn't Relevant: As I mentioned in my Yahoo Pipes post, adding a news feed to your web site can add valuable content for your visitors. However, it is important that you filter it (or any extra content you add to your web site) so that it is actually VERY RELEVANT to the rest of your web site. If you start adding all sorts of content that your visitors honestly don't care about, you're only going to confuse, frustrate and send them away from your web site.

Implementing Too Many Stumbling Blocks: Do you have a web site that requires users to add a product to the shopping cart before they can see the price? Are your shipping costs easy to find or do your users have to give out personal information before they see them? Can users easily navigate and search or do they have to click through page after page of links? The more stumbling blocks your web site has, the more opportunities your potential customers have to become lost sales. By focusing on creating a great user experience, you can eliminate some of the factors that send people to the next web site in their search engine results.