If you’re not currently getting any business through your website, there could be any number of reasons why. Before you go spending money on a possible solution you may have read about on a blog, on social media, or that someone has told you about, let’s look at the most common reasons why.
Reasons your website may not be producing any leads, enquiries or sales include:
1. Your contact form isn’t working
This is one of the most common reasons why a website doesn’t produce any leads, and it’s also one of the most avoidable. At Engage Web, when we look after a client’s digital marketing, we test the contact forms are working each month. We do this as there are so many reasons a form could stop working, and we need to be sure the money the client is spending on their marketing is actually leading to business.
Whenever we take on a new client, it’s one of the first things we check. Does the form work? Does it go to the right place? Have the goals been set up in Google Analytics so we can track where the leads are coming from?
If your website isn’t producing any leads for your business, check the contact form. If you have more than one form, check them all. Check them every month. If the enquiry doesn’t get through to you, something is wrong. Do this before spending any money on PPC, Facebook Ads, email marketing or any other form of advertising.
2. Your email isn’t getting through
Similarly, just because your form works, it doesn’t necessarily mean your email is getting through to the right place. IT issues could be preventing certain email accounts from emailing you, even via your website. Check the email addresses listed on your website and ensure any emails sent to them actually reach you. Check from different email addresses. It’s worth using a free email account, such as a Hotmail or Gmail, to make sure emails from those accounts also get through to you.
3. Your website has been blocked from search engines
Another common issues is when a website has been completely blocked from search engines. This usually happens when a web designer puts a website live and forgets to remove the code, usually found in a robots.txt file, that stops search engines indexing the website.
Why would they even have this code in the first place? Web designers often add this code while the website is being designed as they don’t want a partially built website to be indexed. That’s fair enough. However, when the website goes live, they sometimes forget to remove it. How can you tell? Go to Google.com and enter, in the search bar, the following:
site:[yourdomain.com]
Obviously, replace ‘[yourdomain.com]’ with your website address. If you were doing this for Engage Web’s site, you would write:
site:engageweb.co.uk
If the result in Google states the page cannot be indexed, then you know something is wrong. If, however, the results show every page on your website listed one after the other, you know it’s OK.
4. Your website text is duplicate
Duplicate text is a common issue online. Often, when business owners sit down to write their website text, they draw a blank. For ‘inspiration’ they will look at their competitors and use their text as a starting point.
Some people will change the odd word and think it’s OK. Some people will change nothing. If you do this, your text will duplicate with the website from which it was taken.
If you’re thinking your website is fine, as you’ve not done that, it’s still worth you checking. While you may not have done it, your competitors may have done it to your website!
Use the website Copyscape.com to check your text. Paste the link to your homepage into the search box and check it against other pages on the Internet. Copyscape.com is free for a certain number of searches each day, and it will tell you if your text is copied elsewhere, in whole or in part. Try this with a few of your pages. If you find your text is duplicate, it will need rewriting so that it is unique and passes a Copyscape.com check. Websites with duplicate text will not rank well within Google.
5. Your website doesn’t actually say what you do
This may sound obvious, but does your website actually explain what you do? I don’t mean does it talk about your business, I mean does it speak to your potential customer or client, in language they understand, about how your business can help them?
Most websites don’t do this. The text on most websites is written by someone within the business, someone who understands the business inside and out. Your potential customers are not in that position – they have a problem, or a need, that you can solve. If your website doesn’t explain this in as short a timeframe as possible, you’re unlikely to get the enquiry.
A good idea is to have someone who doesn’t know what you do, such as a friend or relative, read your website while you watch them WITHOUT PROMPTING THEM. Can they understand what you do? Do they know how you could help them? Do they know how to enquire?
If they don’t, your website needs simplifying.
6. Your competitors’ websites are better
If you were looking for your services, or the services of a business like yours, would you be happy to find your website in Google? Is your website the best out of all of your competitors, or are your competitors’ websites better? Do they have better information? Are they easier to use? If your website isn’t everything it can be, then it probably needs to be improved and it’s no wonder your competitors are receiving more leads than you are.
There are many other reasons your website may not be getting the business it should, but these six of the most typical. If you’ve check all six, and you still need help with your website, then please give us a call on 0345 621 4321 and we’d be happy to offer some advice. Alternatively, you can send us an email using the form below and one of our team will get straight back to you.
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