E16: 4 Website Mistakes Killing Your Small Business (And How to Fix Them!)
Many local business owners struggle with websites that aren't driving the conversions they need.
In this episode, I share the top mistakes I see local business owners make and offer solutions to help fix them. We cover everything from improving your calls to action and lead generators to optimizing your website copy and its placement.
By making these tweaks, you'll start capturing more leads and turning website visitors into paying customers.
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P.S. When you are ready, here are a few ways I can help…
Get Your FREE Marketing Domination Checklist: https://www.seangarner.co/
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Schedule A Call to Build, Fill and Optimize Your Sales Funnel For More Leads: https://www.seangarner.co/
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Sean Garner is a marketing consultant and Certified StoryBrand guide dedicated to helping small business owners grow and dominate their industries. He created the Marketing Domination podcast to teach people how to combine storytelling with strategic marketing to help businesses connect with customers and stand out online.
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EPISODE 16 TRANSCRIPTION
Introduction
[00:00:00] Sean Garner: You have a website, but it's not converting well. In this episode, I'm going to show you the common mistakes that I find local business owners make when it comes to their website and what you need to do to fix it, coming up on the Marketing Domination Podcast. Each week, I have the opportunity not only to speak with and connect with my clients at our agency, Sean Garner Consulting but also dozens of other small business owners in the community, just events that I'm a part of. Unfortunately, they're often blinded by what's going on with their marketing and websites.
[00:00:34] Sean Garner: So what I want to do is share with you some of the common mistakes that I see after talking with everyone that you are probably making on your website and what you can do to tweak it and fix it so that you start to see success and results on your website. The very first and most common mistake that I see on a small business owner's website is they don't have a clear call to action.
The Importance of Clear Calls to Action
[00:00:59] Sean Garner: What that means is when somebody comes to your website, what is the main thing that you actually want them to do when they're there? I assume it's not "Learn more" or "Discover how we help." You want them to do something. You want them to become a customer or become a lead. So we do that by having two different things: a direct call to action or a transitional call to action.
[00:01:24] Sean Garner: Both of those are designed to either make you money or get a lead, which is what your website should be doing in the first place. For our direct calls to action, we don’t want to be vague, cute, or clever. We want to be exactly what the name says: direct. We want to tell our customers what to do. I cannot tell you how many times I look at a website, and their main call to action is "Contact us."
[00:01:48] Sean Garner: Well, in a customer's mind, they are always looking for a clear solution to the problem that they're dealing with. Will they contact you? Well, what does that mean? Are they filling out a form? How long do they have to wait before somebody gets back to them? They want the problem solved now, or they want to get that process started.
[00:02:05] Sean Garner: So what do they need to do? The biggest thing that you could do on your calls to action is say exactly what that first step of the process is. So is it to schedule a call, book your appointment, book your assessment, buy now, start the course, or download your free trial? What is the main thing we want our customers to do?
[00:02:25] Sean Garner: And that should be the direct call to action or the main button that you have all over your website. Do not put a "Contact Us" button all over your website for what you want customers to do. If you do want them to contact you, let's at least make it more direct and specific for what actually needs to happen when they contact you.
[00:02:45] Sean Garner: If it is "Contact you," put the phone number, call now, call or text now to speak with us, to book your assessment, to book your appointment, whatever, book your service—whatever the thing is. Do not have a contact form that people are filling out because you are losing sales by doing that.
[00:03:03] Sean Garner: The second call to action that we talked about was that transitional call to action. So not everybody that comes to your website is going to be ready to book that service, buy now, and start doing business with you. But they have come to your website. We don't want that lead to leave us. So what we want to do is we want to create what's called a transitional call to action. That's going to be also known as a lead generator.
Creating a Strong Lead Generator
[00:03:24] Sean Garner: So we want to have something that is less of an ask than giving us your money or doing business with us. That is less of an ask so we can capture that information so then we can follow up with those people. Lots of lead generators that we can do.
[00:03:43] Sean Garner: You can do anything from like checklists and free guides, assessments, quizzes, webinars, mini trainings, and free videos. Do not have your transitional call to action or think that you have one because it is "Subscribe to our newsletter." Nobody wants your newsletter. Not even your mom wants your newsletter. So we want something of value that is worth the exchange of their email address.
[00:04:05] Sean Garner: This can be really, really simple. And like I said, think of the common mistakes people make. Checklists are a really easy thing to do, but just having that on your website is going to start getting you to collect more leads. The thing that I see people make a mistake on is thinking that their lead generator is their newsletter pop-up. That's not going to work, take that off. It's just killing conversions. We want something of value that people are excited for. So then they can get plugged into your nurture newsletters, but that's not the thing we want people to sign up for.
[00:04:47] Sean Garner: Another thing that I do see that works pretty well, especially with e-commerce or people that maybe don't have anything like that, discount options are good for like first customers, like 10 percent off your first service or 10 percent off for your first order. Things like that, that can work. If you're like, "I want to do something today," you could do something like that. But then just me personally, I'm not a huge fan of giving discounts. Um, but that's just a side note.
Optimizing Call-to-Action Placement
[00:05:01] Sean Garner: So that's the first thing—you don't have a clear call to action and you don't have that transitional call to action. The other thing is that call-to-action location. Where do you actually have that on your website? The most valuable real estate on your website is the top right-hand section of your website. So when you're on desktop, you go on there, it's typically the logo that's going to be in the top left. That top right should be a big button that is a direct call to action. We don't want that top right-hand corner. Most websites for business owners, it's the "Contact Us." We don't want it to be that. We want it to be that direct call to action. That is very valuable real estate. We don't want to waste it with something that is not going to make us money. So that top right-hand section of your website should be that direct call to action—the main thing we want them to do, which is buy now, schedule your assessment, book your appointment, download our app, start your free trial, whatever that main thing is.
[00:06:00] Sean Garner: Put that in the top right-hand section of your website. The next thing, big common mistake that I see is very unclear language on the top of the website. So think about your headers—that everything, whenever you first load the page, that first screen that you see, that's called "above the fold." It's like an old-school newspaper terminology. Back in the day, whenever, you know, a newspaper was folded over and it was in the newspaper stand, everything that they saw that was above the fold was very valuable, hook stuff that got them to hopefully buy the newspaper.
[00:06:32] Sean Garner: The same thing applies for the website. So anything before they have to scroll is very, very important. Most business owners don't realize how unclear their copy—the words that they're using on their website—actually is. So this is a test that I always have people do. You can do two things.
[00:06:53] Sean Garner: One, this is the common thing that you'll hear people tell and say, and I'll tell you a new way to kind of leverage technology to do this. So one, just take the words of your website and show it, or take a screenshot of your website and show it to somebody that doesn't know what you do and ask them these three questions: What do I do? What do you think that you need to do to buy from me? And then how am I going to make your life better? If they can't quickly answer those questions, guess what? You are losing customers. People are bouncing off your website and leaving.
[00:07:26] Sean Garner: Here's the new digital version for this. Take the copy that is on the above the fold or the header of your website, and then run it into ChatGPT. Don’t plug your URL or anything, but just take the words and see if AI can even figure it out. Say based upon these words that are on my website, answer these three questions and see if AI can figure it out. Guess what? Most small business owners would fail because AI can't even figure out what you're trying to do. You've got way too much language. It's very vague. And the problem is, is it could be a lot of different things. There's too much insider language, is what it's called. You're using technical terms that you know, that are industry-specific to you. And it's not very clear about how you're solving that problem.
[00:08:05] Sean Garner: So we want to make sure that those three questions are answered on that header section. What do you do? You should very clearly have the service that you provide at the top of your website. Two, how do you make my life better? A customer should be reminded and know that if they hire you for this service, how is their life going to be better after working with you and getting this problem solved?
[00:08:32] Sean Garner: The third thing is what do I need to do to get it? That is that direct call to action. That should 100 percent be in that header section of the website in the top right-hand corner. And then also in the center of the page. Those three things right there—if they're not on the top part of your website—promise you, that you are losing money. You could make those tweaks right now and instantly start getting more sales on your website.
[00:08:50] Sean Garner: The other thing that I would say, and this is kind of the last—there are lots of things on the website—but the last thing that I would say for this episode is a kind of another hack to do is print off your website. And if it's too much to print it off, you can just take all of the copy that's on your website and put it into like a Google Doc or something like that.
Balancing Copy: You vs. The Customer
[00:09:10] Sean Garner: And this is what I want you to do. I want you to look at your homepage copy and look at how often you talk about you versus how often you're talking about, or to, your customers. Too often, small business owners, especially local business owners, have their website copy all about them. "This is how awesome I am. This is what we've done. These are the services that we provide," instead of positioning it to the customer and talking to them and about them. "Hey, are you struggling with this?", “Are you dealing with this man? Isn't it frustrating just to have done it?” And you list out some of the frustrations that your customer has. When you use that more conversational tone and you invite your customers into a story by talking about the problems they are dealing with, then position your products or service as a solution to those problems.
[00:10:06] Sean Garner: You instantly become more attractive as a brand and start inviting those customers who want to do business with you. So what you can do is take all of that copy, like I said, add it into a doc, and get a highlighter—get two different colors. Highlight green, that green money-making green, if it's all about your customers and talking about them. And then use red if it's talking about you and how great you are.
[00:10:23] Sean Garner: Most local business owners, they have this huge about section. They want to write a novel about how the company was founded, the heart and intention I had when I went to go start it, and it was founded by my great grandfather. Nobody cares about that stuff. Your customers are looking for solutions to their problems. We need to make our copy and the words that we use on our website all about them so we can connect and resonate with them. So then they hire us as the perfect guide to solve those problems.
Ready To Boost Conversions?
[00:10:58] Sean Garner: So if this seems like a lot and it's overwhelming, please—it doesn't have to be, and we don't want it to be. At our agency, Sean Garner Consulting, this is exactly what we do for local business owners every day. We build, fill, and optimize sales funnels so you can grow your business and dominate your industry. If you would love to have a conversation with us, we would love to talk to you and see how we can help you be the industry leader for where you're at in your market.
[00:11:15] Sean Garner: Click the link down here below, go to www.seangarner.co, schedule a call, and let's see how we can help your business grow. Hope this episode added tons of value.
[00:11:29] Sean Garner: We got tons of free stuff over on the website as well. You can get our marketing domination checklist, where it's going to show you all the things you must have in your marketing if you want to dominate and stand out online. We also have a free marketing assessment. You can go on our website again, SeanGarner.co, and take that free marketing assessment. It takes about five to 10 minutes and it actually gives you a customized PDF report of the next steps that you need to do in your marketing in order to start making some of these changes and taking action on this.
[00:11:44] Sean Garner: So thanks so much for watching, guys. See you on the next one.
