110: Simple Ways to Help Your Website Convert More Visitors into Clients

In this episode, Jules White continues the back to basics theme, shifting the focus from visibility to what happens after someone actually lands on your website. If you’re getting traffic, but people aren’t booking, buying or enquiring, this episode unpacks why that’s a conversion problem rather than a traffic issue.

Jules explains how simple changes can encourage more of your existing visitors to take action without needing to spend more time or money on marketing. She breaks down the three foundations of conversion rate optimisation, how they tie in with SEO, & why clarity is the thread that runs through every high performing website.

Key Takeaways

Why conversions matter
Many business owners think they need more traffic, yet they already have visitors coming from social media, email, word of mouth, networking or PR. The real issue is what happens after people arrive.

Clarity and structure improve both SEO and conversions
Headings, subheadings, clean paragraphs, skimmable layouts  & removing distractions help both humans and search engines understand your content.

Make the action simple
Repeated clear calls to action, accessible button sizes, directional cues & streamlined forms all contribute to improved conversion rates.

Resources mentioned in this episode

• Learn step-by-step, how to set up Google Analytics & Search Console in this short course & get the essentials in place fast.
• Book a free Website Potential Discovery Call with Jules to uncover where your biggest opportunities lie.
• Download the Free Beginner’s QuickStart Guide to SEO
• Explore more tips and get weekly guidance through the Website Success Hub newsletter

Related Episodes:

🎧 Episode 109: Back to Basics: How to Get Your Website Showing Up on Google

Chapters

• 1:02 Understanding Conversion Problems
• 6:29 The Three Foundations: Clarity, Relevance, and Ease
• 6:29 Foundation 1: Clarity
• 9:19 Foundation 2: Relevance
• 9:39 Foundation 3: Ease
• 11:41 Page Structure and Navigation
• 16:58 Optimizing Forms and Contact Options
• 20:35 Creating Clear Calls to Action
• 22:39 Action Steps and Wrap Up

Transcript

AI-GENERATED TRANSCRIPT - MAY CONTAIN ERRORS

So hi. Welcome back to the Website Success Show, where I teach beauty, health and wellness business owners simple strategies to help you get more traffic.

and make more sales through your existing website.

It's Jules here and last week we, in episode 109, we took it back to basics about SEO and getting your website to actually show up in Google searches.

And today I'm talking about turning those website visitors into real bookings and sales.

This is one of the core problems I solve when I'm working with clients through my content and my programs.

We work on optimising your website so that people actually take the action that you want them to.

So let's dive in with today's episode and explore how we can make your website more effective.

Understanding Conversion Problems

If you're finding that your website's getting traffic, but people aren't actually taking the next step, then that's not a visibility problem, obviously not a traffic problem.

It's a conversion problem, and quite often these things go hand in hand.

So. It's rare for people to say that they haven't got an issue in one, in one or either of these areas.

Sometimes people come to me looking for help and they think they need help with their SEO, but we actually work out that they have got some traffic coming through to their website, so they might be getting traffic coming if they're quite active on social media.

If they've got a really good email list and they're sending people through to their website from their email list, if they've got, if they're doing a lot of word of mouth, so if they're doing a lot of networking, if they're doing guest talks, if they're doing a lot of pr, those kind of things can then drive traffic to your website.

But it's not as simple as just getting people there.

We also want to make sure that they are actually taking the action that we want them to when they come through our websites.

You can check and have a look and see if you, if you are getting traffic through to your website, 'cause quite often people.

Also don't know, this, they kind of just had, don't have an idea how much traffic they're getting through their website, whether it's actually working for them.

Then you can actually go into your Google Analytics and you can look at that.

It will tell you how many users you're getting on your website, how many visits you're getting to your website, and where those people have come from.

It can sometimes be a bit confusing.

Not, sometimes it's, I think it's generally always quite confusing.

Google Analytics, it's not the most user friendly platform when you first go into it.

I actually have on my website, I've got a short course on Google Analytics and also Google Search Console as well.

And it just talks you through setting up the basics and actually understanding like what bits to focus on, what bits you could ignore and how to actually make use of some of that data as well.

It's all good having all this data, but if you don't know where to look, especially I think with Google Search Console.

I think Google Search Console is one of the ones that's more overlooked by people.

People have often heard of Google Analytics, but they haven't heard of Google Search Console.

But in fact, that's the one that's more helpful, particularly if you're working on your SEO and trying to show up more and, and trying to make sure your website is in authority and what you do and what you sell and what you want to be known for.

Actually having Google Search Console set up and using that is better, and it's a lot easier to use than Google Analytics, anyway, that was a bit of a digression.

If you're wanting to actually understand where people are coming into your website from, so whether they've come from socials or whether they've come from somebody else's website or if they've come in through email, then that's what Google Analytics will tell you.

Either way, if you know you've got some traffic coming to your website, you know you're sending people to your website, but they're not actually taking the action that you want them to, then optimising for conversion is one of the fastest ways to get more leads coming into your business without actually having to spend more time and spend more money on sales and marketing.

It's, you can make small tweaks that can make a big difference.

And by working on this it means that everything else you do in your marketing becomes more effective as well.

The things that we need to do, I think for SEO as well as for conversion rate optimisation, the things that we need to do to get clear on that will help you wherever you are talking about your business, wherever you are, improving your messaging.

It can help you with your social media, it can help you with your emails, I think it all starts with clarity.

I'm gonna come onto that in a moment. But Google absolutely loves clear websites that are easy to use and AI tools love this clarity as well.

They love it even more, to be honest with you.

So working on this is good all round.

It's good for conversions, good for encouraging people to take the action you want them to.

When we're thinking about conversion rate optimisation, thinking about getting more conversions to our website, you can think of it as if you had a hundred people going to your website.

So you still get the same a hundred visitors, the same a hundred eyes on your website, but instead of maybe two people taking the action that you want them to.

If you can just do simple tweaks that then double that so you then end up with four people taking the action that you want them to, then that can make a massive difference in your business.

And especially for bigger brands, this can obviously make a real difference.

Just small tweaks to conversions can make a big difference where you start talking about testing different button colours or testing different versions of a page and those kind of things, but that's not what we're talking about here.

Really. We are talking about the foundations and the things that are often overlooked that can make a massive difference.

And there's small tweaks that you can make yourself as well.

All of this is encouraging really those existing visitors to your website to take that next step.

And actually that might be buying from you.

It might be booking an appointment, it might be booking a discovery call.

It might be just submitting an inquiry.

It might be asking for a quote.

It might be calling your business or just reading more of your content.

It's all just about getting people to take that next step towards actually buying from you, booking with you, becoming a customer or a repeat customer of your business really.

There are three foundations to focus on before you start doing anything fancy or start thinking about anything that's too technical or too complicated, start with the three things that are really important.

The Three Foundations: Clarity, Relevance, and Ease

So we've got clarity, we've got relevance, and we've got ease.

Foundation 1: Clarity 

So clarity is really helping people to instantly understand, and I talk about this a lot.

Ideally within three seconds when people land on our website or any page of our website.

So it doesn't have to just be your homepage, whatever page people are coming into, we want them to know what you do, who it's for, ideally, how you're gonna make their life better and what they need to do to get it.

It's really that simple to keeping people on our page.

Whenever somebody comes onto a webpage, the goal is to keep them there on that particular section, and they're on for long enough that they just keep scrolling to the next section and then the next section, and then the next section until they take that action that you want them to take.

And that's what this is all about.

So ideally, when people come into your, your website, that hero section at the top of the page, that's the most important real estate on your website.

That's the bit that hooks them in.

And I don't mean that in a social media hooky type of way.

It's literally just something that captures their attention for long enough for them to think.

Is this for me?

Is this not for me?

Is this gonna help me?

Is this, do I need to read more?

And that's all we're trying to do really, is keep them there long enough to make them want to read a little bit more of that page.

And then we come onto relevance.

So your pages need to match the intention of the person that's landing there.

And this all ties in with SEO as well.

It's really important that people come into our website and they don't just bounce straight back to Google again because otherwise that sends really strong signals to Google that our website wasn't the right search result for them.

If people have gotta go back to Google and ask again, then that's not showing that actually this content was relevant really.

So if we can align what is actually on that page, and especially what people immediately see when they come into that, that page, aligning that with what people are expecting, aligning that with what we're promising is on that page.

So whether it's people coming in through a Google search or even something like a Facebook ad, making sure that what they land on, from whatever you've said on that Facebook ad is the same thing.

I've definitely experienced this myself, especially Pinterest is a real one for this, where you'll click on something on Pinterest and it just takes you off to a different website, or obviously they've changed the link.

Maybe it used to be a blog post that talked about this particular thing, and then they've changed that link and now it goes to something else.

But it's annoying and you it does just make me bounce back.

To be honest with you, I'm never gonna hang around on a website that wasn't what I particularly clicked through to see in the first place.

So just making sure that that intent is there so that it is actually aligning with what people are expecting to see and with what, is gonna keep their attention on that page as well.

Foundation 2: Relevance

And then the third one is ease.

And I think this is one of the ones that's really important.

This is where we make it easy for people to act.

So we make it easy for people to take that next step and to do what we want them to do on this page.

This is how things like making sure we've got plenty of buttons, that our buttons are easy to find, and we've got.

Foundation 3: Ease

Plenty of them.

I think this is one of the things that is quite often on websites.

There's not a clear call to action.

There's not that clear thing of this is what I want you to do on this website, or this is what I want you to do, you know to, to get this thing.

So making sure that our buttons are big enough that the text on the button is big enough as well.

We want it to be really, really obvious.

This is where I need to click and look at it on both desktop and on mobile as well, because quite often your buttons need to be different on a desktop version to a mobile version of your website.

But either way, you always need to be big enough and sometimes on mobile we get a bit wrong 'cause we think, oh, the buttons need to be smaller.

And so then they're not clickable.

You can't actually touch them.

We need them to have space around them so people can click on it and not then end up clicking on the wrong part of your page.

That's a basic accessibility thing that Google does actually look at when it's ranking websites.

Sometimes people can end up with massive buttons where you've made a button big for desktop and then not looked at it on mobile, and then it's the responsive version of it is too big and the button almost takes up half of the the mobile page.

So it's getting that balance right between something that actually is.

Easily, and obviously shows where people need to click, but it still looks good.

It still flows naturally.

It doesn't look like that.

It's just taking up so much of that page on the mobile view.

On buttons as well.

The other thing you can do to help to increase conversion rates is using language that contains a verb.

So actually getting people to take action today, or, yes, I want to do this now, those kind of words can help.

And then using directional cues as well.

I recommend doing this on all your buttons.

Just using something like, so you've got what it says like, take, take action today, for example.

And then you have either two chevrons, little right buttons or a little arrow or a little emoji pointing in the direction that you want people to go.

Um, but that's just a basic kind of conversion tip that can, that can help, it can make a difference.

Page Structure and Navigation

And then page structure.

Coming back to the SEO point of making sure that our website pages are set up in a way that makes sense to both people and to robots as well.

The bots that are crawling through our website.

So coming back to that example, I always say give a bit English essay.

If you were back at school writing an English essay, making sure that you have one heading at the top, and then you've got subheadings within that, throughout your page, and then paragraphs that your content is broken up into paragraphs as well.

And this is where we are thinking more about the visual appearance of this.

So I think this is where it's good that it all ties in together.

'cause if you get into the habit of writing your webpage with that backend structure in place, so you are actually thinking about, okay, what needs to be bigger on this page?

what are actually headings that need to capture people's attention?

What are the words that maybe need to be in bold?

People should be able to skim read your web pages and understand what you do and understand whether they need to go back and read that section fully.

And I think quite often this is neglected or just is ignored, and people try and make web pages look fancy.

They'll use that styling to make the webpage look fancy without necessarily thinking about the end user and like what they need to see in bigger writing or in a different colour, or in bold, as I say, that will help them to navigate that page a little more easily, really.

And then thinking about reducing overwhelm as well, so making sure that your pages are nice to use, that it's not

a mess of noise.

And you know, especially we're kind of moving on from the days of having websites with loads of banner ads and all sorts of things.

I think that is something that will gradually fade away.

I think those kind of websites are maybe their days are a little bit numbered, to be honest with you.

We'll always have some adverts on websites, but I think those ones where you get all the popups and everything and all the adverts all over the page, I think are becoming less and less.

Relevant and less and less popular really, because a lot of the content on those pages can now be answered in AI search now.

So actually I don't think people will put up with those kind of sites that just bombard you with everything.

I think we are all so overwhelmed with all the content and all the noise out there that actually if you can have a simple website that's easy to navigate, that doesn't feel overwhelming, that doesn't make people immediately feel anxious when they come into your website, then that's always gonna be a bonus, really.

And then navigation, making that simple as well.

So making sure that your top navigation menu and also the navigation menu in your footer as well.

Making sure it's clear, making sure there's nothing in there that doesn't need to be in there.

I think I'm, I'm a real fan for streamlining your navigation, especially that top level as well.

So the things that you literally have across your navigation menu at the top of your website, in your hero section, your header, making sure that that is really easy for people to use.

And if you haven't ever thought about this, this can be one of the things that you can come back to.

It's certainly one of the things that I do with my clients is thinking about.

That site structure and how can we make this easier for people to actually come in and immediately get to where they need to go.

'cause quite often that's what we want to happen. It's usually people are coming into our website for a purpose.

They're coming in to achieve something and that can be finding out whether you are the right business for them.

We don't wanna make it hard for them to do that.

We don't want them to get annoyed and to get frustrated or just to think that you are not the right business for them.

Because your navigation menu is not clear enough.

So even that, sometimes taking a step back and maybe asking somebody else to navigate your website, maybe you could have somebody sitting in front of you so you are sitting looking over their shoulder and they're trying to navigate your website.

Ideally, somebody who doesn't know too much about your business, 'cause that way you are much more likely to get an honest view of how they navigate your website.

There are things like Hotjar that you can install on your site, which is a, it follows the clicks that people do and follows where people go on your pages.

I probably wouldn't suggest starting with something like that because they can sometimes slow your website down.

So it's probably better to start off just those basics of getting a real human to navigate your website and to try and find where they need to go.

Removing distractions.

Talked about this with the ads, but actually if you can keep that site simple, so if there are things that don't need to be on a page, if there are, you know, if it's a page where you are trying to make a sale or trying to get people to take a direct action, then don't have loads of distractions like, or read all my latest blogs or follow me on social media and have like a big banner with all your social stuff going on there.

Try and think about what is gonna detract people from this page?

What is going to end up making them go off somewhere else?

And remove those kind of distractions from your pages as well.

And then if you do get somebody to take that next action of actually making an inquiry or joining your email list or something, then making sure that the form they have to fill in is really simple.

Optimizing Forms and Contact Options

Tell them how many steps there are.

If it's a multi-step form or if it's something where it's a long form, don't have that all in one page.

'cause there's nothing more likely to get somebody to bounce off of a, a website, then a great big, long form where you feel like you've gotta fill in, in a whole essay.

If it's something that you need people to answer more questions.

It does need to be a longer form.

I would strongly suggest breaking that into different pages if you can.

You can do this with high level, with FEA Create where you could actually create it as more like a survey.

So it, you have a couple of questions on page one, and then you kind of go from there.

Really don't dive in with forms as well, with immediately asking people for their details.

Especially if it's a form where you are asking lots of questions, or if it's something like a quiz or it's something where you are asking, you know, where you need to get more information from them first, that's easier for them to give.

Get them to do that bit first and then say at the end.

So say if it was for a quiz or something like that on the end slide, you would have something that says, now what's the best email address to send it to you?

Or something like that.

So it just makes it feel like you are not diving straight in, like giving your personal details out on a form.

that that person needs to trust that website and needs to trust the person behind that website.

And sometimes justeasing them in with some simple questions to begin with can make a difference.

Obviously, if the form is just that you literally need their name and email address, then that's fine, but there are things that you can add in to make it more likely that people will want to.

Actually give you those things.

So thinking about what is the benefit to somebody, what's the benefit of them giving you their email address and their name, and popping that in there, and then just removing anything from that form that doesn't need to be there.

So if you don't need to take their phone number, don't do it.

If you don't need their address, if you don't need their surname, then don't.

Don't ask them for it, because the easier you make it, the more likely people are actually to take that action.

And then letting people get in touch with you as well in the way that is simplest for them.

So if your customers are more likely to want to send you a DM, or they're more likely to want to email, or they're more likely to want to fill in a contact form, then.

Making sure that that is available there on your website in different places, probably in your footer.

Definitely having a contact page with options of different ways that people can contact you I think is really helpful.

I put a contact form wherever on my website it says about, you can email me.

I also then have the link to the contact form directly on my website and I have had a few people come through and email and send me a message through that.

So I think just having that, having different ways that people can get in touch with you and thinking about if you're a business where most of the time people would have to phone you, making sure you've got another way for people to contact you.

'cause I think we are less likely to wanna pick up the phone nowadays as well, really.

And even if it's as simple as they send you a message and then you can ring them back all the better.

If I've gotta ring somebody, there's definitely more resistance to doing that than just being able to fill in a form or going out, being able to go in and book online or something like that, really.

And then thinking about clarity, thinking about how people do read those pages really.

So making sure each page has only got one primary message, one primary call to action.

And this again ties in with your SEO.

So thinking about what's the thing you want this page to be showing up for on Google?

But then also thinking about what is the action that we want people to take?

Creating Clear Calls to Action

And the only page that you can kind of get away with having more than one call to action is generally is your homepage.

Because you might want people to book a call or buy something, or they may also then you might have like a transitional call to action where they either read a blog or they, join your email list.

So generally, and there is definitely no hard and fast rules on all of this, but generally for most pages of your website, you want to have one clear repeated calls to action down your page, really.

And then when people are actually reading the content on your page, making sure that it is skimmable.

I mentioned this about the fact of having.

Those headings having bullet lists or, I think I mentioned bold heading, bold text, but having things like bullets and icons and those kind of things that can break your copy up and make it a lot easier for people to skim read.

Nobody wants to sit and read an an like an, a wall of text on a website, realistically, and I

This is also an accessibility thing.

So if you are thinking about how you can make your website more accessible, and that doesn't mean necessarily to only to people who have, something that makes them need more accessibility.

But just in general, if your website is set up in a way that it visually gets across what you're trying to achieve, it visually gets your message across and that's reinforced.

Then with the copy that's there as well, then that is, it's gotta be a win for everybody really.

It makes it.

It's easier for customers to use.

You then get more conversions and get more people taking the action you want and you feel good about a website that's a pleasure for people to use realistically.

So when you come into your website, could my 81-year-old mom or my 9-year-old nephew immediately tell you what you do?

So those things of what do what you do, how are you gonna make their life better?

What they need to do to get it really, and are you using plain enough language on your website for that to happen?

So I've got some quick actions for you to do this week.

So go to your website and open your homepage or your services pages, ideally for your most profitable services page or products page.

So whatever

Action Steps and Wrap Up

is your pages that are closest to the sale, really, and pretend you've never seen it before.

So can you instantly answer those four questions of what you do?

Who it's for, how's it gonna make their life better, and what is the next step?

What do they need to do to get it?

This is all about sort of going back to basics really, with this, and it's often ignored, sometimes, not sometimes, actually, often when I'm working with consulting clients, they have these light bulb moments.

When somebody points this out to you or when you actually take the time to look at this and think about your website through the lens of clarity and relevance, and is it actually easy for somebody to understand what I do.

Then the gaps tend to jump out at you and you can immediately know the things that you need to do, the actions that you need to take on your website to get it actually converting for you.

So for more tips like this, visit the website success hub.com, and join my weekly newsletter.

You get tips and tricks each week.

Is the best way to sort of get some more content from me.

Your website, remember, is an asset for your business.

So give it the time, give it the attention that it deserves.

And remember that social media is optional.