Website Not Converting? Here’s the Fix

I’m going to answer the “website not converting?” question in two formats– written and video. Skip the video below to see the written version.

Video Explanation for the Website Not Converting Question

Written Explanation for the Website Not Converting Question

I like to talk about my basic philosophical view on conversion optimization, particularly when it comes to optimizing product pages. So the thing to keep in mind is that there are two types of actors that are navigating or trickling down to a product page or landing directly on our product pages. I call these skimmers and diggers. Skimmers are very much in favor of shot to the point.

Diggers are just the opposite. They are the type of people that can spend three hours on Wikipedia, researching a topic. They really like to consume information. They like to be really knowledgeable about a specific subject. And so one of the challenges we have as copywriters, and I’m sure if you look at product pages, you will notice that there has been a systematic shortening in the product description on product pages over the last five, six years.

And this doesn’t make any sense because the user has just three things to go by on the product page. They have the part images, which of course are clearly doctored in the sense that we’re making the product look nice with perfect lighting and stuff like that. We have customer reviews that they can go by, which is of course a useful tool.

But the problem is that. There could be too many reviews. And from a brand perspective, you are now dependent on what an external person says about your product. So even if you had 500 positive reviews, but the last four reviews were negative, that would strongly bias the buyer. So really all you have is the description– and that’s a tiny section.

Making the Sale

You have to describe what your product does or make a sales pitch about the product. And that block has been reducing with time. That short content is perfect for skimmers, but not perfect at all for Diggers. And what happens is that you already have a pretty good conversion rate for skimmers because that’s what the whole website architecture has been designed for.

And then we have a relatively bad conversion rate for diggers because we don’t have any content for them. So my recommendation is this. On your product page at multiple locations, maybe three different locations across the page. One is higher on the page. The second is mid on the page and the third location is somewhere lower than the page near the reviews.

Have a little button or some kind of a link or some kind of a mechanism to allow diggers to self, identify themselves for them to raise their hand up and say, yes, I am a Digger. Talk to me. And if someone says that they are a Digger, when they interact with this. Show them a pop-up, it’s almost like a blank canvas, right?

The Layout

It’s a popup on the top of the page. So you’re not affecting the design of the page. It appears on top of the page. And in that, you can in glorious detail, talk about all the geeky stuff that diggers like. Cause they want to know all the geeky information they want to know about the origin story of the product. To see an example, see this case study: How One Section Lifted Overall Sales.

They want to understand the technical specs of the product they want. All the choices you made in designing the product. You know, again, a typical person who spends a lot of time with Wikipedia. And by doing this, what’s going to happen is that the skimmers are going to ignore this content because they don’t care about it, but the bigger are going to be high dissatisfied because now they’ve got this, they’ve got this extra blanket.

And you haven’t broken or compromised the design of the site. You haven’t forced the skimmers to read this content because it’s an optional button. By doing this, you are maximizing conversion rates for skimmers while also maximizing conversion rates for diggers. And as a consequence, you are maximizing conversion rates for your business.

Further Reading

This article was written to answer the “website not converting” question. If conversion optimization is your jam you will love the following articles.

We’ve spent the last 13 years in our marketing lab, experimenting with ways to optimize conversion rates and grow sales. We’re ready to spill the beans.

The following articles will save you 13 years:

— Before revealing the secret that’ll improve conversion rates by 20% let’s zoom out to see the forest for the🌲: Optimize Conversion Rates: A Totally Different Approach

— For every 1,000 product pitches encountered the shopper buys one item (and we’re being generous). You want this to be your product. How do our brains choose? They rely on a ranking algorithm, not dissimilar to the one Google uses for search results. Our conversion copywriting process is designed to get your pitch to the front of the line.

— The link above revealed how to construct the perfect sales pitch. Next, this killer pitch needs to be infused into your product page. We have just one chance to convert this visitor (only 15% of visitors ever return). Read this next: Infusing Your Product Story To Your Product Page.

About Frictionless Commerce

We deliver an unfair advantage to technical product DTC brands (for example, Dyson) by improving advertising effectiveness by 20% in 90 days. This is achieved using a buyer psychology conversion copywriting framework. All paid traffic eventually reaches the product page and this is where we strike. Our process.

If you like doing the hard work yourself, our founder Rishi shares conversion ideas on LinkedIn every day. Connect with him here.

If you want to make your life easier and still increase conversions, jump on a call.