Websites and conversion
Why a site “for beauty” does not sell — and what to do about it
Most often a site is ordered as a picture: “so that it looks good”. Six months later it turns out that it does indeed look good, but no leads come from it. The reason is almost never the design — it is that the site answers the wrong questions.
We see this regularly in audits: the layout is neat, the fonts are in place, the animations are smooth, and the conversion rate is a fraction of a percent. Below are the six reasons that occur most often, and what to do about each.
1. The site talks about the company, not about the client
The first screen opens with the words “We are a team of professionals with over 10 years of experience”. At that moment the visitor is deciding an entirely different question: whether this site will solve their problem. They will read your history later — if they get that far at all.
A working check: cover the logo with your hand. If the text of the first screen could be placed on a competitor’s site unchanged — it communicates nothing.
2. It is unclear what exactly you sell
It is especially painful in complex niches. “Comprehensive solutions for your business” means nothing: accounting fits it, so does concrete, so does advertising. The client will not solve a riddle — they will go back to search.
The formula is simple: what it is + for whom + what the task is. “Polymer fibres for concrete — for construction companies and concrete plants” reads in two seconds and immediately filters out those who do not need it. That is not a loss of audience but a saving of your time.
3. There is no next step
The person read it, got interested — and did not find what to do next. There is one “Get in touch” button, somewhere in the footer, leading to a page with a nine-field form.
The action must be visible on every scroll screen, and the threshold must be low. A two-field form collects more enquiries than a nine-field questionnaire, even if you then have to clarify details in correspondence.
4. The design gets in the way of reading
The most typical: light grey text on white, a line running the full width of the monitor, a fade-in animation on every block. Each decision on its own looks stylish; together they make the site impossible to read.
- Text contrast below 4.5:1 is not “delicate”, it is unreadable.
- A line longer than 75 characters — the eye loses the start of the next one.
- An animation longer than 300 ms reads as lag, not as smoothness.
- Text on a photo without a backing plate is readable only in the design mock-up.
5. There is no proof
Promises without proof do not work. “An individual approach” is words; a case study with before-and-after numbers is evidence. A review with a name, a job title and a company name weighs more than ten anonymous “very satisfied”.
If there are no case studies yet, intermediate proof works: certificates, test results, the team line-up, a description of the work process. The main thing is that it is verifiable.
6. The site is not ready for traffic
The most annoying reason, because the money has already been spent. Ads bring people to a page that takes four seconds to load, breaks on a phone or has no form at all. The budget goes, there are no leads, and the advertising is declared guilty.
Before the first ad launch, check three things: the speed of the first screen on mobile, how the form works from a phone, and whether emails with leads actually arrive at a real inbox.
How to check your own site in half an hour
The first 10 minutes. Open the homepage on a phone and read the first screen aloud. If in those seconds it is not clear what you sell and to whom — you need read no further, the problem is right there.
The next 10 minutes. Walk the client’s path: find a service, find a price or a way to learn it, fill in the form. Count the clicks. More than four to a lead is too many.
The last 10 minutes. Send a test enquiry and check that the email arrived. While you are at it, look in the Spam folder — sites with forms regularly lose enquiries exactly there.
The main thing
A beautiful site and a site that sells are different tasks, and the second does not follow from the first by itself. Design should reinforce a clear structure, not replace it.
The order of work is the reverse of the usual: first decide what you say and to whom, then in what order, and only then how it looks. A site assembled in that sequence usually turns out to be more beautiful as well.
A case from practiceXLink: a site built to sell, not to look prettyView the case