Building a pretty site and getting traffic to it is just one part of the equation, but many webmasters fail to take the appropriate measures to ensure that visitors are doing what they want them to do. Whether it be visitors making purchases on an e-commerce site, or making an enquiry through a lead-generation site, you have to be sure that you’re doing everything you can to make your site convert at its full potential.

If you’re getting the traffic but no results, take a look through these top tips and see if it could be an easy fix.

Are You Clear On Your Objectives?

This is a problem that comes up time and time again. People put in the time and effort to drive visitors to the site, but they aren’t actually clear on what exactly they want their visitors to do when they arrive at the site. If you don’t know, then how can you expect your visitors to know? It sounds simple, but make sure you are absolutely clear on what your objectives are. You’d be surprised how many webmasters aren’t!

Do Your Calls to Action Pack a Punch

Clear calls to action are an absolute necessity. If you don’t make your calls to action prominent, you cold be missing out on valuable business. Everything on the page should be subordinate to, or supportive of the actions that you want your visitors to take. Think about your use of colour when implementing button – do they stand out from the rest of the page sufficiently?

Minimise Distractions on the Page

Lots of sites make some or all of their revenue through paid advertising. However, if you have lots of flashing ads dotted around the page, you run the very real risk of distracting users from completing the desired action. Weigh up the value of people clicking the ads against completing a conversion.

Does Your Site Work?

Most webmasters have been there at some point – you’ve noticed no sales for a couple of days or you notice that it’s been a while since you received an enquiry, and upon further inspection you realise that a broken link has thrown a spanner in the works. If your site doesn’t work the way that you intended it to, you could be prohibiting visitors from completing the desired actions. Check, check and check again!

Is…..Your…..Site……Painfully…..Slow?

Everyone hates sites that take an age to load. In the age of high-speed internet, no one wants to feel like they’ve slipped back to the days of painfully slow dial-up. Most people will simply look for a quicker alternative site, rather than sticking around and waiting for a page to load. Run a load speed audit – there are plenty of free tools out there that will help you identify elements that could be slowing your site down.

If none of the above help you to sort your conversion issues, you may have to delve a little deeper. Check out some of the many free online resources out there, which will help you solve your conversion nightmares.

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Thanks to Harry Poole for this post. Harry is a freelance web developer in Brighton and loves to blog about pretty much anything from the world of web development.