If your website is getting traffic but nobody seems to be contacting you, buying anything or taking the next step, it is very easy to assume you need more traffic. Sometimes you do. But sometimes the bigger problem is that the people already arriving are being given too many reasons to leave.
That is how I tend to think about conversion rate optimisation. I am not trying to squeeze people through a funnel or trick them into clicking a button. I am looking at what might stop someone from becoming a customer, then working out how to remove those barriers. Anything can hurt conversion, from unclear copy and slow pages to confusing navigation, missing information or simply asking too much from somebody too early.
Start with the five-second rule
One of the simplest checks I use when I land on a website is what I call the five-second rule. Within the first few seconds, I want to understand three things: who you are, what you do and how I can contact you. If I cannot answer those questions quickly, the site has already made me work harder than it needed to.
- Who are you?
- What do you do?
- How do I contact you?
Most websites do not fail this because they are technically broken. They fail because they are trying to be too clever, too vague or too busy. A hero might look beautiful, but if the main heading says something like “Creating digital experiences that transform tomorrow”, I still have no idea whether you build websites, run events or manufacture particularly ambitious kettles.
Good design should make the important information easier to understand. The visitor should not need to decode your brand language before they can work out whether you are relevant to them.
Help people find what they actually came for
Once I understand who a business is and what it does, the next thing I usually do is try to find exactly what I came for. That might be a particular service, some information, pricing, a case study or just a direct way to get in touch.
This is where websites can become surprisingly frustrating. A business might have all the information I need, but if it is buried under a huge homepage, vague navigation or several pages that all seem to say roughly the same thing, that information may as well not be there.
I do not think every page needs to explain everything. In fact, I normally prefer the opposite. A page should fulfil a specific purpose. Give somebody enough information to understand what is being offered, then let them choose where they want to go next. If a homepage is trying to sell eight services, tell the company story, show every project, explain the entire process and answer every question at once, it starts to feel a little desperate.
On larger or information-heavy websites, search can help too. If somebody already knows what they are looking for, giving them a direct route to it can be much more useful than forcing them through the navigation you imagined they would use. This is especially useful for things like healthcare and ecommerce, where somebody may want a very specific answer before they are comfortable making a decision.
Trust comes from showing people what they need to know
Trust is a huge part of whether I convert on a website. A generic-looking design can sometimes give me the impression that the online experience was treated as a box-ticking exercise. That does not mean the business itself is bad, but first impressions are still doing a lot of work before I have spoken to anybody.
I also want a business to feel confident about what it is selling. If important information is deliberately vague, I start wondering why. What does the service include? How does it work? Where are you based? What happens after I contact you? If pricing can reasonably be shown, I would rather see that too.
I think prices upfront should be prioritised wherever possible. If you are confident in your service, the price should help sell that service. There are obviously cases where work is too bespoke for one fixed number, but even then a starting price, typical range or explanation of what affects the cost can help somebody decide whether the service is remotely right for them. “Contact us for pricing” is not mysterious luxury positioning if the user only wants to know whether they can afford you.
Testimonials can help, but I would never treat them as the whole story. They are naturally curated by the business. I normally look for independent reviews as well because I want to know what the less-than-perfect experiences looked like and, importantly, how the company handled them. Five happy customers are useful. Knowing how a business behaves when something goes wrong can be even more useful.
Case studies are another strong trust signal because they show more than the finished result. A good case study tells me what somebody was capable of, how they approached a problem, how well they understood the user and whether their way of thinking feels like a good fit for me. Hiring somebody without looking at their previous work feels a bit like buying a car without checking its history. It might look lovely, but I would still quite like to know what happened before I got there.
Remove friction before asking for more
A contact form is one of the easiest places to create unnecessary friction. If I am just trying to browse products or understand a service, I should not need to hand over half my personal history first. Ask for the information you genuinely need at that point in the journey, not everything you might possibly want later.
The same applies to mobile. I really dislike seeing the user experience reduced simply because somebody is on a smaller screen. Mobile often needs a different layout and interactions may need to be simplified, but useful information and functionality should not disappear just because there is less space available. Mobile should be adapted, not downgraded.
Speed matters for a similar reason. If a website is constantly lagging behind, buffering or making me wait for heavy animations and imagery, I start to lose interest. The useful thing about a fast experience is that it lets somebody make a decision while their thoughts are still fresh and they are surrounded by the context that brought them there. Every interruption gives them another opportunity to think, “Do I actually need this?”
Do not build the website around yourself
This is probably one of the biggest principles I follow. I would not build a product around myself because I am not the end user. I already understand the website, the terminology and where everything lives. The people actually using it do not have that context.
That is why data always needs investigation. Analytics can help you see where people are dropping out of a journey, heatmaps can show what they interact with or ignore, and user feedback can give you the context that numbers alone cannot. If your customers physically visit you, such as in healthcare or another local service, even a simple questionnaire can teach you a lot about the online journey they had before arriving.
I also really like getting somebody unfamiliar with the business to use a website blind. Give them a task, do not explain where anything is, and watch what happens. Test the site yourself too, because you may still find obvious problems, but seeing somebody struggle with something you assumed was clear is useful evidence. It can be slightly humbling, but that is generally healthier than designing an entire experience around your own assumptions.
Even something like a high bounce rate needs context. On a service journey it might point towards a problem. On an information page, somebody may have landed, found the exact answer they needed and left completely satisfied. I would rather treat a metric as a clue than a verdict.
Modern does not automatically mean better
I have seen plenty of websites become harder to use because somebody wanted them to feel more modern. Huge video backgrounds, heavy imagery, elaborate scroll effects and dramatic transitions can all look premium, but they need to earn their place.
I am not against flashy websites at all. They can be exciting, memorable and fun. The issue is when the design starts forcing every user through the exact journey the designer imagined. Each visitor can arrive with a different goal. Somebody might want pricing, somebody else might want a case study and somebody else may just want the phone number. Making all three sit through the same cinematic scroll sequence before they can get there is a very narrow way of designing an experience.
If the site is already drawing in customers, it is doing its job regardless of whether it looks like the latest design trend. Before jumping into a full redesign, I would look at what is actually causing the bloat or friction. A redesign makes much more sense when the branding is seriously outdated, the site is genuinely hard to use, the structure is broken or the experience has become so complex that smaller fixes are no longer enough.
Persuasion should not feel like pressure
There are plenty of conversion techniques that technically encourage action but make me trust a business less. Guilt-based popup copy is a good example. If the decline button says something like “No thanks, I would rather pay full price”, the website is no longer helping me make a decision. It is trying to embarrass me into one.
Urgency can be useful when it is genuine, particularly in retail where stock or an offer really is limited, but I still think it should be handled carefully. Urgency adds stress. It should inform somebody about a real constraint, not manufacture panic because somebody decided anxiety was good for the conversion rate.
The same idea applies to CTAs. Multiple calls to action can be useful because somebody may not know what they need when they first arrive. A good website can help them understand the different services and point them towards the right route. The problem starts when every section is shouting for a different action and the user is left trying to work out which button the business wants them to press this time.
The conversion is not the end of the experience
One of the things that puts me on edge after submitting a form is a lack of confirmation. If I do not receive an email or clear success message, I immediately start wondering whether the website actually worked. That reassurance matters even after the user has done what you wanted them to do.
A useful confirmation can tell somebody that their message was received, what happens next and roughly when they should expect to hear back. Automated follow-ups can work well for the same reason when they provide guidance rather than pressure.
Then, when the business does respond, tone matters. I want to feel like somebody has understood my needs and the issue I am trying to solve. Treat the enquiry like a person asking for help, not a lead entering a pipeline. Speed is useful, but a fast templated response that ignores what I actually said is not going to build much confidence.
Live chat can help here too, although I prefer it to be honest about what it is. An AI assistant can be brilliant for quick questions and helping somebody find information, but if a problem is niche or complicated I want a route to a human. A chatbot pretending to be live support until it runs out of answers is not really improving the experience.
So where do you actually start?
If you are looking at your own website and wondering why people are not converting, I would resist the urge to redesign everything immediately. Start with the five-second rule. Open the site and ask whether a new visitor can quickly understand who you are, what you do and how to contact you. Then ask somebody who knows nothing about the business to do the same thing. You might be surprised by what they notice.
From there, look at the actual journey. Can people find the service they need? Are you hiding information they need to make a decision? Is the page asking for too much? Is mobile genuinely as useful as desktop? Is the site fast enough to keep their momentum? Then use analytics, feedback, heatmaps, usability testing and whatever other evidence you have available to investigate the places where people seem to struggle.
Before I change anything, I like to come back to three questions: will this benefit the user, what evidence do I have that it will, and how will I know whether it worked?
That is essentially how I think about conversion rate optimisation. It is not about making every button bigger or chasing a perfect metric. It is about understanding the people using the website, removing the things that get in their way and making the next step feel clear when they are ready to take it.
If you need help applying this to your own site, I offer website improvements and web development in Oswestry and work with businesses across Shropshire and the UK. A Website Health Check costs £95 and gives you a prioritised list of improvements to work through.