Sometimes Traffic Is Not the Problem
Imagine pulling up your site analytics and seeing you had 1000 visitors to your site that month. Awesome, right?! But then you look at your number of contact form submissions or phone calls coming in and there was nearly zero uptick. Unfortunately, this isn’t an entirely rare situation. We’ve heard from many small business owners who have had this or a very similar situation happen to them.
Why is it that your SEO and marketing efforts are bringing in hundreds and even thousands of new users, yet no one is getting in touch with you? There are several reasons for this issue, both on-site and off-site issues. In this blog, let’s look at some of the most common on-site issues that can lead to your site getting 1000 visitors and zero calls.
Check Your Traffic First
Not all traffic is ideal traffic. Yes, not all users to your website are ideal users to your website. The goal of SEO is to connect the right users to the right websites, at the right time, when the users have the right intent.
Wrong Geographic Area
There are geographic issues you might be facing, The audience you are pulling in might be from the wrong area simply. If you own a local hardware store in Green Bay and you’re getting users from New York, you have the wrong geographic users for some reason. Those users, while real human users, are highly unlikely to buy from a store 1,000 miles away.
Wrong Keyword Intent
You might be focusing on a keyword that has the wrong user intent. Some keywords are most commonly used by people for commercial purposes when they’re looking to make a purchase. Some keywords are more informational focused. If you sell fishing charters on Lake Michigan, but your keyword is an informational one used by students writing a paper on Lake Michigan, you won’t see an uptake in phone calls or contact form submissions. Those users have little interest in booking, they’re purely there for information.
Wrong Timing
Your industry may have certain times of the year that people will most commonly make a purchase. A window replacement company has its highest sales in the spring of the year. The rest of the year the traffic might be purely looking for information when they make a buying decision the following spring. Those users aren’t bad users by any means and very well may make a large purchase down the road. It’s simply the wrong timing.
Tools to Use
If you’re unsure of all the users and intents you’re getting on your site, you can check with a few key tools. Google Analytics and Google Search Console can provide some great insight into the users and keywords your site is focusing on. Best yet, both tools are free to use!
Your Website Might Not Be Pulling It’s Weight
If your keywords are dialed in and on point, but you’re still not getting clients to reach out, there is possibly/likely something wrong on your site.
Phone and Email Are Hard To Find
One of more common, and easy to fix, issues is that your phone number or email address might not be as visible as you think. It’s a safe bet that you know your website look and layout very well. You have your phone number and email address memorized. So when you look at the site, it might be so obvious to you, but yet hidden to other users. Make sure your phone number and email address are in high profile spots and prominently displayed.
Phone Number Not Visible or Not Clickable
It is also entirely possible that you forgot to list your phone number or email on a given page. Ideally the header section of each page should contain the best ways for users to contact you. This commonly means that your phone number and email address will be clearly visible in the header of each page.
If the phone number and email address are in each page, be sure to have them as clickable links. Sure, it’s easy to just copy and paste the phone number into the phone or email address into an email, but users simply don’t want to do that. Make the job as easy as possible and make sure those are both clickable links.
Weak or Missing CTAs
The CTA, Call To Action, is the button or link that grabs the attention of the users and directs them where they likely want to go next. This could be a “Contact Us Today” button or a “Browse our Products” link.
If those CTAs aren’t displayed in a prominent, bold, but not annoying way, users can have a tough time getting to those conversion points.
Technical issues
There are also some common technical issues that can be plaguing a site, leading to low conversions. Many of these common technical issues can lead to even great issues if they’re paired with any of the other issues we’ve already covered.
Buttons Not Linked
When users click a link on a site, they’re expecting to be taken to a new page. If the HREF in that link, the attribute that sets where the link goes to, is set to just “#” then that link won’t work. This will quickly lead to frustrated users who will likely leave the page and find another option.
This can happen in graphical buttons as well. Those graphical buttons can make for great CTA’s, but if that link doesn’t work, how great can that CTA really be?
Wrong Number Showing
Not long ago we got a call from a possible client wanting us to help get their site to convert. We went through our normal questions, one of which is simple but silly: what is the best phone number for users to call? The client said that number was 920-867-5308. But the number on their site was 920-867-5309. While the users wanted to reach the client, they kept getting through to some girl named Jenny.
This can easily happen as well with email addresses or mailing addresses. I’ve even seen some businesses list their wrong open hours on their site. A few years back my wife and I were excited to try a new restaurant we heard of. The website for the restaurant said they’re open until 10pm Tuesday through Sunday and Monday is the only day of the week they close. We get there for dinner and it turns out they’re actually closed on Tuesdays, not Mondays. The website was wrong and we had to find another spot for dinner.
Broken Forms
For many users, they’ll prefer to contact you through a contact form. For many people, it’s an easier and more approachable way to contact a business. It also allows you to get the basic info you need up front to get the process started. But those forms are only great if they’re working correctly. Too often we’ve seen forms that not only don’t work when the submit button is clicked, but sometimes they’ll have other technical issues.
If the form is set to email to the wrong email address, what good will that do for the business? We’ve seen some clients come to us with contact forms that get emailed to something like info@domainname.com, but the client has never had that email address, so they’ll never get those submissions. Make sure your contact form is set to email to the correct email address(es). We’d recommend testing your contact forms at least monthly to confirm it’s always working correctly.
We also had a client that hired us for an SEO campaign and we noticed a major issue on the site right away. When we were working on their site to confirm it was ready to go, we noticed that their contact form in their main CTA didn’t work on mobile devices. Desktop browsers had no issue with the form, but on mobile the form didn’t work. Even if we’d have brought in 1000 visitors, the majority of them would never be able to get in touch with the business.
Traffic is great. Calls are better.
Why is it that your SEO and marketing efforts are bringing in hundreds and even thousands of new users, yet no one is getting in touch with you? There are several reasons for this issue, both on-site and off-site issues. In this blog, let’s look at some of the most common on-site issues that can lead to your site getting 1000 visitors and zero calls.
Getting 1000 visitors to your site, but not seeing an uptick in calls or inquiries from those users? Your site likely has some one site issues or keyword issues to address. These on-site issues are one possible reason for this 1000-0 mathematical issue, there can also be some key off-site issues as well. We’ll explore those issues in an upcoming blog next week as well.
Getting Plenty of Visitors, But No Calls?
If you’re getting plenty of visitors but no one is reaching out, contact Full Scope Creative. We’d be happy to take a look at your site and help you figure out what’s holding things back.