I know why your website sucks.
Great news for you: I also know exactly how you can fix it.
Over the past few weeks, I’ve been deep in web audits.
And there are a few things I keep repeating in nearly every single audit.
To be clear, it’s not because these businesses aren’t doing incredible work. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: your hands-on work is incredible, but if nobody knows you exist, or can’t figure out how to buy what you’re selling, then what’s the point?
Cue Tyler, the Creator.
Most of the sites I looked at aren’t broken, but they just aren’t doing their job.
But hey, lucky for you, customer journeys, e-commerce design, marketing, and branding are kinda my whole thing.
So if your website feels like it should be working better than it is, here’s what I’m seeing over and over again, and exactly what to fix
1.First things first: You need to tell people (in the simplest terms possible) what you do and how they can buy from you “above the fold” (before anyone scrolls).
This is the most common issue. By far.
A lot of homepages are warm and welcoming, but they lack calls to action.
They say things like:
“Welcome to our farm…”
“Where blossoms and memories flourish…”
“Rooted in tradition and sustainability…”
And that’s about it. I get it, it is important to make sure users and visitors know they are in the right place (that’s where your branding comes in), but if that is all you’re giving people as a first impression, they are going to forget you.
You need to give them the information they are looking for and a way to help them achieve their mission (like ordering flowers for Mother’s Day, or subscribing to your beef box to feed their family in accordance with their values) ASAP!!!!
Your homepage has one job:
Help people understand what you sell and what to do next. Immediately.
Across multiple audits, I saw:
No “Shop Now” button above the fold
No clear next step
Multiple sections saying the same thing in different words
Products and offers buried further down the page
What to do instead:
Add a clear CTA in your hero section
Shop Now
Order Your Bouquet
Book Your Session
Prioritize your top revenue driver first
Cut repeated intro copy and replace it with action-oriented sections
If someone lands on your site and has to scroll to figure out what you sell and how to buy it, you’ve already lost them.
2.You need to include so much more of your personality on your website!
Speaking of personality, everyone is BANNED from copy-pasting directly from ChatGPT. Banned forever, from this moment on. The robot is sucking the soul out of your brand!
Everyone’s website now sounds the same, and that’s doing you, your business, and your customers a disservice!
There are a few things ChatGPT has ruined for us (you know, aside from privacy, human connection, cognition, and drinking water of various municipalities)
ChatGPT is a Large Language Model that runs by predicting the next most likely word/number/emoji/image in whatever you’ve asked it to draft.
There’s no magic happening here, folks! And definitely no insight or inspiration either!
These robots have just cannibalized and illegally ingested all of the available words and images they can to be able to predict the outcome you’re looking for.
They don’t actually do math when you ask it a math question. It’s not a calculator; it just knows that most of the time when the combo of numbers and symbols “2+2=” appears, the next most likely character is 4.
So when you’re like “Make me a logo for my flower farm/market garden/beef ranch” its’s going to do the exact same thing.
It's going to predict what comes next.
And I would bet at least 1 beer flavoured beer on the fact that’s not what you’re going for in your branding.
“Did you see their new logo?”
“Oh yeah, super predictable.”
Sends shivers up my spine! Gross!
You can be: trustworthy, dependable, consistent.
But I don’t want your branding to be something the robot regurgitated because it looks the most like all the other flower farms/ market garden/ beef ranch logos it’s gobbled up.
Don’t get me wrong, AI can be an incredibly useful tool.
But if I see one more sentence that has been directly copied and pasted from ChatGPT I’m going to throw my laptop, phone, and then myself in the Salish Sea (don’t worry I’ve always wanted to live in a kelp forest in the PNW, ever since I was obsessed with Free Willy as a child, so it’s really not a bad deal for me).
These days, it is more important than ever to sound like a real human person, not a robot.
And not just any generic “human person” (that’s what ChatGPT is meant to sound like)
You need to sound like YOU.
If you want people to buy from you, they need to feel a connection to your brand. If your brand and your story is just recycling the same ai slop as everyone else, they are just going to buy the cheapest version from Amazon.
F*** that!
3. You’re Explaining Everything, but you’re forgetting to guide the next steps
A lot of the websites I looked at are full of information, but the brand isn’t acting like the guide they should be.
Remember, the customer is the hero in this situation; they are on a quest, and you are their guide who can help them achieve their goal and bring glory to their family!
Your websites are telling me things like:
“contact us for more info” with no button
“follow along on Instagram” with no link nearby
“learn more about our products” and that’s all
And I’m like: okay… how?
I saw long explanations with no next step, and product pages without a clear path to purchase.
So now your customer has to go looking for it.
And they probably won’t.
What to do instead
Every time you say something like:
Learn more
Contact us
Shop our products
Immediately follow it with:
a button
a form
or a direct link
Never make someone go looking for the next step.
You’re the guide!
You know the path so well because you friggen built it!
But your potential customer has literally never been here before.
Once you can see it through their eyes, you’ll be able to notice all of the holes.
4. Your Website Isn’t Built for How People Actually Read
People don’t read websites.
They scan them.
These are a few design choices I saw over and over that are making your content harder to read for website visitors:
Centred paragraphs
Long blocks of text
Low contrast colour combinations
Fonts that are hard to read
(Don’t feel bad if you’re using any of these on your site, I did a whole ass degree learning how people read and process information, so all of this is second nature to me now. You see, I’m the guide in this situation, I have the information you need to succeed on your quest of turning your website into a sales machine!)
What to do instead:
Left-align your text
Break content into short sections
Use headings generously
Check your colour contrast for readability (this is my go-to tool)
Choose function over aesthetic when it comes to text
If it’s hard to read, it won’t get read.
5. You’re Not Answering Questions Before They’re Asked
If someone has a question and can’t find the answer quickly, they leave.
Simple as that.
What to do instead:
Add FAQs everywhere!
product pages
service pages
workshops
events
Think through:
What would someone hesitate about?
What would stop them from buying?
Then answer it before they even have to ask.
