Owning a website in 2021 is more complicated and confusing than ever before. With ever-changing industry trends, constant security threats and online competition becoming increasingly fierce, it can be hard for even the most diligent website owner to keep their website generating the sales and leads they need.

Here are three mistakes you can avoid so more of your happy users become happy customers.

#1. Driving traffic to sources other than your website.

You’re always going share tips, tricks, photos and posts with your followers on your social media platforms. However, it’s important that your larger, original content lives on your website. Use snippets as teasers on social media to drive users to your website for the whole enchilada.

Keeping content on your website first is not only a great way to keep people coming to your website (and one step closer to becoming a happy customer,) but it’s also helpful for your page rank in search engines. The more time users spend on your website reading articles or watching videos will demonstrate to Google that your website has content that users find valuable. This is gold for search engines, as they only want to serve up the best content to their searchers.

#2. Not putting the needs of your visitors first.

In the same way that having a phone number doesn’t guarantee people are going to call it, just having a website doesn’t mean you will get traffic, nor that it will mean instant sales.

The way consumers buy has changed. The majority of people want to do their pre-purchase research online and only want to reach out when they’re ready to buy. If your website doesn’t give users the information they need to make a purchase decision, they’ll happily click that big ol’ BACK button and visit your competition instead.

People come to your website because they are looking for somebody to solve a problem they’re having. In reality, you have built your website for your potential customers, so it makes sense to put their needs first.

#3. Spending money on ads and SEO without doing an analysis of your website first.

Google, Facebook and other platforms that sell ad space are more than happy to charge your credit card regardless of whether you’re seeing any kind of return on that investment.

Many website owners—unhappy with the conversions they’re getting—pay for ads or search engine optimization. However, for many websites, traffic isn’t the issue. It’s the website itself.

Before you budget for any kind of activity that will drive traffic to your website, it’s so important to ensure that your website has what users need to make a purchase decision. Take some time to review your website and maybe run a small focus group before making that investment.

In addition to the mistakes you want to avoid to improve your users’ experiences, there are also many simple changes you can make to your website to make it even more compelling. A better user experience reduces user friction and breeds trust which motivates your visitors to pick up the phone, download that pdf or put that product in the cart.

Join Kris’ upcoming workshop, Supercharge your website: How to turn more traffic into leads or sales on November 25^th at the WECafe. Sign up for this free seminar today and get some great tips on making your website more enticing to users.