Your Website Has a Job. It Is Probably Not Doing It.
A business website has one job: turn visitors into leads. Everything else — the design, the animations, the clever copy, the brand photography — is in service of that job. If the website looks beautiful but the phone is not ringing, the website is failing.
We audit roughly 20 websites per year for companies across various industries. The conversion rate for the average business website is 2-3%. That means 97-98% of visitors leave without taking any action. Most of these companies could double their leads without spending a dollar more on traffic — just by fixing what is broken on the site.
Here are the eight conversion killers we see most often, and the specific fixes for each.
Problem 1: Nobody Can Tell What You Do
You have about 3 seconds to communicate what your company does and why a visitor should care. If your homepage headline is something like "Innovative Solutions for Tomorrow's Challenges" or "Your Partner in Growth," you have already lost.
Clear beats clever every time. A headline that says "We manage Google Ads for HVAC companies" is infinitely more effective than "Driving digital transformation across service industries." The first one tells the visitor whether they are in the right place. The second one says nothing.
The fix: Rewrite your homepage headline to answer three questions in plain English: What do you do? Who do you do it for? Why should they care?
Example: "Fractional CMO services for companies that have outgrown DIY marketing. Strategy, execution, and accountability — without the full-time salary." That is a headline that tells you exactly what the company does.
Problem 2: The Site Is Slow
Every additional second of load time reduces conversions by roughly 7%. A site that loads in 5 seconds instead of 2 seconds has lost about 20% of potential conversions before the visitor even sees the content.
This is not theoretical. We have measured it across dozens of sites. Speed is the single most impactful technical factor for conversion rates.
The fix: Test your site speed at PageSpeed Insights (pagespeed.web.dev). Target a score of 90+ on mobile. Common culprits: oversized images, too many scripts, cheap hosting, no browser caching, render-blocking CSS. A developer can typically fix the worst issues in a day. Speed is also a critical SEO ranking factor, so this fix compounds across channels.
Problem 3: The Mobile Experience Is Bad
Over 60% of web traffic is on mobile. If your site is not designed for mobile first, you are providing a poor experience to the majority of your visitors.
Common mobile issues:
- Text too small to read without pinching
- Buttons too close together to tap accurately
- Forms that are painful to fill out on a phone
- Navigation menus that do not work on touch screens
- Pop-ups that take over the entire mobile screen
Problem 4: No Clear Call to Action
Visit most business websites and try to figure out what they want you to do. Is it call? Fill out a form? Schedule a meeting? Download something? Sign up for email? The answer is usually "all of the above," which means effectively "none of the above."
Every page on your website should have one primary call to action. One. Not three. Not a sidebar with six different options. One clear next step that makes it obvious what the visitor should do.
The fix: Pick the single most important action you want visitors to take (usually "request a quote," "schedule a call," or "contact us"). Make that the primary CTA on every page. Use a contrasting color. Make the button large. Put it above the fold and repeat it at the bottom of the page.
Problem 5: The Forms Are Too Long
We audited a company that had a contact form with 14 fields. Name, email, phone, company, title, industry, revenue range, number of employees, current challenges, budget, timeline, how did you hear about us, preferred contact method, and a message field. They were getting 3 form submissions per month from 8,000 visitors.
We replaced it with: name, email, phone, brief message. Form submissions went from 3 per month to 28 per month. Same traffic. Fewer barriers.
The fix: Reduce your contact form to the minimum fields needed to start a conversation. You can qualify leads after they submit. Every additional field reduces conversion rates by roughly 10%.
Problem 6: No Social Proof
Visitors who have never heard of your company need a reason to trust you before they will fill out a form or pick up a phone. Social proof — evidence that other people have worked with you and been happy — is the fastest way to build that trust.
Forms of social proof that work:
- Client logos (even without permission to show results, showing that recognizable companies work with you builds credibility)
- Specific results ("We increased their leads by 340% in 90 days")
- Industry recognition or media mentions
- Trust badges (BBB, industry associations, certifications)
- Number of clients served or projects completed
Problem 7: Your Content Talks About You, Not About Them
Most business websites are written from the company's perspective. "We were founded in 2008." "We believe in quality." "Our team is experienced." The visitor does not care about any of this. They care about their problem and whether you can solve it. This is also why building a brand that does not compete on price starts with making the customer's problem the centerpiece.
The fix: Rewrite your key pages to lead with the customer's problem, not your company's story. Instead of "We provide fractional CMO services," try "Your company needs marketing leadership but is not ready for a $300K CMO salary. We fix that." The first sentence is about you. The second sentence is about them.
Problem 8: No Urgency or Reason to Act Now
Even if a visitor is interested, they need a reason to act now instead of bookmarking the page and forgetting about it. Most business websites give no reason for urgency. The visitor thinks "I will come back to this later" and never does.
The fix: Create a reason to act now. Free audits, free assessments, limited-time offers, or simply making the next step feel easy and low-risk. "Schedule a 15-minute call — no obligation, no pitch" is more compelling than "Contact Us" because it tells the visitor exactly what will happen and how low the commitment is.
How to Prioritize These Fixes
You do not need to fix everything at once. Prioritize by impact:
1. Speed — fix this first. It affects everything. 2. Mobile experience — affects 60%+ of your visitors. 3. Clear headline and value proposition — affects every visitor in their first 3 seconds. 4. Primary CTA — the mechanism for conversion. 5. Form simplification — remove friction from the conversion path. 6. Social proof — builds trust. 7. Customer-focused copy — makes the content relevant. 8. Urgency — gives a reason to act now.
We rebuilt a website for a commercial services company getting 15,000 monthly visitors and 45 leads. After fixing these eight issues — same traffic — the site generated 190 leads per month. That is not magic. It is removing the barriers between visitors and the action you want them to take.
Get a Professional Assessment of Your Website
If your website gets traffic but does not generate leads proportional to that traffic, the fixes are usually straightforward. You do not need a complete rebuild. You need someone who knows what to look for and how to fix it.
Fusion Marketing audits websites and identifies the specific changes that will increase your conversion rate. Call (704) 749-0642 or email contact@fusionmarketing.biz — we will take a look at your site and tell you exactly what is holding it back.
