There’s nothing that gets a business owner down like unhealthy online sales. Despite the hours you’ve spent trawling through marketing blogs and making little tweaks to your company website, you’re still not seeing those sales leap up like you want them to. If this sounds familiar, then you may be committing a few damaging conversion mistakes. Read on and make sure you’re not making any of these expensive blunders!

The first thing you need to avoid doing is forgetting the emotional aspect to your website. It’s not uncommon for businesses to operate a perfectly well-designed website, and still have to deal with a miserable conversion rate. A lot of the time, this is because the person in charge was totally disregarding the emotions of people in a given target market. No matter how much we try to deny it, our emotions sway the way we buy things. The beautifully written content on your site, and all the information and details about your product, won’t mean nearly as much as the user’s emotional impulses. This is as true for B2C businesses as it is for B2B ones. If your website is feeling a bit robotic, then try to focus on the emotional aspect of it. Work on your brand persona, tell a story, or offer a solution to an issue all your customers have.

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Another big slip-up is neglecting to use a “mobile first” strategy. We’re in the second half of 2016 now. We’ve moved past the mobile age, and we’re now in what some marketers call the “post-mobile age.” At one point, a website would be designed for a desktop or laptop, and then modified for use on a smartphone, tablet, and other mobile devices. That’s all changed now, and a “mobile first” design strategy is gradually becoming the standard for web design and conversion rate optimisation services. In this model, the development team will ensure that your website for mobile traffic first of all, and make sure it looks fine on a desktop or laptop later. This will fill any pesky performance gaps, give you better customer segmentation, and empower your audience. Together, this will translate as a greatly improved conversion rate!

Finally, forgetting about the site speed. Yes, I know that cool new animation that’s just become available looks excellent on your site. However, when you’re working on the aesthetics of your site, it’s important to think about the impact it will have on your site speed. We’re all a little spoiled with the speed of modern broadband. Certain studies have come up with some pretty worrying figures when it comes to the impact of your site loading speed. Just one second of delay can put your bounce rate up by about 7%, meaning less conversions and less revenue. Find some simple solutions to make your website load faster, or change your host completely.

Check out your website now, and scour it for any of these mistakes. Just one can be a massive crutch to your business, and hold you back from your goals.