People Aren’t Reading Your Website; This Is Why
By: Kathleen Krueger
Tags: Marketing, Website Content, Copywriting Tips, Sales Copy, Digital Marketing

Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash

Your home page has plenty of content telling people what you do and why everyone should want to be your customer. Your About page tells your company history and why you’re an expert. All your services are well described. You have calls to action on every page to make it easy for people to connect with you. Yet, your website isn’t converting visitors to customers. Why?

Nobody is reading what your website says.

Why aren’t people reading your website?

There can be a variety of reasons that website visitors don’t read the content on your website. It might be one reason or a combination.

You’re using a small font that is difficult to read. You have too much text on a page, making it overwhelming. Your headings don’t entice them to read further. You talk more about what you do than the problems you solve.

Visually unappealing text

If you have lots of paragraphs of writing in a tiny font, you automatically turn off your readers. Their brains subconsciously say, “That’s too much work.”

Even if the font is a reasonable size, the thought of reading through several paragraphs of information is intimidating. We’re fast-serve culture. We want answers to our questions delivered to us within seconds. If not, we’ll click away and try elsewhere.

It is better to say less and have the words read, than to say a lot that no one ever reads.

People skim before they read

Online readers skim over a page before deciding whether to invest time in reading the content. They read the top header or title of an article first. Then their eyes jump down the page to the bold headings to determine if the page offers anything of value.

If your headings don’t speak to their needs or a problem they need to solve, they will likely click away without reading any more of the writing on the page.

When they skim those headings, you want them to recognize themselves in the words.

Questions are a great way to do that:

Are you still tired after a long night’s sleep?

Do you want your team to be more productive?

Is it time to buy a new home?

Can you see how a person might identify with those questions?

There are other ways to speak to a person’s needs besides asking a question. You can tell them the benefit they will receive from your product or service.

Save time and money!

Get the job done faster.

Make your team more efficient.

These types of statements cause a person to think, “I need that.” Then they will read further to find out what you have to offer that will fulfill their needs.

Talk to them, instead of talking about your company

Just as you want them to identify with the needs you present in your headings, you want to continue that direction in the rest of your text.

Your website content should first tell them the benefits they will receive — more time, less stress, faster turnaround. Then, and only then, should you tell them how you are going to deliver those benefits by describing your service or product. This is the point when you can start talking about why your company is the one to hire or your product is the one to buy.

Remembering the order of these three steps is all you have to do.

First, WHAT benefit do you have to offer or problem do you solve?

Second, HOW will you deliver that benefit or solve that problem?

Third, WHY should your company or product be chosen over competitors.

The purpose of your website content

The purpose of all your website content — text, images, videos, layout — is to get the website visitor to contact you or place an order. When the goal is to have them contact you, less is more. You don’t need to tell them everything you would want to tell them in person. You want to pique their interest enough to act — click that button, call you, fill out your contact form.

Are people reading your website content, or are they turned off before they get to the first sentence?