Your Website Is Working Against You: Here's How

Could your website secretly be sabotaging your business growth? 

You've got traffic but no conversions. You're attracting the wrong inquiries. And potential clients keep asking for information that's literally right there on your site. 

These aren't just annoyances—they're warning signs.

In this episode of Talk Copy to Me, I'll walk you through the five key areas where your website might be working AGAINST you instead of FOR you. You'll learn how to identify misaligned messaging, interpret user behavior red flags, spot the business impact signals, recognize brand evolution issues, and address strategic disconnects that could be costing you clients and revenue without you even realizing it.

Ready to future proof your site? Then let's start talking copy.
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EPISODE 155.
Read the show notes and view the full transcript here: https://erinollila.com/your-website-is-working-against-you/

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Join the waitlist for Spring Clean Your Site 2025: https://erinollila.com/opt-in-spring-clean-your-website/

Book a Done-For-You Website Audit: https://erinollila.com/website-audit/

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Here's info on your host, Erin Ollila
Erin Ollila believes in the power of words and how a message can inform – and even transform – its intended audience. She graduated from Fairfield University with an M.F.A. in Creative Writing, and went on to co-found Spry, an award-winning online literary journal.

When Erin’s not helping her clients understand their website data or improve their website copy, you can catch her hosting the Talk Copy to Me podcast and guesting on shows such as Profit is a Choice, Mindful Marketing, The Power in Purpose, and Business-First Creatives.

Stay in touch with Erin Ollila, SEO website copywriter:
• Learn more about my VIP intensive options or just book a strategy session to get started right away
• Visit Erin's website to learn more about her business, services, and products

Transcript

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Hey, does any of this sound familiar? I've updated my website three times in the last five years, and I'm still not getting the right clients, or my traffic is up, but my conversions are down, so I don't really understand what's happening. Or people keep asking me questions that are literally answered right there on my services page. Sound familiar? Well, if you've nodded your head at any of those three little quotes that I shared with you, your website may actually be working against your business instead of for it. And the scary part is most people don't actually realize it's happening. Hey, hey, and welcome back to Talk Copy to Me. We have been on quite a journey recently talking through strategy, which is how we started this entire fourth season. Today I'm here to talk about how your website should be bringing the strategy that you have to life and not sabotaging it, because sometimes our websites just don't act like those hardworking business partners. We need them to be, you know, you've done so much strategic work. If you've been listening along to these episodes and. I don't want you to, , come up against these issues that may not be super obvious upon first glance. You know, there's no big red, , flag being waved when you click onto your website. And 4 0 4 pages don't have to appear for you to understand that things aren't working because. A lot of the website issues I see are actually little sneaky, little stinkers. They're lurking beneath the service, and like I said, they're sabotaging the business goals and the strategy that you've set up because things can look beautiful on the outside. But you know, just like having a car that has no dents in it, that is like brand spank. A new lovely paint job, but it has an engine problem, right? It looks great in the driveway, but if it can't take you anywhere, nah, it's not gonna help. Just like you may have a beautifully designed website, but if it is not bringing in clients or , customers who are purchasing your products. We gotta do some work to find out what needs to be fixed so you can, you know, put the strategy to work in a way that it is actually benefiting your business. So today's episode is gonna cover all of the signs that your website is not working as it should, or maybe even is working against you because I want your site to be, , your best salespeople. Each page has a job to do, and I have a really good blog post actually. I'm gonna link in the show notes that I want you to read that talks about those job duties of all of your main website pages. If they're not doing the job, you know, we gotta kick 'em to the curb and get some copy and content and messaging and design and all the things needed to make it work for you., so we're gonna start and talk about the misaligned messaging signs. You know, this is one of the first red flags I see simply just'cause of being a copywriter., this could be a glaring issue It could be actually what contributes to all of those, like discovery calls gone wrong, you know, it looks okay. It doesn't actually look that bad. It seems to be speaking to your ideal audience, but the slight shade in messaging is attracting the wrong people to booking a call with you. And let's talk about that for a second. Attracting the wrong audience. You know, you have a messaging problem when you're getting plenty of traffic, but it, it's not really relaying the same way into conversions. You know, you're, you're getting crickets for conversions sometimes. I see this happen when, service providers, for example, they may have high traffic to the site, but they don't have people booking discovery calls. And you know, an example of this could be a wedding photographer who writes a lot of content about weddings in general and never really targets her niche, local keywords. So if you talk about like engagement photos, and if you talk like how to pose or what to wear. That's great content. I am not suggesting you don't do that. However, it's very important to have some visual reminders, some key indicators of the locations that you do service, , potentially even within that blog content or at least on the site, so that way when people land there. They know that they could hire you because you're local., and that's just one example. I see this in many different types of service-based businesses where they attract budget DIYs., unfortunately they have premium done for you packages. The disconnect costs them a ton of money. I actually noticed this myself in business, I don't know, maybe about a four years. In five years in that I kept getting discovery calls from people who really wanted to learn from me. They were. At the pre-decision stage about whether they even needed a website, and I realized what I had done wrong there was attract people who weren't ready to move forward with the services that I was offering. There is absolutely nothing wrong with trying to figure out if you should have a website or what you'd even say on it, but. I had to shift my messaging at that time to make sure that I was speaking to people who are ready to hire someone to do this for them, not simply learn about, whether they should have a website for their business. Another sign that you may have been attracting the wrong audience is if you're constantly getting inquiries for services that you don't currently offer or you don't want to offer., this example could be something like if you are a brand designer that maybe in the past has done a little bit of website design, but really your love is for logos and colors and fonts and all things that go into the actual. Branding or maybe even product branding, let's say, and you don't love C-S-S-H-T-M-L or anything related to websites. Well, if you've pivoted and you're still getting requests for, something you don't want to offer, then you're attracting the wrong audience and the messaging that you've created is kind of doing that for you. I mean, another option, I, I think we can all understand who the wrong audience is, but maybe you've experienced something like, , a potential client hops on a call with you and you realize that you both have wildly different expectations from what they may want and for what cost compared to what you actually deliver. That's misalignment . It's not just, creating poor lead experience, but it's wasting both of your time. Because if your client form is full and the leads make you want to run for the hills, like you're thinking, these are not my people. Your website is not doing a good job of pre-qualifying these leads for you. Something else that falls in the misaligned messaging sign is actually the disconnect from your current business. And this is really honestly the case of an outdated website. You know, it happens when businesses evolve quickly or they get busy or they settle for something that works, but maybe is not as aligned with their current offers, you know? Maybe you see this on your own site by having service descriptions that no longer match what you'll actually offer. Or maybe you've upleveled an approach or your process, but your website is still talking directly to an entry level version of the work that you used to do. Pricing is another common disconnect. Have you raised your rates? The, the world's changed a lot in the past five years, and if your website is implying the lower price points, then there's gonna be a pretty uncomfortable moment when someone books a call and they're expecting those, let's say 2020 rates. And your 2025 reality is just not aligned with their expectations, even if they have the budget. That's key. Even if they have the budget and the, the quote comes back very different. It feels stinky, and honestly, maybe it's something more in the sense of a shift of specialization. If you were a general virtual assistant when you started, and now you specialize in, let's say tech systems or tech setups, you don't want your site to scream that you do all of the tasks that are admin work, or, , maybe it's not your specialty, maybe it's your audience. Have you shifted from serving solopreneurs and now maybe you only work with established businesses, did you currently. Did you start your business only working with SAS tech companies and now you find you like working with the small businesses? You know, if your, if your copy is speaking to, let's say, you know, someone who feels overwhelmed because they're a one person business owner, you're gonna send mixed signals if you actually want to attract, you know, small to medium businesses with a thousand employees. Now I could stay here, talk about messaging mistakes all day long, but I do have a lot I wanna cover here because we're going to be doing our annual spring, clean your site challenge soon, and I want you thinking about how to improve your website before the wait list closes down and the actual page is launched for you to join me because there is a lot. To think about and especially how it relates to our entire business. Let's move on to what the data and your customers are actually telling you. And one way to do that, you know, data doesn't lie. And that's analytics. Your analytics are like a health dashboard and you should be tracking your website analytics. There are some numbers that are vitally important, some that are only specifically important to some businesses. Uh, let's just, let's, let's do a high level overview of this.'cause I. You know, it's an entire episode. To get detailed here, think about high bounce rates, especially on key pages, like your services page. You know, it's a big red flag if people land on these pages and immediately leave. That means something isn't connecting,, it could be something to the effect of you're using really poor SEO keywords, so people are searching for something., whatever the intent is, if they get to the page and you are not fulfilling on the promise of what they expected, they're gonna click off. You know, and that's, you know, that's simple. Like you can restructure a page, you can adjust SEO keywords, you can change the messaging to prevent these things from happening. Another analytics to think of is low time spin on important content. You know, if, if someone di digests one of your pages in 22 seconds, you know, whereas it's a long sales page that you know is gonna take them several minutes or maybe a case study or a blog post, they're not actually engaging with what you're saying. Pay attention to that and pay attention to exit points. You know, what's the next step that they're taking when they abandon the page that they're on? If you know the next step, then you're able to kind of make better decisions on what needs adjustment and what needs attention. And you know, in 2025, if you have not figured out your mobile engagement metrics yet, you really gotta get into it. People are searching on mobile. I don't mean this in any negative way, but I have been writing this for companies since like 2016. The importance of mobile optimization, that's nine years ago. I understand it takes extra steps to make sure like how your website is viewed on desktop also translate to mobile. But if you're paying for a website designer to do this for you, absolutely make sure it is mobilely optimized. And if you're DIYing it, I, I don't know how to tell you this, you, you have to actually focus on mobile. It is very important. Most people are browsing on their phones first, and if they cannot navigate your site easily. They're not gonna bother going to a computer to try to see who you are and what you offer. But in addition to those analytics, let's talk about some customer feedback signals or even lead feedback signals, because sometimes your customers will straight up tell you that things aren't working. If you get feedback from customers or leads or colleagues say, thank you, don't let ego get involved here., but, but more than that, . I'm talking about things like, if you're consistently getting questions about basic information that really should be obvious from your website . So, you know, if someone asks you for more clarification on what you do after they've visited your site, your messaging is not clear enough. I see this a lot in the coaching industry. Often coaches are hesitant. To really get clear on their services pages, especially one-on-one coaching, something I hear all the time, "this is so custom. I don't have a package that translates to all of the types of clients that I serve." Okay? But we need to make sure that the message on what you do offer is clear enough so that people are not getting on discovery calls and saying things like, I thought you did X, Y, Z, or, I'm not sure if. A, b, C is included. We want your service descriptions to do the work for you. Or . When clients say that they cannot find information that you know is on your site. For example, if someone's emailing, asking for pricing, and it's, it's on your services page, that's not necessarily them being lazy. Could it be? Sure, but it also could be that your pricing is nested in your frequently asked questions section in the same size, fawn as your, your body text and your website. You're putting it there for, for. Various reasons. We could get into mindset and stuff here, but if you're hiding information and then feeling frustrated that people can't find that information, we gotta make some adjustments there. And if you've ever gotten a direct complaint about usability, like I can't figure out how to book a call or like, you are contact form wouldn't submit. So I just decided to try to send you a message on social media. Well, those are more critical alerts that really need some immediate adjustments. But let's move on from user experience and talk about business impact signs. And this is really how a misaligned website is impacting your business results. One of those easy ways is revenue indicators. Things like we talked about earlier, decreased conversion rates, , over time, despite steady traffic, that's, that's a red flag. But if that decreased conversion rate, let's say conversion rate was 3% before, and now you're down to one, well, your bank account's gonna notice that shift. Lower quality leads. Also coming through your pipeline is another problem. For example, if you find yourself constantly disqualifying inquiries, you're wasting time and your website's not prescreening. Similarly, if you decided to create, let's see, a DIY product suite, maybe you're website designer and you're creating some templates., you offer them for really low prices, and then you find the conversions that are happening on your site. Are for the templates and not for the done for you clients. Well, that's another flag that the, that is a revenue indicator that there is some issues happening with your website. And then there's also missed opportunities., if someone mentions a competitor and says, oh, I went with them because, their website had their process and their website was very clear that they had an opening for quarter two of this year, and I wasn't really sure exactly whether you even taking new clients. Yeah, that's a revenue indicator that there's some messaging that needs to get adjusted something else business-wise is if your website is a growth blocker. And what I mean by that is. can you showcase a new service or a new product within your current site structure? That could be a problem if you have maybe like two services pages because you have two distinct offers. Let's go back to coaching for a second. An example here could be group coaching versus one-on-one coaching. Now in addition to these, you also want to offer that you are, interested in coming into larger corporations to do some training on coaching for leaders. If you cannot get that on your main navigation bar, or find a way to share this on the homepage, because those two competing group and one-on-one coaching offers are really taking up all the space on your site. That's a growth blocker . We wanna make sure that the messaging, the pricing, the services that we have are, are allowing us to expand and grow. And we do not want to be limited by a site structure. And there are also tech limitations. So maybe the current platform you're on can't integrate with tools you need, like SEO tools or, , maybe it can't handle the hosting that you have. Can't handle the volume of traffic that you're getting now that you are growing in business. I think a scaling issue, which I, I guess this falls into the revenue and the growth part here for these business impact science is you might have had a website that worked fine for your current business, but now that you're growing in one certain direction, you're finding that things are breaking or there's a lot of manual touches that need to happen in order to keep your website. Consistent and growing. Yeah, that's generally a sign. Your site's working against you and we're not done yet. What a talkie episode today. Let's talk about your brand evolution issues, because like I just said, as your business grows, your website needs to keep pace and. What I see very often, or at least the clients that come to me for done for you services, is that they're, they just have outgrown their site., they feel constrained by their current website, like there's no room to grow, or they can't at a membership area because, they've just created a program, or maybe they now have a resource library and they just have no clue where to put it. They have outgrown their digital home. Whether it's because of limited functionality, workarounds that they've been doing, patching together things on their site. This is generally an indicator that they've outgrown what they have and they really need to upgrade., and positioning evolves too. So if your site is reflecting a beginner brand. Just visually or just by the tone of the voice and now you are truly an established expert within your space, that disconnect will absolutely stunt your credibility you can't have positioning that is outdated, so you have outgrown your site if you are not showing up as the expert that you are showing up like literally and in person. And just to continue, if you are delivering premium results, but it looks like your site was built in 2009, there's a credibility gap. No one wants to hire, let's say a brand photographer whose own. Brand images are like one headshot taken after their wedding, right? Who you can tell they're wearing a wedding dress as one headshot and you're like, aren't you a brand photographer? Like, have you never done your own brand photos or, and I hate to pick on. Website designers, but I've seen this many times, website designers who just haven't updated their site in five or 10 years because they're doing so many clients' websites and theirs are, it's working for them, especially from a messaging standpoint, let's say. But it looks a little outdated and that needs to change. And one simple little way is if current achievements or updated client results, or maybe a media feature never makes its way to your website, you gotta remember those authority signals matter, especially for premium positioning. if you are an interior designer and you previously worked in the suburbs, let's say, and you have moved your way into the big city, working for some like. Big corporate gigs, you want that to be shown on your website. You don't want Sally's house, , a cape from, the 1940s to be your only portfolio piece. You want that coworking space that just opened in one of the new and upcoming parts of your city. You want the updated workspace that was recently renovated after Covid. You want that on your portfolio. You don't want the random Cape House that you did the last time you took pictures of your work. And the same thing goes , for speakers. You know, get those speaking gigs on your site. Get the logos of all the clients you've worked with. You really need to prioritize social proof to be current., all right. Final section here. And that is just strategic misalignment. It's the big picture., where is that alignment between your business goals and what's actually being shown? If you have set clear business goals for the year, but your website isn't designed to support them, that's misalignment. So for example, if your goal is to sell more group programs, but your web website is primarily promoting one-on-one services. There is a disconnect. If you wanna actually read a good case study about this, I just posted one about working with a former client, Kim Jones, of Kim Jones Alliance, and she is a coach who works in the executive and corporate world. And one thing that we had talked about when we updated her copy, , was just the idea that her audience has not necessarily split. But grown. So yes, she still does work with individual, contributors. Also, she works with organizations, so we needed to go in there and we needed to make sure that there wasn't that disconnect any longer. And that we did update the site to showcase that she can work in multiple ways within her own agency and within being a coach. And I think it worked excellently. if that's something where you feel like you're struggling, that would be a good case study just to check out., Other things like missing key offerings or having, , outdated service descriptions, maybe not having a process. Maybe if you have a lot of line items on invoices and your clients need to understand what's included. Well, if that stuff's not included on your site and that's a purchasing decision for them, it's important to put there, jumping back, let's say that poor goal tracking could potentially be an issue that people don't connect with their site. If you're following and tracking KPIs for your marketing, you need to make sure your site is on there. And, and an easy way to do that is just Google analytics, like, or, or fathom analytics. You know, if you're not using Google products. What's happening on your site If you are not tracking it, please make sure that you do that, because that's the only way you're gonna see the correlation between your website and those business goals that you set., there's some more future growth limitations. When your website can't support where you want to go, like adding courses, but your website platform can't handle that. Or if email is a big goal for you this year, well, if you're having integration problems, that is costly, that is a website working against you, you wanna make sure that your website can integrate and connect with tools like your email platforms, which is obviously what we're just talking about. But also other things like your CRMA booking system, your analytics tools, maybe even things like Airtable, if you're collecting specific types of data or if you have actually, , used your website as a host for your courses, whatever it is. Scaling issues can become growth ceilings. And you want a website that can help you move from your early phases of business into your growth phases of business. And I know that's a lot. Those are like five major sections with multiple different issues that showcase ways that your website is working against you.. The tricky part of these issues is that they tend to compound over time. I don't wanna just sound like a broken record here, but it's the truth. What starts as tiny misalignments, they grow into more significant business problems if they're unaddressed, and that is why I recommend doing a strategic website review at least once a year. I am here just reminding you again that you can get on the wait list for spring, clean your site, and that's for my DIYers who listen. That's for my middle ground people who both DIY, but also hire things out because doing this, blocking out the time now to make this an annual practice will allow you to go through these warning signs and honestly assess currently where your site stands. Catch those issues that you may be having fix them so you're not allowing them to silently sabotage all of your growth, but also make this a repeat process so that you know the, the time is happening every single year to review these things., all the My Done for you listeners. I can do this for you. It's as simple as booking a website audit so that I can review all of these different things. The user experience, the site navigation, the messaging, the design, the technical elements, the business, how it functions with their business growth. Those are things that I can do for you so you don't have to be bogged down. By all of this stuff when you are, keeping an eye on your website and really wanting to make sure that it works as a good salesperson for you and as a sales team, I should say, not just one salesperson, but your website should be your sales team. And I don't know, I, I know this sounds corny and silly, but it just makes me sad to think that. There's one process, one honestly, low cost process that can get your business performing better and that is regular maintenance. It's as simple as booking a website audit. It is as simple as joining me, in my annual spring clean Your site workshop that I do. So get on the we wait list. I'll put the link for the website audit within the the show notes as well. You can literally book that now., I talk you through everything I recommend to you because I want you to leave those calls with a clear action plan for how to improve your site or even ways that we can work together so I can do it for you. Alright, enough sales here. Let's finish this episode just with a quick reminder. Your website. Really, really, truly should be working for you. It should not be a pain in your butt, and if it is not actively helping you reach your goals, it is absolutely time for a change. That's it for today. If you found this episode helpful, then please leave me a review or, share it with a business friend of yours because they may also be struggling with these same issues. And if I can help them either by, you know, a one-on-one audit, or by having them join my spring clean your website challenge, I would love to help. All right, that's it I will be back next week where we'll keep talking copy and if you have gotten tired of hearing just little old me on the podcast, I'm sure you'll be thrilled to know that I have some guest showing up with me next week to talk about different things that we can improve on our website. See you then.