4 Website Silent Killers That Make Visitors Ghost You (And How to Fix Them)

You're getting traffic to your website. People are clicking around, spending time there—but your inbox stays empty. No contact forms filled out, no calls booked, nothing. So you think, "I just need more visitors, right?" 

Wrong. The problem isn't traffic—it's that your website is quietly pushing people away before they reach out. There are four website silent killers turning interested visitors into ghosts: confusion, overwhelm, distrust, and friction.

In this episode, I'm breaking down exactly what each of these website silent killers looks like in practice and how they're costing you clients without you even realizing it. We'll explore why someone might land on your site genuinely interested but leave without taking action, and more importantly, what you can do to fix it. 

These aren't design problems—they're messaging, strategy, and user experience problems that you can actually address without a complete website overhaul.
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EPISODE 167.
Read the show notes and view the full transcript here: https://erinollila.com/4-website-silent-killers-that-make-visitors-ghost-you/

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Here's the 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

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Shout out to Carolyn from Maypop Creative's new social media series "Lessons from the Cheese Shop" which inspired my cheese shop example this week 🤣

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Register for Homepage Hot Seat

Date: Tuesday, November 18, 2025
Time: 1:00 PM EST

Learn what essential homepage elements make visitors convert, watch live homepage reviews, and discover the simple updates you can make to improve conversions without a complete redesign.

Register here: https://erinollila.com/webinar-homepage-hot-seat/

Transcript

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Tell me if this has ever happened to you. You find yourself looking at your website analytics. Kudos to you on that. And you see that people are actually visiting your website, like real humans have found their way to your site and they're clicking around spending some time there, but nothing seems to be coming from the their clicks. No one's filling out a contact form, no one's booking a call and your inbox. Unfortunately is more empty than you'd like. So you find yourself thinking like, what's happening? People are coming to my site. So why is no one reaching out? Well, here's what I think is happening. Your website's probably pushing people away with mistakes that you are not acknowledging. Disappearing website visitors is a real thing. It's frustrating because most people in this situation see that they're not getting conversions and think to themself instead of thinking that there is an actual problem with their conversion copywriting efforts, they think, well, if I could just get more people to look at my site and then I am more likely to get clients, the people. That are clicking on my site probably just aren't the right people, but I don't actually think that's the case. It could be, of course. I think that's what happening most of the time is people are already interested, they are curious about what you do, and they wanna find someone to help them with whatever they need, however. Something on your website is quietly turning them away before they reach out. It's not so much a traffic problem as it is an actual conversion problem. It's kind of like when you walk into a store and then something just feels. Off. Maybe it's too overcrowded or the vibe is weird, or there's too many directions between shelves and you just know, don't know what to do. So maybe you browse for a second or maybe you just politely leave. Well, that's what's happening on your site right now. There are invisible barriers, things that you might not see. Because you're way too close to your own business that make it so that your website visitors are ghosting you. Yes. I'm gonna say ghosting you a few times this week because this is the week of Halloween and that's just fun. I call these the silent killers, and there are four of them that I see that happen most often on regular small business websites. They are confusion. Overwhelm, distrust and fiction, and these four silent killers are costing you clients without you even realizing it's happening. The good news is once you know what to look for, you can actually fix this stuff, and it is not as overwhelming as it sounds. So let's figure out which one is the main culprit for your site. We're gonna start with silent killer number one, confusion. Confusion is when someone lands on your website and genuinely can't figure out what you do. And I know you're probably thinking, what are you talking about? It is right there on my homepage. I get it. Because to you it's so obvious because you think about your business all day every day. You are familiar with your industry jargon. You could explain what you do in your sleep, but people who visit your site. They might not have that same amount of knowledge or understanding. They're coming in completely cold and with sometimes little to no context, and what they're doing is they're deciding in five seconds or less, whether they're even in the right place. Now the problem here is if they have to work too hard to figure it out, they're going to leave. My example of the store, you know that you might get weird vibes in earlier if the sign on a storefront says a cheese shop, let's say, and you walk in and all you see are expensive looking crafts and jewelry. You are gonna be confused. Now the cheese might be in the back of the shop. Maybe that's just what they're selling in the front, because the store owners think that it is actually attracting more people. It's not though. It's confusing them. Same thing with your website. So let's talk about what that confusion may actually look like. Again, sometimes it's just that industry jargon that is making sense to you, but it means nothing to someone else. Or it could be really vague positioning, things like, I help people live their best life, or, I'm a strategic consultant. All right, cool. But what does that actually mean in practice? What is the concrete outcome? Who specifically is this for? Sometimes. Business owners try to appeal to everyone because they don't want to exclude potential clients or potential customers. But what's happening with that approach is that you're just kind of sounding generic to everyone. Or maybe you're talking about your process instead of what actually changes for someone. And you say things like, I use my, uh, proprietary four step framework to X, y, z. Cool. I'm glad that you have a framework. I very proud of you. But what does the end user get out of that? You know, what does it mean to them? Another option here is that maybe you're leading with credentials when really the website visitor needs to actually know whether you can solve their specific problem, not so much what your credentials are In order to do that. When someone lands on your site, they're gonna ask themself a couple of questions, like, in rapid succession, is this for me? Does this seem like it would solve my problem? Does it seem like it's, you know, going to be the answer to my need? Because obviously not everyone has a problem. Should I keep reading? Should I move on? And if they can't answer those questions almost immediately, way quicker, in the time that it took me to say them right now in this video, they're gone. They're not gonna dig around through your entire site hunting for answers. I see this all the time with people who actually serve a really specific niche because they know exactly who their ideal client is. But their homepage tries to be so broad so that they don't actually accidentally exclude someone, and because of that, they don't really connect deeply with anyone. Now you all know if you've listened to this podcast for a while, I am not a hyper niche marketer. I don't believe everyone needs to have a very focused niche with one audience, but I do think that you need to be clear who you're speaking to on your website. Okay. Before we end and move to a different silent killer here, let's just, I'll do another example for you because I see a ton of this in the coaching or wellness industries. If someone lands on a website that says, quote, transformational coaching for women ready to step into their power end quote. That sounds nice, doesn't it? But what the heck does that actually mean? What's the transformation? What does stepping into their power look like? Is this about a career confidence divorce, starting a business and which women, all women. Women at a certain stage of dealing with a specific challenge. People who identify as women, it, it all sounds good, but it does not give enough information to the person reading the copy. That right there is confusion in action. The fix is to be specific about who you want to serve and what the outcome is that you provide. Talk about actual results that someone gets, not just process and not just vague promises. Make it clear enough that. Anyone could understand what you do, and it's always easy if you have like a grandma or a parent, a a child, run it by them and say, does that make sense to you? Okay. Let's move to the next silent killer, and that is overwhelm. This one is tricky because it might feel like you're giving people options. And options are great, right? Like we want our audience to feel like they have a choice. And we want them to know that there are a couple of ways that they can work with you, but these options are actually doing the opposite of what we hope for. Overwhelm Looks like having a bunch of different calls to action that are all competing for attention. Like book a call, download my guide, follow me on Instagram. Listen to my podcast. Read my blog. Similarly, it could also be listing every single service you offer with no indication of where someone should start, or navigation menus that have way too many options. Here. Here is why this is a problem. There's research on this and it's called the paradox of choice. When people have too many options, they often don't choose from any of them. They get decision fatigue because they don't wanna pick the wrong thing and they don't really know where to start, so they leave to think about it and they never come back. Remember the cheese shop example that I had from before? If you walk in. And then all of a sudden you're seeing jewelry and crafts and all these things. You went there for cheese, like you are getting overwhelmed because you have to make the choice to like where to start, what to look at. We don't want that to happen on our website. It's fine to want to accommodate different types of people who may have different needs, but when someone's still trying to figure out if you are even the right fit, giving them 17 different paths is just gonna freeze them up. What this looks like in practice is that people will spend time on your site. Your analytics will show that it will look decent, but they don't do anything. They don't convert. They might even reach out later asking like, where do I star if you're lucky enough for them to reach out to you? And that's unfortunate because your website should answer that question. This actually happens a lot. You might think this would happen for new businesses, but this happens a lot with businesses who've been around for a while because they start with one offer, maybe add a course, add a freebie, add five more freebies. They start a podcast and they're just adding and adding and adding without clarifying anything. The homepage, just as an example, it could be any page, but the homepage becomes. A cluttered collection of a lot of the things that you've done or the services page especially, we want to check and and be able to answer. Is there a clear path that someone should take, or are there roads going in every direction? User experience and site navigation is so incredibly important to having a strategic website. If someone lands on your website, they're genuinely already interested in working with you or purchasing from you, but they might see a popup that asks for an email and close it. Then a banner about a new course, a button to book a call, something to download, something else sidebars that is too much. They're, they're standing at an intersection with roads going everywhere, and they do not know which to take. So they bounce, they leave, they don't take any. Meanwhile, you have a competitor that you're doing research on. You look at their site and their homepage, while it might share some podcast links like, and redirect them to a blog has one main call to action, book a call, like it explains what their services is and each time you move through the page, it shows them to book a call. Now this does not mean that that is the perfect approach for everyone. But who do you think gets the client the website that has seven different options of choose your own adventure or the website that makes it clear what they do and encourages the end user to book that call? It's your job to guide people down one clear path instead of asking them to choose from everything at once, especially if they're new to you. All right, let's move on and talk about silent killer number three. And that is distrust. And, and real quickly here, I'm not saying you're untrustworthy. I'm not even saying your website is untrustworthy. I'm just saying that it's giving people. Reasons why they should not trust you yet. Here's what distrust could look like on a website. There's no testimonials on the site, no case studies, no social proof of any kind. It's a lacking about Paige. Maybe you have a generic about Paige that just has a few fun facts, but nothing about your personal and work history, your experience, your education., If you are in the business of creating things, let's say you are a event planner, or you are a interior designer, there's no portfolio, right? The images that you have could be stock images, and I like stock images. But sometimes we've seen'em all a thousand times. It could be that your blog has not been updated since 2019. You have a lot of broken links or 4 0 4 pages or worst, a section that still says Coming soon. There's nothing about who you've worked with, what kind of results you get. It could be that you're this hard to find contact information. Look, you are good at what you do. You trust yourself, your clients trust you, the ones that have already paid you and that you've worked with for a long time. But the visitors that you meet for the first time, actually, let me restate that. The visitors you have not met yet, those who actually need your help with something important. They're not gonna hand over their time and money and trust without some kind of proof that you're legitimate. And here's the thing, the absence of proof doesn't feel neutral. It feels like a warning when there's no testimonials, when people aren't willing to vouch for your work. It might seem like you're brand new, and it might seem that people aren't pleased with the end result. Every little missing piece of proof is creating a tiny little dot of doubt, but those doubts add up. And people who may have been interested, they choose not to reach out because they're just not convinced yet that you are the right person for them. They may leave your site to learn more about you, maybe by going to LinkedIn, to Google to Instagram, or they might just leave your site completely. I see this all the time. It's people who are gen, genuinely great at what they do, but terrible at showing that greatness. They're focused on doing the work that they forget to talk about the work that they've actually done. But here's the thing, premium clients are looking for proof because a lot of them have been burned before. They've worked with people who have overpromised and now they're careful. So look over your website and determine what evidence is there that you are good at, what you do. Would you trust yourself based on what's visible? I. And if you can't answer that question and in the affirmative, the fix here is gonna be to add a strategic proof. You don't need 50 testimonials. You just need the right ones. In the right places. One great testimonial does way more than 20 hidden testimonials on a separate page that no one visits. All right. Trying to keep this brief. So let's move on to silent killer number four, and that's friction. This one is different because it's not about your messaging and positioning. It's more about the actual practical stuff that makes it hard for someone to take action, even if they want to. Cheese shop example. Friction could be that the door jam jams a bit when you're opening. It could be that you are doing inventory and have left boxes in the middle of the aisles. It could be that nobody is working at the cash register when people are ready to check out. Friction may look like contact forms that ask for way too much information upfront. Name, email, phone number, company, how you heard about me, budget, timeline, detailed messages about what they're looking for. That is too many feels. It could also look like no clear way to get in touch because your email is buried somewhere or there's no contact form. Friction could also be pages that load really slowly or don't work correctly on mobile, A mobile experience in general that's too clunky. Maybe the text is too small. The buttons don't tap. The forms don't work. Maybe friction is that they have to take too many clicks to get in touch with you. Especially for things if they need to find basic information like how to, how to work with you or maybe the pricing information is hidden when honestly, some type of transparency would help people decide faster. This matters because people are taking the path of lease resistance. If something feels hard or complicated, they're gonna assume that working with you is also gonna be hard or complicated. Every bit of friction is a chance for them to change their mind. Second guess and click away. I see this with businesses that built their site a couple years ago, and they haven't actually tested it recently. The assumption is that it's working fine, but they've never tried to contact themselves or they've never gone through their own processes.. So pull up. Pull up your site right now on a phone. Does it work? Is your call to action there? Is it fast, easy, clear? Then if you're used to using your phone, check it on a desktop. How many steps does it take to actually submit a contact form? How many clicks do they need to do before seeing your pricing? How many feels are on that contact form? Is any of this something that you could cut or streamline? Does the website load quick enough? Can you make adjustments to the tech that's running your site? Because you know someone could be finding your website on their lunch break. They might be interested, excited, and they might wanna reach out. But with all of these different clicks and with all of a contact form that has way too many questions, or maybe if it's on mobile and it's just really annoying to type because the fields are jumping or the text is too large, or the images are too small, it's gonna happen as they're gonna close the tab. Their lunch break time is precious to them, and they want to make this inquiry as quick as possible. So it's your job to reduce the friction. Anywhere you can make it easy to say yes, easy to reach out, and easy to take the next step. Every unnecessary barrier is costing you opportunity. You can get more information from people later, especially in a follow-up email or on a call, but first you have to get them to reach out and don't make that harder than it needs to be. So those are the four. Confusion, overwhelm, distrust, and friction. Excuse me. Here's what you need to know about them. They don't usually happen in isolation. They work together and unfortunately they compound each other. A confused visitor is not gonna stick around long enough to get overwhelmed and an overwhelmed visitor is not gonna be there to search for any type of social proof. Someone who doesn't trust you is not gonna push through to the friction to like find the, the pricing or to look for, you know, your booking forms. These things are layering on each other, and they're creating an experience where people show up interested and then leave without doing anything. But I mean, the good news is once you see these patterns, you can't unsee 'em, not just on your site, but anywhere. You'll notice when a site has no social proof and feel skeptical, you'll notice when it's a lot of friction to get to where you need to be. And that awareness is the first step to fixing your own site because once you spot the problems, you can then take the steps to address them. And none of this. Remember in the last episode I told you, you can make these changes in a way that feels good and it's not too hard because none of these things require a complete redesign. They're not design problems. They're editing problems, strategy problems. Confusion is a messaging fix. Overwhelm is a prioritization. Fix. Distrust is a content. Or a social proof fix. And friction is a user experience fix. They're changes you can actually make, and they're kind of small shifts that create pretty ginormous results. If you think your website is working against you right now, don't worry because once these fixes are addressed, you will immediately stand out. Your competitor, whether you think it or not, is also experiencing these same issues on their website too. Who's gonna fix them first? If it's you, you'll become the clear choice, the easy choice, and the trusted choice. All right. Next week we're gonna talk about what premium clients are actually looking for on websites that the bargain hunters will completely ignore and that will actually detract them from staying. We're gonna talk about why some sites are attracting dream clients who are ready to invest and others are getting tire kickers and price shoppers because there are subtle signals that separate. Find websites from premium websites because now you know what's pushing people away. Next time we'll talk about what attracts the right people, specifically the higher paying clients you actually want to work with. See you next week where we'll keep talking Copy.