Why is my website not converting: find the step

A visitor does not read your page top to bottom. They ask three things in order: is this for me, what do I do next, and what does trying it cost me. The first is answered by the headline and the first screen, so a headline that could describe any product loses people who came from a search for a specific job. The second is answered by one clear main action. The third is answered by the form, the price and the account wall. A fourth exit is a fault: a button that does nothing, an error, or a page that stalls.

• Your first screen: does the headline name the job the searcher wanted, in their words?
• Your main button: one action, labeled with what happens next, such as Start free trial.
• Your signup form: every field asked before any value is shown, and whether the next step needs it.
• Your plans page: a way to try the product that does not need a sales call first.
• Clicks that do nothing: a button, menu or submit with no change, a spinner that never ends, or an error.

Analytics shows how many visitors leave at each step, not why. Start from the page most visits land on, then follow the next step most of those visitors reach. The largest drop between two steps is your first suspect. Do not start by rewriting the hero because you wrote it last and know it best. A drop on the landing page means a question failed on arrival. A drop at the form means trying costs too much. A drop right after a click, with an error or no change, means a fault. Fix the step that loses the most visitors first, then check what the simulated visitors did at that same step.

Your headline reads clearly to you because you already know the product. A stranger reads it cold, with no context, in the moment before they decide whether to scroll. Look at the words that brought them: the search phrase, the ad line, the email subject. Then read only the first screen and ask whether that same job is named there. If the search was for a specific job and the headline names a category, the visitor cannot match the two, and they go back. Compare the headline with the words the visitor typed, not with what you meant to say.

Landing page testing

A page with a header menu, a hero, a demo request, a contact link and a plans link has no next step. The visitor scrolls, opens a menu, comes back and leaves. Check whether the main button says what happens when it is clicked, such as Start free trial, and whether the page it leads to continues that same action. If menu links get clicks while the main button gets few, visitors are looking for something the page does not put in front of them.

A visitor who wants to try the product still leaves when the page asks for a phone number, a company size and a job title before showing any of it. Count the fields on the first form, and cut every field the next step does not need. Look for a card, a sales call or an account requirement that appears before the product is visible. Confirmation emails are part of the cost too. If the code arrives late or lands in spam, the visitor who just signed up gives up at their inbox. A simulated visitor can reach the payment step and no further, so the final card entry still needs a real person.

The first run shows one drop. After the fix, the drop often moves to the next step, so the same visitors need to go through again to show whether they got further. Rerunning the same visitors is how you see whether each change helped. On paid runs, visitors can sign in with a test account you give them, or open a protected preview with a site password.