What’s the point of having a website?
As an entrepreneur and marketer, the main goal of your website is to get people to sign up for your email list or to buy a product or service.
That’s it.
Every page on your site and every piece of content you produce should lead people to one of those two outcomes.
Unfortunately, a lot of marketers forget this.
And we build sites that conflict with that goal.
We cram a bunch of widgets and graphics into the sidebars.
We plaster “Follow Me” social media buttons all over the place.
We have banner ads and popups jumping out of every corner of our site.
Then we wonder why our website isn’t converting.
all that stuff is just Website clutter
And like regular clutter, it serves no purpose whatsoever.
Actually, wait, it does serve a purpose.
It serves the purpose of keeping people from clicking the “subscribe” or “buy now” button on your site.
The only thing it’s doing for you is killing your conversion rates.
But how can something as innocent as widget in the sidebar or a social media button lower your conversion rates?
clutter Distracts Your Visitors
When someone lands on your site, you want them to consume your content then take the next step (sign up for your email list, buy your product, read more articles etc.).
What you don’t want is for them to click on something else and leave your website before giving you their email address or buying from you.
You don’t want them to get distracted.
And when you have a bunch of links and widgets in your sidebar, or push people to go check out your social media profile, they get distracted.
And they’ll start interacting with whatever it is instead of doing what you wanted them to do in the first place – consume your content and convert.
Once they go check out your Facebook profile, you’ve lost them.
They’re down the Facebook rabbit hole, where there’s a million other things going on.
They’re not coming back to you website to read your article. And they’re definitely not signing up for your email list.
So make your content the sole focus on the page.
Get rid of the distractions and make it as easy as possible for people to read your article then subscribe to your email list.
Clutter annoys people
The other day I’m surfing Twitter and click on an interesting article. Here’s what happened when I tried to read it…
- The whole screen immediately turns into a welcome mat opt-in…
- 2 paragraphs later another popup asks for my email address…
- Then halfway through the article something jumps out of the bottom corner trying to get me to opt-in again…
- Once I’ve finally had enough and try to get away from this stupid site, I get hit with an exit-intent popup.
I know you’ve been there. And I know you were as annoyed as I was.
So why are you doing the same thing to the people who land on your site?
Why are you badgering them with popups and banner ads and social media buttons multiple opt-in offers?
People don’t come to your site for that crap.
They click on your article because they want to read it.
They don’t want to have to fight through popups and banner ads and all the other stuff you have cluttering up your site.
All they want is to consume the content they clicked on and get on with their day – so let them!
Let them get through your article before bombarding them with optin offers.
And maybe give them a reason to want to sign up instead of just pummeling them until they reluctantly give in.
Clutter Slows Down Your Site
All those plugins, widgets, sliders, graphics, popups and social media buttons that you think look cool, also require a bunch of code.
And that code bogs down your website and causes your pages to take a lot longer to load.
You might not know this, but website speed is a big deal.
Especially when it comes to people staying on your site.
If a page on your site takes longer than 3 seconds to load, you’re in trouble.
No one’s going to stick around that long to read your article.
They’ll just click the back button and move on to the next article that doesn’t waste their time.
So get rid of all the clutter bogging down your site and keep the focus on your content.
Because when people can quickly and easily consume your content, they’re more likely to subscribe to your email list.
It’s time To Get Rid Of The Clutter
It’s not serving any purpose except to keep people from subscribing to your email list.
So get rid of all the crap on your website.
Give people what they came for – an unobstructed way to consume your content.
What you’ll find is, the easier you make it for people to consume your content, the better your website will convert.