You don’t have a traffic problem
Founders tell me they need more traffic. Then I open their website, and within a minute I can usually show them where the traffic they already have is leaking out.
You can spend thousands on ads and SEO. If the page they land on is built for a machine instead of a human, conversion drops immediately. That was the idea behind this workshop at Wolves Summit in Warsaw.
The five-second test
Show your homepage to someone for five seconds, then hide it. Ask what you do and who it is for. If they can’t answer, your value proposition isn’t clear yet. No tool or plugin fixes that. Only better words do.
The red flags
In the session we went through real startup websites from the room. The same problems kept coming back: a headline that sounds smart but says nothing, three different calls to action above the fold, pop-ups before the visitor has read a line, slow pages on mobile, and forms asking for far more than they need.
Where people hesitate
Every extra decision is a place to drop off. If a user has to think about what to click next, many of them won’t click at all. Walk through your own site as a first-time visitor and note every moment you pause. Those pauses are your to-do list.
Thanks to everyone who put their URL on the big screen. That took courage, and it made the session.
