By Matt Prados

Today, it seems that everyone and their mother think they can design a website. And the public at large believes if something shows up on the World Wide Web, it’s a website.

Here’s a little-known secret — not everything on the Web is a real website.

Why is it not a real website? The reason is because a website, to a professional, is a sales and marketing tool. The purpose or type of sales and marketing of a website can vary widely, but it should never be the purpose of just having a website.

Your profession, model of business, or niche will typically determine what the purpose of a website should be for you. You can and always should try to think outside the box to find any opportunities that others are missing because they follow the crowd.

You are a chiropractor and your purpose is to deliver your service (chiropractic) to your local public, and deliver it in the volume you need to receive the exchange needed for the quality of life you want.

So what should a website do for you? It should in some way contribute to achieving your purpose. How can it do that? Your website should be able to be found by your local public, then deliver enough communication — no more or less than needed — to get that local person to contact you.

Many chiropractic websites violate this formula and have way too much information, with most of the information being duplicated from a book or pamphlet that has been around forever.

Let’s chat about conversion

What is conversion? Simply put, it is the percent of people that arrive on a website that take the desired action the website owner wants. The sad fact, however, is the average website converts only 1 percent to 2 percent of its traffic to take action.

It is probably safe to assume your site is producing the same poor results. So what can you do to improve your conversion rate?

Here are the top 10 things that cause poor conversion.

1. Too much data.

2. Phone number is not clear on the site.

3. You don’t tell the visitor to contact you.

4. The visitor cannot get a feeling for who you are based off the website.

5. Your site doesn’t communicate in your visitor’s “language” because there is too much “doctor talk.”

6. You site plays music. (Not everyone agrees on what is good music.)

7. Your site is overly artistic and distracting.

8. You can’t look at your site as if you have never seen it before and know exactly what to look at and what to do without