Why your website does not create leads and what to do about it.

Why Small Business Websites Don't Work (And What to Do About It) 

Are you pouring time, money, and energy into driving traffic to a website that simply doesn't convert?

In this episode, Steve Mills breaks down the brutal truth about small business websites. Most owners obsess over Google SEO, Google Ads, Facebook Ads, social media, and email marketing to drive visitors: completely ignoring the elephant in the room. Sending traffic to a non-converting website is like pouring water into a leaky bucket.

Discover the 2 Keys to Website Success:

1. Traffic: Getting the right prospects to your digital door.
2. Conversion (CRO): Turning those visitors into paying clients and qualified leads.

Learn actionable website conversion rate tips that will instantly transform your online presence from an expensive digital brochure into a relentless lead-generation machine.

👉 Ready to scale your business? Join the upcoming Results Mastermind Intensive starting September 11, 2026 for just £299 (backed by our 90-day performance guarantee): https://results-mastery.com/events/mastery-intensive

👉 Automate your marketing with the Results Mastery Hub: https://results-mastery.com/results-mastery

👉 Access Free Business Resources: https://results-mastery.com/free-resources

Ready to build your lead generation system? Book a free one-to-one strategy call at results-mastery.com and benefit from nearly 30 years of experience helping thousands of businesses in hundreds of industries to create an average of 45% growth within 12 months.

Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:13

Hello. If you've got a website, then I am ninety-nine percent sure that it's not creating leads. I see this so often, and I've done so for over 31 years that I've been helping and advising over 10,000 businesses, and I've worked in over 50 different industries helping people and business owners to uh create more leads. I create an average of 45% increase in leads within 12 months. Now that said, today I'm here to talk to you about a specific area of marketing, and that is CRO or conversion rate optimization. And uh it's something that's it's almost like the hidden thing in the world of websites. You know, websites uh are pretty much universal. Every business owner uh pretty much has a website, and yet most of them don't win any business. Now, what they do do, and they're pretty good at, is getting traffic to the website. So they'll use social media, LinkedIn, uh advertising, um, they'll use email and so on and so forth, with a purpose of getting people from A to B from wherever it is, perhaps on LinkedIn, to go and visit their website. And that's great. The problem is that they're visiting a website that doesn't turn visits into leads and sales. And so, in a way, it's just like taking all that effort and often all that money and just flushing it down the toilet because it doesn't work. Today's video is all about what to do about that, how to improve your CRO, your conversion rate optimization. As it says on the wall behind me, what to do if your website doesn't create leads. Now, anybody who's thinking, well, you know, I've got a website, but you know, I don't want, you know, it's it's a brochure site, it's not about that. To be quite honest, that's absolute BS. You know, you've probably spent several thousand pounds. I met a lady once who'd spent 50,000 pounds on this. What was a fantastic website? 50 grand. And she'd come to me because she'd had it six months and won no business. No business 50,000 pounds, won no business. When I asked her what she'd done to market it, and uh she said to me, Well, nothing. I spent all the money on getting this, you know, fantastic website. You know, that's not a good return on investment. And being a Yorkshireman, I'm always uh talking to my clients about the their ROI, their return on investment. Are they getting a good return on investment? So if you're not getting a good return on your investment, then it's time to uh uh time to take action and time to listen. By the way, just to introduce myself, my name's Steve Mills. As I said, 31 years now helping businesses to improve. And to be honest, you know, you can't be that bad at your job if you're stuck at it and you've won business yourself for over 31 years. I learned my skills and my trade from the world's leading sales marketing, um business growth experts, and I pass that information on to my uh to my uh small business clients. So that said, uh just bear with me one minute while I share my screen and get everything set up. I got a few slides to show you, and I got some great ideas that are going to make a vast difference to you and your business and your website uh if you uh take on board my ideas. But I will just tell you, because this is true. A lot of people come to a video like this, they get to this point and they think, oh well, you know, I'm busy, I need to go and do something, and you know, they miss out, which is I think is really sad. And I also, even worse, get people who go to the end, think it was really good, and then do nothing. It's like you've just what you know, at least the people who disappear off haven't wasted the time. The people who stayed and then done nothing have uh you know got nothing from it, really. So uh, you know, if you uh get to the end and you think that what I've said is of value, then I'd strongly recommend that you get in touch with me. I'd recommend that you book a meeting with me. And uh to do that, go to resultstery.com and uh and book a meeting. Uh let's have a chat, see what we can do and how we can help you to overcome not only conversion rate optimization, but get you that 45% growth in your business. Anyway, on with what we're talking about now. So um just bear with me a second. Okay, right, here we go. Right, so welcome everybody uh to Results Mastery, that's the name of my company. Um, with me, Steve Mills. Uh, today we're gonna be looking at conversion rate optimization. Are you spending a fortune in time, money, and effort getting traffic to your website and winning the leads because you're driving them to a website that doesn't convert. Let me just say, if you are, you're not alone. Uh, that happens to a lot of businesses. And uh one of the things I do is to help solve that problem. So uh you're gonna get some great ideas. I'm not keeping anything back. I'm gonna tell you exactly what you need to do in order to overcome conversion rate problems. So uh I'm not gonna read that, but that's just a little bit of information about me. As I've already said, I've been around for a long time. Um, I'm really good at what I do. Um, not saying that to be big headed, but just a fact. I get an average of 45% growth. I've worked with over 10,000 businesses, and uh my record growth was uh 42 million pounds a help to client to create. And uh he tells me the commission check is in the post, but it's not arrived yet, but I'm sure it will any day now. Um, okay, onwards. Um, more, better, and new. This is something I picked up from a guy called Alex Armosi, who's one of these like leading, uh world-leading experts in sales and marketing that I learned so much from. And he talks about marketing uh as having three keys to it. One is to do it better, to improve whatever it is you're doing, whether it's your you know, optimization of your website or your LinkedIn marketing, your emailing, your advertising, whatever it is. Once you've got it better, it's a matter of just doing more of it. Let's keep doing what we're doing, what's working. And you know, for advertising, for example, just spend more on advertising. Once you know that for every pound you spend, you're getting 12 pounds back. Just keep going and uh doing more and more and more. Uh, lastly, new. This is the stuff that you're not doing, that you need to do, and you need to test in a small conservative way and make sure that you measure everything that you do. So I thought I'd just put that in there as an example. So your website's job. This is where we really start, where we really get into it. Uh, your website's job is to convert, not to look impressive, it's to create leads. And one of the problems with that is that your website was designed by a designer, you know, who likes to make things look pretty and beautiful and eloquent and all those other words that I could come up with. Um, my job is to turn that into something that converts. You know, traffic does not fix the problem of a website that doesn't uh persuade, that doesn't convert. And spending time, money, and effort getting thousands of people to a website that doesn't convert is a waste of time, money, and effort. A visually impressive website and a converting website are simply not the same. They're a different website. Now you need to make a decision. Which type of website would you like? Do you want one that looks nice and pretty, or do you want one that creates leads and sales? The largest gains often come from a number of high impact decisions. And I'm going to help you to make some decisions about what you're going to do, how you're going to do it, and how you're going to measure those results. On the last line there, it says focus is clarity, and that is so incredibly true. Uh, we need to focus on it. We need to make sure that the website that we've got is clear. How many times have you been to a website where you've gone on there, you've spent a minute or two maybe looking round it, and at the end of that, you have no clue what that uh company does? I've done that so many times you wouldn't believe. I just don't know what they do. What is it that they do? Um, you know, it's just a nightmare. And the next one is action or specifically calls to action. You know, what is it? If I asked you, what is the when somebody arrives on your website, what is the one thing that you want them to do? Now you might have two or three things, but I'm talking about the number one thing. If you go to my website, the number one thing I want you to do is to book a meeting with me. That's the that's my end goal. I don't necessarily expect people to go to my website and give me a load of money, although some people do for some of my lower-end services. They put their credit card in and pay me to join my Kickstart program, for example. Um, but what I really want is a meeting with them so I can talk to them, find out about their business, find about what they're doing in marketing and sales, define what's working and what's not, what we can work on, and then talk to them about how much uh my help would be. So um that's what I want, and that's really, really important. Um now, behind that, I also want to maybe some people are not ready yet for a meeting. Uh, they're they're here to have a little look. And I want them to maybe sign up to perhaps download a report, uh, book on a webinar or an event that I'm running. I want them to uh have a look at some videos that I've got on my site that are like free training videos. I want them to utilize some of the software that I've got that will help them to grow their business anyway. I quite like them to go to my blog and and have a look at that because there's some great tips and ideas on that. But my ultimate objection, uh sorry, not objection, my ultimate objective is to get them to sign up to something, to give me their contact details in exchange for something. And and within all that, we need to measure. Measure measuring and learning are uh within the in the same world. And one of the biggest mistakes that I see with businesses, they do not measure. You know, how many people uh make inquiries as a result? If you get a thousand people to your website in a month, what does that equal? No inquiries, one inquiry, ten inquiries, thirty inquiries. What are the numbers that sit behind your website optimization? Um and and once you know that, you know, you can start thinking about improving it. Uh the same could be true of uh downloading a report. I've got a report on my website. Let's say I don't know, I'm a landscape gardener and I write a report called the 10 biggest mistakes that people make when considering landscape gardening. And uh the question is I get a thousand people to come to my website. How many people download the report? And if that's two or twenty or two hundred, um, that's a major difference. So we've got to make sure whatever it is, even if it's 200, how can we increase it? What can we do to improve the effectiveness of what we're doing is a real key uh that I talk about all the time. So here we go. Conversion beats traffic every time. Absolutely. You know, you could spend a load of time and effort getting more people to your website, and so what? You know, it don't really matter. You can't put uh website views into a bank, as far as I'm aware. Uh, only thing you can put into the bank is cash, and uh the only way of creating cash is to create leads and meetings and then sales, uh, unless you sell in Mars bars where you can just sell them and go straight to the cash. But anyway, so uh number one, then let's have a look at this traffic uh conundrum. Um firstly, ad platforms are auctions, you know you're gonna spend money on that, and the problem with that is that you really need to make sure that you know, let's say, for example, you spend you spend, I don't know, a thousand pounds uh to get 500 people from Google to your website. So that click that visit to your website has cost you two pounds. You get the maths? I'm sure you do. So two pounds for uh uh get somebody to the website and you get 500. And at the moment that equals five meetings. Five meetings, let's say you are getting some meetings, but you're only getting five. So if you're getting five, then that meeting is costing you two hundred pounds. You get five meetings for a thousand pounds in advertising. Are you with me? So that's a very expensive. If you could improve the number of meetings, you could reduce the cost of acquisition, the cost of getting that meeting. So we need to be working on that by improving the conversion rate. Sending paid traffic to an unclear uh page that people don't understand is just is just a waste of time. You might as well go and take the cash and flush it down the toilet, or better still, go and give it to charity so that somebody else can benefit. Because you're not doing all you're doing is creating traffic. So really important. Judge the site by understanding an action, not by winning design awards. So your website, it doesn't matter how good it looks, how great it is, how much people like it, all that matters is uh people understand what you do, and they take action on that by doing something, booking a meeting, downloading a report, etc. etc. Identify two or three decisions that actually move conversion. So this is what we're gonna look at now. So, what are the couple of things that you could do right now, excuse me, right now to uh actually improve your conversion rate, your conversion rate optimization. Let's go and take a look. Okay, so number two the important thing about this is something called above the fold. What do we talk? What do we mean when we talk about above the fold? Well, those of you who are old enough will remember in the good old days, and still today to some extent, um, people bought newspapers and uh you'd see them on the shelves, and often they'd be folded, they wouldn't be the whole page, you'd just see the top part of the page, and that was known as above the fold advertising. That was always the most expensive advertising, and uh was always uh the most important part of the newspaper, the the front page at the top, that's where all the best headlines, stories, adverts, pictures, and so on was uh kept. In the modern world that we live in now, nothing has changed. It's except this is the most important part of your website. Probably the most important place of your website is your home page above the fold. And the fold is when people have to scroll down. So it's the bit that they see before they scroll down. That is the most important part, and it doesn't only concern the home page, it's whatever page somebody lands on. So when they go from the home page to go and have a look at what you do at your products and services, they've still got an above the fold bit. So it's the first thing they see when they look at the my Kickstart program, for example. So it's a really, really important thing. So let's just have a look at some of the ideas we can use in order to uh improve that. So, firstly, if we're going to improve things, what we don't want to do is to improve 48 different things at once. Why? Because we don't know which one has made the huge difference. So we might, for example, start by testing different headlines. We might do what's known as a split test, where we change the headline over a period of time. Uh, we then might go to the hero uh image, so the main image that maybe sits behind or at the side of your uh headline. Uh and I can tell you that I personally have helped one particular company. Uh I've helped loads of companies with this, by the way, but one particular company, I changed the headline and I removed the one that they got and I wrote six words. Uh that month they made five million pounds, five million pounds from the headline. And the six months before, they'd made no sales, none at all. Not a single lead had they created. And uh just by changing six words on a web page, uh I managed to make them five million pounds. I say that not to impress you, but to impress upon you that this stuff works. This is really powerful. Let me give you an example of a really, really, to be honest, crap headline. It's called Our Services or About Us. Let's be clear, nobody gives a rat's ass about you. All they care about is what you can do for them. They don't care about me. Why would they? They're they're here on your website to find out how you can help. And that's a really, really important defining thing. If you look at your website, you've probably got we can do this and we can do that, and we what's known as we all over the page, uh, instead of talking about the results that you can achieve. So test your headlines, definitely. Test the use of in images, avoid doing 40 things, as I've said, uh, and look at each week trying to improve it by a little bit. Just look at a couple of little improvements, maybe even one improvement every week, compounds over a year to produce 52 different improvements in your website. That's how you get good. That's how you get good at sport, isn't it? You know, if you're playing tennis, you're not gonna get good at foot at you know, your back and your forehand, your slice, your serve, your defense, your attack, your footwork, your everything. You're gonna do it one bit at a time. One training session might be on your serve. So one training session, as far as your website's concerned, might be on your homepage, or the use of videos, or the addition of testimonials or case studies, uh, improving your calls to action. Uh, loads of things that you can do to improve uh your website. Uh, I saw a website the other day, it was actually a client of mine's. And uh he had a button, a little button in the top corner, and it said uh book a review meeting. Book a review meeting. And I said to him, Look, I wonder whether we could come up with a better headline than that. This is like a a sub, it wasn't a headline for the page, it was just a little button on the corner, and it said book a review meeting. He said, Well, what do you mean? I said, Well, what about book a free review meeting? Do you think that might get more people booking a meeting? Might do. Okay, so how could we improve it even more? I said, Well, why don't we say book a free financial review meeting? That might work, might it? That that you see can you see the difference between book a review meeting to book a uh a uh financial uh review meeting. Or what about book a no obligation financial review meeting? So you tell them look, they're not in any obligation. Uh we sort of know that anyway, don't we? But you with me? Now I don't know which one of those would improve results, get more people clicking and booking a meeting. But what I do know is by testing the use of different things, different words, different colours, different sizes, location, instead of it being in the top corner, pull it front and central, make it bigger and bright orange or yellow or whatever, make it bright and stand out. That could be really, really powerful. It could be then that you add a video to that page, you know, uh saying with you saying, Welcome to my page, welcome to my website, please take a look round. And by the way, if you're interested in a no obligation free meeting with me, I'd be very happy to talk to you uh and uh conduct a financial review of your business. If you want to do that, click the button just below this video. Do you think that'd do better than having a little button in the corner that says book a review? I think it would. So, really uh important thing to do. Okay, next one. Uh, pass the five-second test. You know, people are going to come to your website. If you've got Google Analytics, which you should have on your website, you'll be able to see your results. You know, how many people visit your website, which pages do they look at, how long do they stay on your site, and what's the bounce rate? The bounce rate, by the way, is the number of people who come to your site and bounce straight off it. Uh, if you've got people where uh or you've got a result on the site that says the average person stays on your website for 3.2 seconds, you've got a problem. You need them staying a little bit longer than that, don't you? You know, at least for a couple of minutes. Okay, some of them might stay for five, 10 minutes, others uh coming on the site, this you know, like half a second and disappearing off. So we need to pass that five-second test. Um, to do that, uh, we've got to make sure that our first screen, the first thing they say uh see above the fold and below it, is uh for you to explain who you help, what you do, and the result that that is available, or the result that you can uh provide for them or help them to produce. Really important. Make the value understandable, make them you know, understand what you can do. If you go to my website, you'll be shocked to hear that it says I can help you get a 45% growth in your business within 12 months. I tell them who's this for? Who's it for? It's for small business owners. What is the result that you can expect? Well, I don't know. It depends how much you turn over, but I do know it's 45% growth on average. So, you know, this stuff is really, really powerful. Um, make the value understandable within five seconds. So they don't want to have to search for it. People are very lazy uh on uh the internet, and what we often do is we have a load of blurb all about us and what we do. We've been established 15 years, we're one of the most highly respected law firms in the south of England. Uh, we can help you with move in-house, blah, blah, blah. But but what we really want is to know what it is that you're going to do for us. So uh avoid polished but in personal AI visuals, uh, whether they are or not, you know, the the the corporate, you know, with with six beautiful young people giving each other high fives in a stunning boardroom, which is clearly not yours, you know, that's like the first time you're lying to them, isn't it? You know, they come to your website, they see this incredible office with these stunning, stunning people, and uh they're thinking, when's he gonna lie to me again? You know, so it again, really, really important. Okay, number four, sell the result, not the website. Okay, so let's have a look at this. Uh, the using the what I call the value equation, um let's look at what you need to do in terms of creating an outcome, perceived likelihood, um, divided by the time delay, effort, and sacrifice. Oh, sorry, uh clicked on that and didn't mean to. What do I mean by that? What I mean is what is the dream outcome of a client for you? I don't know your business, but for me, people come to me when they've got one of one of three problems. They either don't have time to do their own marketing, so their dream outcome is that their marketing gets done for them, or they don't get uh the the modern digital AI type marketing, and they they want to learn how to do it, they they want to do it themselves and they want to learn how to do it. So it's like either they haven't got time to do it or they don't know what to do. They're the two biggest problems. And the third one, and this happens um probably to about 10% of people, they say, Well, I've not really done any marketing. Um, we've been winning business from referral and repeat business, that things have started to slow down. I wonder why that is, because they've not kept up to date with modern digital marketing methods. So once I know what those pro three problems are, they've fallen behind the times, they don't have time, they don't understand what to do, and they need help. So that's the outcome. And and ultimately, none of those things really, all they want is more sales. That's ultimately what they want, but they've got those three perceived problems. Uh, they've then got to think about well, what's the likelihood? You know, Steve tells me that he can help me, but you know, I didn't really know him until I went to his website. So, what's the likelihood? How can how can I how can I uh help somebody by presenting the fact that I can help them more clearly? Well, I can show them things like you know, 150 testimonials that I've got on my website. I can show them things like uh 15 video testimonials on my website, I can show them case studies of what was happening, what what I did when I came in, and what were the results, where I'd helped a business turn around within nine months and get and double the size of the business in that time, where I helped an accountant go from 15 to over 75 leads within three months, and so on and so forth. Um, and we've got to measure that or position that against the time delay, haven't we? You know, if if somebody uh is thinking, well, it all sounds good, but this that's gonna take time, isn't it, Steve? You know, we can't expect that much in the first 12 months. Well, you know, with some people, no, but I would expect significant growth within, I would expect somebody to pay for my service within the first two months, at least, probably in the first month. So 12 months you join my results mastermind program, 12-month program, you'll have earned enough money uh to pay for it within the first month guaranteed. You know, that that's that's really what we're looking at by uh you know reducing and uh explaining that time delay. And then they've got to think about well, how much effort am I gonna have to put in? What's it gonna cost me and is it all going to be worth it? And we've got to have again words and ideas that are around that to make sure that that's uh really clear. So uh that's that. Number five, remove the risk before the click. Uh, really, again, a really important one. As you can see there, I've got my dream outcome that I was just talking about, perceived likelihood of achievement, uh, time delay to minimize effort and sacrifice. It's all about minimizing that. So um let's just take a look at this, uh, put the proof where the doubt uh peaks. Um, testimonials already mentioned that, case studies, review scores, real numbers, replace, you know, satisfaction guaranteed. Be specific. You know, if I don't make you at least 50,000 pounds in additional income within 12 months, then you know, whatever it is, you get your money back, you you know, you you you know, I'll continue to work with you, you know, whatever it is that you're gonna guarantee. Place proof directly beside or beneath um uh the call to action button. Again, really important. Uh prove it. Don't tell me how good you are, prove how good you are. Uh, that's a really good tip for your website. Lower the action threshold until clicking feels safer than postponing. You know, when you think about it, you're not competing against competitors, you're competing often against doing nothing, carrying on as you are. That's your biggest competitor that you're competing against. So uh let's talk just for a minute. I'm coming to the end now, uh, but uh pretty website versus a converting website. Pretty but passive, uses generic industry language, looks like every other website, relies on stock or in personal AI imagery. A converting website explains the value within five seconds, sells the customer uh desired result, uses real people, proof and specifically, specific can't say it, specificity, um, and shows distinct process and point of view. Uh by the way, there's a saying that uh Jordan Belfont, uh who was the wolf of Wall Street, uh famously made, and that is that people buy from people that they know, like, and trust. They also buy from companies that they know, like, and trust, and they lastly buy products and services that they know, like, and trust. So that's the job of you and your business and your website and your marketing is to get people to know, like, and trust you, your company, and your products and services. So uh let's look at the four keys to SEO then. What are they? Uh firstly, you need to think about what are you going to do? The people who are better able to convert those eyeballs are going to be the ones who are able to compete and win. So we've got to get the eyeballs. You've got to get people from you know, LinkedIn and Twitter and Instagram and all those other social media sites, from your YouTube channel, from your podcast, um, from advertising, um, and the people who get them there and then convert them are the ones who are going to win. Um, action is the key. You know, spending time with me today hopefully has been interesting. Um, but it won't burn you any business whatsoever until and unless you take action. Uh, if you're worried about whether it'll work or not, you know, I've got 10,000 businesses, I got 150 testimonials, um, you know, I've got videos, I've got everything I can show you to prove. Uh, you know, I've been around for 31 years. I'm not gonna have had that level uh of success in that time if I can't do what I say. So uh, and it's the same with you, by the way. So think about what you're selling, um uh, you know, uh how you're competing against and not doing anything, you know, and uh uh selling against that big obstacle, which is risk. Okay. The idea could make you a fortune. Make them an offer that is so good that be that it'd be stupid to refuse it. This this idea, this one idea, this is from Alex Armose in his book, which I'd strongly recommend by the way, 100 million offers, Alex Armose, great book. He sold uh, I believe it's five million copies in the first three days of it coming out. That gives you some idea how good uh that book is, and one of the key things that I took from it is to make people an offer that is so good that they'd be stupid to refuse it. So that in itself, I think, is well worth your participation in in today's uh video. So that's it. Make your next website change, make sure it actually counts. If you want to know more from me, if you want to ask me about your website, if you want to talk to me about your marketing, if you want to create an average of 45% growth within 12 months, then book a meeting, go to my website, results.com, and we can talk about how to get you from where you are to where you want to be. Thanks very much for listening.