Why Your Startup Website Is Losing Deals (And How to Fix It)

The credibility check you don’t know you’re failing

Our most important sales employee works 24/7 for no pay and closes more deals than the entire sales team combined. I am talking about the company website. An overhaul of a landing page can do wonders. But sometimes it doesn’t even have to be a complete redesign; a strategic change is often everything that was needed to go from few to nil leads to an inbox filling up!

A website is the best first impression you can make on a potential client. It should radiate trust and professionalism. This is done visually, but also technically. If the links on the website are broken, that signals sloppiness; if it takes ages to load, that tells the visitor “they might not know what they are doing”.

The wall of text problem

One major issue that I come across regularly is the “Wall of text” or “feature dump”. I get it, you are excited about your product or service and want to tell everyone about every useful thing you have baked in. Unfortunately, where you see endless possibility and excitement, most visitors feel overwhelmed and confused. How often have you surfed the web, looking for a solution to your problem, skimmed a website just to find an ocean of information, and left thinking “this is great, but how does this help me?”

So instead: solve a problem. The page headers should state the problem you’re solving, and the content explains how your service will make it possible. You probably don’t even have to rewrite most of your existing content, just give it a different structure. Move the technical feature matrix to a dedicated sub-page, force the homepage to only answer three things: what the problem is, how you solve it, and the primary business outcome.

The visual identity gap

Another issue many starters have is a lack of visual identity. The website is often considered just a tool, and let’s be honest, a hammer doesn’t have to look fancy, it just has to be able to hit nails into walls. However, if you are shopping for a hammer and are standing in front of a wall of hammers at the hardware store, to buy a solution to the problem of a wall at home with insufficient nails, how do you choose one? Do you pick the cheapest? The most expensive? Do you look at material? A brand that you like? Maybe as you glance over the endless barrage of choice, your eye rests a moment on the one with a subtle decorative red stripe on the handle. Does the stripe add grip? Probably not. Perhaps it makes the hammer hit harder? Unlikely. But your eye lingered. And it is actually priced well. And it looks like it’s made from excellent materials with good build quality. And it feels good to hold. Maybe that’s the hammer you wanted. Not because of the red stripe, that’s just what got your attention. You’re buying it because it’s a good product.

That’s what a website does, and if your page uses the same template and design language as nearly every other page, it will be hard to stand out in an aisle of competitors. You might get skipped for the slightly cheaper option that looks like it will do the same job, for less.

The small bugs that signal big problems

Lastly, we have the issue of little bugs on the page. I mentioned this in the introduction, and it is worth expanding on it: a minor bug on your page, maybe a dead link or a button where the text overflows, can be devastating for your image. In an age of extremely optimised web services, users are expecting flawless. So just a minor issue immediately signals “sloppy”, “lazy”, or even “shady” to visitors. These are adjectives you do not want to be associated with. So check your padding on the mobile version of the page and make sure nothing goes beyond the phone screen, swap those low-resolution Canva exports for high-quality SVG or WebP files, and ensure the contact and sales flows work seamlessly without clunky integrations or making the user fill out a Google form.

Sometimes less is more

I once was handed a landing page of a client who had clearly spent many hours of research and hired an expensive copywriter to scatter the page with compelling calls to action and convincing use cases for their services. There was only one problem: nobody read it. Looking at the data, 90% of users didn’t scroll past the hero section. So what was the problem? There were actually a few: for one, the page treated itself as a sales pitch but was simultaneously the only way to sign up for the platform, even for returning clients. This meant that all the ad campaigns and social media promotion had already convinced clients to sign up and all they wanted was to fill in the contact form, which was conveniently placed at the top of the form. Secondly, all returning clients just wanted to sign back up to get back into the sales flow, they didn’t care about the company’s ESG efforts and happy customers.


Another issue was the sheer volume of the page. It was over 2,000 words, so even if users had made it further down the page, next to one would’ve stopped to read four A4 pages of sales pitches. Speaking of volume, the contact form made users fill in three pages with a total of 13 questions before they could hit send.
 So what was the solution? First of all, trim the fat. It’s a shame to delete well-written content, but it’s even more of a shame if no one reads it. Clearly, the pitch had to happen inside the hero sections, as nine out of ten users didn’t bother to scroll down. Considering most traffic came from ad campaigns, it was also clear that most of the heavy lifting had been done, and we just needed to briefly remind people of the service instead of starting the sales pitch all over. Lastly, the biggest UX improvement was shortening the contact form and giving returning clients a way and place to reach out that doesn’t involve the whole initial sales flow. After three months, the amount of leads had almost doubled.

Your product is ready. You have the traction to prove it. Don't let a generic digital foundation act as a ceiling on your growth. Your site is the first thing a prospect checks after your call.

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