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Have you ever launched a website and not gotten the response you were hoping for? Maybe you’ve had the copy rewritten on your website over a 2-month process only to find your website still isn’t pulling its weight. Even more worrying, maybe you’ve spent several months having your website redesigned and spent several thousand in the process.
Don’t worry, all of that effort and/or money was not spent in vain.
Thinking in systems
Just because something is not working, it doesn’t mean the whole system is broken.
If your car has a fault, say the spark plugs ain’t sparkin’, we would never throw out the whole engine, let alone the whole car. That would be wasteful, and not very smart.
Instead, we take our cars to someone who spends their days analysing and studying vehicles, because they know a lot more than we do about mechanics. Maybe they run some tests, or maybe they’ve just seen enough engines to know that 80% of the time, it’s the spark plugs that need replacing and the rest is fine. Using their insight, skills and knowledge, they can diagnose what part of the car is causing us issues.
The spark plugs. Found ‘em.
Your website and online presence are not so dissimilar from a car, or any system for that matter. A small component of it can have an issue. But, instead of taking it to a mechanic, we might take it to a website strategist. That eloquent new copy may not have been a waste of money, nor the website redesign.
You may have made some improvements to the overall system, but there may be something else unaddressed which is throttling your system.
A bottleneck, if you will.
What is bottleneck thinking
"Bottleneck thinking" in the context of analysing a website and online presence involves identifying the single most restrictive factor preventing better performance, conversions, or growth.
This method focuses on the area that has the most significant impact across all connected parts of your online presence. That’s looking at your website and everything it connects to.
Yes, there could be several things that aren’t running at optimum performance. But, focusing on the most restrictive part of your online presence and fixing that will fix your tightest bottleneck.
Once that has been released, we can move on to the next one. Our aim? Get to a point of a nice, smooth, flowing system. One that carries traffic from your different sources, to generate leads at your different touchpoints and eventually conversions.
Benefits of bottleneck thinking
Taking things one step at a time, and focusing on the most significant improvement we can make has a lot of benefits.
- You gain focus. Rather than trying to fix 10 things at once which could be an issue, you tactfully identify the biggest hitter and take it out.
- You feel less overwhelmed and more confident as you actually have direction on how to fix your problem.
- You can save time (and money) by identifying where your resources will create the most significant change, rather than blindly investing in one area because it “could” or “should” help.
This sounds great, but isn’t it easier said than done? How am I supposed to just “find a bottleneck”? Well firstly, it helps to know where to look just like the mechanic knows to check the spark plugs.
Possible bottlenecks
To start, it’s essential to nail down the business’s critical goals (e.g., lead generation, sales, brand visibility). This is like knowing we need our car to drive first. If we don’t understand the purpose of a system, there’s no chance we’ll find the problem.
A bottleneck is any factor holding you back from hitting these targets. Your diagnosis should focus on key metrics like:
- Website traffic
- Conversion rates
- Bounce rates or visit duration
- Social media engagement
- Online brand perception and trust
- Offline brand reputation (i.e. local marketing and networking)
- Lead generation
Now, once we find the bottleneck, we need to go one level deeper. Why did the spark plug stop working? Did it overheat? Maybe it was just old and ran its life and needs replacing.
So, what is causing your bottleneck?
Key contributors to bottlenecks
Think of your entire web presence as an ecosystem. Each part interacts with the others, so it’s important to identify the core areas that could be contributing to a bottleneck.
In terms of website bottlenecks, here are some contributors to the above problems you may be facing.
Website performance
How fast is the site? Is it optimised for mobile? Is the design user-friendly? Issues like slow load times or poor navigation can seriously impact conversions. Likewise, if your website takes an age to load, that bounce rate is going to shoot up. People are impatient, don’t make them wait. That’s why we use either Webflow or custom-coded websites for high performance. Read more on those links.
Content quality
Is your messaging clear? Does it connect with your audience? Are you driving visitors to take action? Review your homepage—are your main offers and services immediately obvious, or do they take some digging to find?
Offer quality
Are you giving visitors enticing offers? Do you offer low-barrier ways to get involved with your business? Are your offers displayed in a way that highlights their value and answers any doubts? If you don’t give visitors a reason to stay, they probably will bounce. If you don’t have a service to offer them, look back at the content quality. Maybe you can offer them some valuable insights by using content marketing to get more website traffic and give more value.
Traffic sources
What are you relying on for website traffic? Are the right channels driving traffic (SEO, paid ads, social media)? There are several things you can do to get more social media traffic. But maybe, you are attracting a lot of people already. However, if you’re attracting the wrong crowd, even the best site won’t convert because the audience you’re trying to talk to is not arriving at your site. It’s someone completely different.
Brand consistency
Is your tone of voice and branding aligned across your website, social media, and email? Disparities between these platforms can cause friction. If you want people to stick around and build a relationship with you, they need to feel like the social media you is the same person as the website you.
Technical aspects
Are there any broken links, hosting issues, or technical SEO problems that might be undermining your efforts? It may be as simple as people getting lost along the way due to an incorrect link or your website not being indexed properly. If you need a quick overview of using SEO for more website traffic, read this article on content and technical SEO tips.
But… How do I actually find my own bottleneck?
Just like asking a mechanic “How could I have found that faulty spark plug myself?”, if it were that simple to pass on knowledge and experience, we wouldn’t need the mechanics, but we do.
Now, there are ways to get your problem diagnosed still.
- You can work with a website strategist (or “website mechanic”, if you will) to save yourself the time and effort of trying to figure these things out yourself.
- Or, you can learn how to find your own bottleneck and give it your best go at fixing it.
I’m going to write a lot more on bottleneck thinking, how to find bottlenecks and importantly, how to fix them.
A simple exercise
But, if you've subscribed to my mailing list, The Lumin Letter, the day after posting this blog I will be sharing an exercise to try and find your bottleneck.
This first exercise will rely on objective numbers and be specifically geared towards service-based businesses with an online presence. We’ll be using our website analytics to look at some core bottlenecks while comparing them to some standard benchmarks to see how we compare.
If you’re reading this too late and the exercise has already gone out, that’s okay. If you subscribe now and drop me an email mentioning the analytics bottleneck exercise I’ll email you the exercise myself.
You’ll get my email when subscribing to The Lumin Letter, but alternatively, you can use the contact form too.
Conclusion
Bottleneck thinking is the process of finding the most significant contributor within your online presence that is preventing you from achieving your business goals. It can appear in multiple places, but by tackling the most significant problem first, we gain clarity and save time.
Bottlenecks could appear as low conversion rates, low traffic, high bounce rates, low engagement or a dry lead pipeline.
If you want to take the first step in finding your bottleneck, I hope to see you in my newsletter where I can send you a free exercise. Also if you want to get a free look at your website…
Do you have a website that you want checked out? Get your free New Moon Audit to learn how your website is dimming your shine in just 15 minutes. This is an easy first step towards a strategy-driven website you’re proud of and the first part of our process towards a more confident, effective and professional online presence.
- Article categories:
- Website strategy
- Business and marketing
