Most underperforming bio pages are not badly designed. They are simply asking too much of a stranger with three seconds of patience. Here are the nine faults that show up most often, and what to do about each.
1. Everything is equally important
Twelve identical buttons is a menu, and a menu asks the visitor to do the work of deciding. Pick the one thing you most want tapped and make it visually different — a featured link with an image, or the only button in your accent colour.
2. The labels describe the destination, not the benefit
"Website" tells a visitor nothing. "See this week's menu" tells them exactly what happens next. Write labels as the outcome, not the noun. "YouTube" becomes "Watch the workshop tour". "Shop" becomes "Prints, from £18".
3. The best thing is below the fold
One phone screen is roughly four or five blocks. Anything below that is seen by a fraction of your visitors. If your newest release is seventh, it is effectively hidden — and your statistics will show you exactly how badly.
4. Dead links nobody has checked in a year
Campaigns end, shops move, events pass. A page with three links to things that no longer exist reads as abandoned, and visitors extend that judgement to you. Check every link quarterly; it takes four minutes.
5. No photo, or a photo nobody can see
Visitors arriving from a social profile want a half-second confirmation they are in the right place. Your face or your logo does that. A tiny, dark, low-contrast avatar does not.
6. A wall of text at the top
A paragraph of introduction pushes everything tappable off the screen. One line. If you genuinely need more, put it lower down, below the things you want people to click.
7. Colours that fail in the real world
Pale grey on white, light text on a busy background image, or an accent colour used on everything. Test your page on a phone, outdoors, and again in dark mode. That is where it will actually be read.
8. Static QR codes on printed things
If you printed a QR code with the destination baked into the pattern, changing that destination means reprinting. Use a dynamic code — same pattern, repointable forever, and it counts scans so you learn whether the flyer worked.
9. Never looking at the numbers
The single most valuable thing on a bio page dashboard is taps per block, and most people never open it. It tells you precisely which of your assumptions about your own audience is wrong.
The pattern to look for is not the totals but the ratio. Lots of views and few taps means the page is not converting. Few views and a high tap rate means the page is fine and you need to promote it harder. One block taking 80% of taps means the others are mostly pushing your winner further down the screen.
The fix order
If you only do three of these: cut the number of blocks, rewrite the labels as outcomes, and move your best thing to the top. Those three account for most of the difference between a page that works and one that just exists.
Then change one thing at a time and give each change a week. Start a page free if you do not have one yet.