Ok so you have a website. Great! Has it proved successful? Have you at the very least received enough business via your site that it has covered the cost of it’s initial development? If your answer is no, then do you have any idea why your site has been a failure?
Let’s look at some critical points on how not to make your website suck and don’t be overly sensitive and defensive about your site being labelled a failure by choosing to defend it when clearly it’s not doing it’s job.
1. Is your website responsive to mobile and tablets? No? Well sadly, you are not alone. As of posting this, more than half of all websites are not fully responsive. The mobile market is growing. 46 percent of traffic is coming from mobile users but if you are not catering for their needs by infuriating them as they try in vain to navigate your site….you will lose them.
2. Is your website cluttered? Do not try to pack every piece of information on your homepage and do not clutter any given page. Create a good balance of whitespace and try to design your page(s) to allow your users to cast their eye quickly over each page while still being able to easily find what they are searching for. Keep the most relevant part of your pages information at the top of each page and as the importance of the information drops so should its place on any given page.
3. Are you speaking like a stuffy corporation to your users? Well don’t. Communicate like a human being not a corporation. Don’t be overly clever – just be clear.
4. How often have you published new content since you first set your site live? If you have said never, well, you are not alone. Many sites out there get published and then are left to stagnate. This is one of the main reasons why sites fail. You must have a future plan for your site, no matter how small a business, there is always room for fresh, relative content to be delivered. Search engines will rank you higher if you have fresh relative content being published on your site and your visitors may well turn into repeat visitors.
5. Have you a clear Call-to-Action? The goal of your website should be straightforward; to get your visitors to take the next logical step. Do not give them too many options or none at all or they will leave. Simple call to action can be aside or below a main piece of content and could be asking them to simply click to contact you, to purchase, to watch a video, to view a gallery. Whatever the call, it needs to be clear.
6. Have you pop ups or pop unders? Think seriously about getting rid of them. It’s lazy design and many users will find it annoying and many of those will leave.
7. Have you checked for broken links? Make sure all your links are working on a regular basis. You may change location of a page but forget to change the link to it or have links to external sites that you do not control and their URLs may change. Run a link checker from time to time. Google will eventually penalise you for broken links.
8. Have you incorporated any social media? Establish your brand on social media platforms. It will build loyalty and strengthen your brand. Ensure you have integrated your social media into your main business site so that your content can be shared easily.
9. How is your site ranking on Google? If your site has been established for sometime but is still achieving poor search returns then you should start running some SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) tests. Always build a strong SEO plan into your site from the get-go so you can achieve good organic returns quickly. Tip – with a new site with a strong seo coded plan you should still avail of Google Adwords, at least for the short term. While your site is growing organically in terms of search engine results you can still get to the top of Google with a few well placed ads.
10. Is your site too me-centric? Still, too many business concentrate way too much on showing off just what a great business they are, what awards they have won, and go to overly great lengths to explain what they do. Don’t fall into this old style way of promoting yourself. Rather, concentrate on what you can do for the visitor to your site. The best businesses focus on the user.
DON’T GET STUCK WITH A SITE THAT SUCKS ! CONTACT US TODAY.
