How Having A Bad Website Can Hurt Your Business
Running your own business, you’ve leant one thing when it comes to generating new business – referrals are king! – nothing beats a happy customer telling a friend how good you are and what an amazing job you did for them.
BUT it doesn’t always work that way – the referral opens the door (pretty wide usually) – but here’s a sad scenario that is made even worse by the fact you won’t even know when it happens.
A happy client of yours refers a prospective client to you – a pretty warm lead by any ones standards but unfortunately, before contacting you, they do what everyone else does — they visit your website to check you out.
And that’s where it all comes to a grinding halt… the warm lead just turned very cold – your website fell well short of the standards they expect so they kept on looking – unfortunately at your competitors. You don’t know anything about what has happened but instead of giving them confidence your website did just the opposite. They just quietly clicked the back button and decided to look elsewhere.
So, January, start of a new year and a brand new decade is as good a time as any to take a good, critical look at your website, or better still get someone else to do it – you are far too close to it to be objective.
So, in general terms what are the keys to a “good” website? Obviously, a lot is subjective but there are quite a few things that common sense says just work.
A few basics to start with:
Prominently display your address and phone number and make it easy for people to contact you via email or the contact form.
Make sure the contact form works and don’t demand too much information too soon – they’ve only just met you after all. You can always offer them something in exchange for their email address - reports or white paper for example
Provide a good user experience for visitors – make sure the site is easy to navigate and not cluttered with irrelevant content that distracts from your core messages.
Include details (and a picture) about you – people buy from people so don’t hide, it’s your company and they want to know who you are
Display testimonials from actual customers, with their pictures if available.
Keep your site’s content up to date - visitors also want to see content that is current and relevant
Obvious but make sure your content is free of typos and grammatical errors. Nothing screams amateur like misspelled words and poor English.
So that’s the basics out of the way, but don’t assume your site is perfect, a quick look through a random selection of SME websites shows how often people get things wrong. In this day and age your website is your shop window – make sure it reflects your business in the way you want it to.
So let’s assume you’ve got the basics nailed and we can move on to stage 2 - looking at the design and build of your website and highlighting things that can be a real turn off for potential customers.
Working with a broad selection of SMEs and their websites, there’s one question I always ask upfront – “who did your website?” – and there’s one answer that fills me with dread – “Oh I got a friend of mine/my brother/my sister to do it for me”. They may well be top level website designers but usually not and that’s where the problem starts.
Some Common Website Design Mistakes That Can Hurt Conversion - 75% of consumers admit that they judge a business’ credibility based on their website design – it needs to look up to date and be consistent in order to give confidence
Poor website loading speed can be extremely harmful to businesses -most consumers expect a web page to load in 2 seconds or less. 79% of shoppers reported that they would not return to purchase from a slow loading website – it’s just annoying and shows you are not thinking about the user experience.
Websites must be mobile-friendly and optimized for all devices. Last year web browsing on mobiles accounted for over half of all web traffic globally (excluding tablets) so it’s essential that your website performs at it’s best in all browsing locations
Website clutter is a huge turn off for potential customers - too many Flash animations, ad prompts, auto-play videos, background music, etc etc all ruin the look, feel and performance of your site and can mean a poor user experience. Less is most definitely more.
Poor site navigation, unclear headings and confusing calls to action all lead to poor conversion rates - confused, frustrated prospects don’t buy.
Some Top Tips In A Nutshell:
Headlines - quickly explain what’s in it for your potential client – they are interested in one thing, “Can you help me with what I need?”
Build your credibility through customer testimonials and make them easy to find.
Make sure your site is friendly for all devices not just PC. This makes a far better user experience as well as helping search rankings
Good navigation is intuitive and simple and makes it easy for visitors to quickly find what they need.
Cut out weak and fluffy language “We’re the best,” “we’re the cheapest,” “we’re the most innovative,” tells your potential customer nothing.
Use of strong images enhances your site and can make it look very professional. When possible, use your own custom images.