4 ways your website is letting your business down

When your business website is built well it is a valuable business tool. It generates leads and sales, offers a good user experience, and is a good representation of your brand and its values. If you feel your site is underperforming it could be due to a variety of reasons… but we have highlighted below a few of the most common reasons where your website may be working against you. All of these issues affect your site’s ranking on search engines in addition to giving your visitors headaches.

No SSL – No Trust

Site Secure Location (SSL) was introduced to prevent unencrypted information from being accessed by hackers. Specifically, this was when users entered sensitive data into a form and submitted it. Depending on the form, information submitted could be, name, address, age, credit card details, email address. Everything needed to commit identity theft and fraud.

If you do not have SSL enabled Google Chrome displays ‘Not Secure’ and a ‘ⓘ’ symbol in the address bar. Other browsers show similar messages. This can and will damage your site and business. Your visitors will be reluctant to submit information and some may even conclude you’re a spam site. If you have yet to migrate to HTTPS ensure you make this a priority.

Slow Loading Speed

Given the rise of mobile use, it is essential your website loads quickly. People are impatient and if it doesn’t load straight away they may click off it and go elsewhere probably to a faster loading competitor.

If you feel this could be an issue you may want to give your site a speed test. The easiest way is to use Google’s free ‘Test my Site’ tool and see what rating it gives you. If it is rated as slow over 4G you may want to approach a web designer to give your site a much-needed push.

Poor Navigation

More sites than you may think have poor navigation. This results in visitors not being able to find the information they want, are unsure how to proceed, and this costs you in terms of generating leads and sales.

Some key features of this could be a poor or hard to notice call to action. Difficult to find products and information laid out in such a way that everything looks like a mess. If you feel your site could do with a navigation improvement talk to us. We know what works and how to implement it.

The better sites have information that is easy to find, laid out in an intuitive way. The site is easy to use and the visitor doesn’t really have to work out how to use the site to find the things they need. Moreover, the site’s design lends itself to mobile use which is becoming the dominant device of choice to use the web.

Broken Links, Typos, Incorrect or outdated information

Every business needs to be looking after the site’s maintenance, ensuring all of the links land on the pages the users expect and ensure that the information is always up to date and correct is essential. This tends to be a job that is put on the back burner, but it really shouldn’t. This is a serious issue especially when visitors cannot find the information they want or even worse, given the wrong information. They will lose patience with your site and trust in your brand.

How should I make sure that this doesn’t happen to me?

It is critical that the person/s you entrust to build your business website is able to take care of these things for you. An SSL Certificate, website speed and usability is a job that your web designer/developer needs to do for you. As for the content – most modern websites are running on what we call a “content management system” such as WordPress. If that’s the case, you can easily take care of the content of the website to make sure it is always up to date and current. Ensure that your web designer/developer takes adequate time to train you in the management of such system.

If you feel your site is letting your business down get in touch with us. We have years of expertise in web design and up to date on the latest trends. Click here and start your project with us.