7 reasons why your website just isn’t working for you

why-your-website-is-not-working

A website is an indispensable tool, it can go a long way in improving your business. Yet, having a “bad” website may do the exact opposite. We have identified 7 key issues. This article does not offer solutions, it just paints a picture for you with facts & figures (where applicable). A comprehensive follow up article with solutions is in the works.

Your website is slow

A slow website is costing you a lot. No one will wait for your slow website to fully load when a million and one alternatives live one tab away. According to kissmetrics 40% of people abandon a website that takes more than 3 seconds to load. The following are good examples of what page speed improvement can do:

  • Amazon increased revenue by 1% for every 100ms of improvement.
  • Mozilla got 60 million more Firefox browser downloads per year, by making their pages 2.2 seconds faster
  • The 2011 Obama campaign website showed that a 3-second page load time reduction saw a 14% improvement in onsite campaign donations, this equates to an increase of over $34 million.

Your SEO score is so low that you are literally invisible

If your customers and prospects can’t easily find your business on search engine result pages, there’s big a problem. They say the best place to hide a secret is on page 2 of Google. Your business is not a secret.

According to imforza.com, 75% of users never scroll past the first page of search results. The world wide web is highly competitive. You should always strive to be on page 1 for your target keywords.

Your website is not mobile optimized

In 2015 Google reported that more searches take place on mobile devices than on computers in 10 countries. According to an earlier study by Google, 67% of users are more likely to buy from a mobile-friendly site than a non-mobile friendly one. As of 21st April 2015, Google started using mobile-friendliness as a ranking signal.

The bottom line is that a mobile friendly website = more business.

Your have an outdated / poor design

94% of people admit their first impression of a website is based on its appearance. 75% of users make judgments about a brand’s credibility based on the website design. The best content can be rendered useless if the presentation is poor in terms of design.

You don’t update your website

We are going to touch on content and software updates. If you are using a Content Management System (which you should definitely be using in this day and age), keeping up with software updates is critical. Updates enhance security & performance. Running outdated CMS versions puts you at risk of hacking & sub-standard performance.

I cannot overemphasize the need for fresh and updated content. Google bots love frequent content updates, Frequent content = Frequent indexing. This means fresh content may have an effect on your SEO.

Customers and prospects heavily rely on your website for information about your business. Any changes in the business should be accurately represented on the website. The last thing you want is an outdated representation of your business.

You Information architecture is not well thought out

If users cannot quickly find what they want, you are in trouble. Information Architecture has a substantial effect on your website’s usability, user-friendliness, and SEO.

You haven’t installed any type of web analytics

If you don’t understand your website traffic, you are pretty much “shooting in the dark”. A good analytics tool will give you reliable traffic data so that you can start making data-driven decisions about your website and business in general.

<
Twofour Carats Ltd

November 16, 2023