When a website deliver’s results it can be one of the most profitable investments your business can make. A website can act as a salesman that works twenty four hours a day seven days a week three hundred sixty five days a year. A good website will not only look give your business brand recognition but it will convert. What happens when you invest all that money in a website that isn’t converting? What is the reasons for it? Did you hire a web design company that does a poor job? Is it your content or products and or services? These are all valid questions. That is why our professional Phoenix web design team came up with 7 of the most common reasons why websites simply does not deliver. If your website is not delivering these 7 steps are the first things you should check.
- Does Not Appeal to Your Target Audience – Many business owners have the web design company do everything. You may think that is what you are paying them for however, the problem with this is that you know your target audience better than anyone else. By letting your web design company design your website with little or no input from you it is likely going to be a design that is not best for your target audience. If a website doesn’t appeal to your target audience you are going to have a difficult time ever converting.
- Navigation is Confusing and Frustrating – When a visitor comes to your website they expect it to be easy to find what is that they are looking for. If they get to your website and are having trouble navigating it they likely will not spend a whole lot of time trying to figure it out. They will most likely leave your site and go to one of your competitor’s website that is much easier to use. People do not have the patience that they used to when the internet was run by dial up connections. Now people expect a certain level of quality and an easy to use navigation system is definitely one of those things.
- Content – Content is so important and not just for search engine optimization. Your website needs to have updated and relevant content that your visitors want to read. The issue that you are beginning to see on many websites is that they are writing their content strictly for the search engines and this may be great for your SEO campaign however it is not what your visitors are wanting to read. Having content that is that interesting so that your visitors want to read it is critical to the success of your website. I would suggest that you go through and read the content on your website so that you can make sure it is something that your website visitors want to read.
- Slow Loading Times – Again, if we were still in the time of dial up this may not be as big of issue but we are not and this is a huge issue. Some of the things that will slow your website down are; uploading images that are too large, server issues, bad code, etc. Whatever the reason your website is slow you must contact your web design team to make sure that it is fixed. If this was the issue then once you fix it you should notice your conversion rate is going up.
- No Call To Action Buttons – Call to action buttons are key to any conversion rate. People like to be told what to do and where to go. By simply using call to action buttons you can lead visitors through your website and directly to the conversion pages. This is one of the issues we see all to often. This may not be something as a business owner you are aware of but your web design team should point this out to you.
- Shopping Cart Does Not Work Properly – This should never ever be an issue however we see this time and time again. If you get somebody to your shopping cart ready to check out the deal should almost always go through. However, if there are issues on your shopping cart issues it may cause potential customers to leave your site frustrated or cause them not to trust your website. Many times if they lose trust not only do you lose the sale but you will lose the customer for good. One of the more common issues that we find happen on the checkout page is having an SSL issue. This will leave a no security error message which will scare many of your customers off for good. You do not want to lose the customers that you worked so hard to get.
- Not Mobile Friendly – I have said this time and time again. Mobile users are passing the amount of people surfing the web from desktop and laptops. This has made a mobile friendly website almost as important as just simply having a website. If your website is not mobile friendly then there is likely a large portion of visitors that are leaving. Why would you want to spend all the money on a new website and then only target half of your visitors? This does not make any sense that is why if you want to increase your conversion rate you must get a mobile friendly website. We would suggest going with a responsive design and not going with a mobile website. There are many reasons for this but a couple important reasons are that a responsive website is one website and doesn’t have to be updated twice and secondly is that a responsive website will update based upon the device that you are using.
These are 7 common issues that we see on websites that cause a website not to deliver. Some of these issues are quick fixes and some of them will take a little more time. In either instance they are issues that need to be fixed if you expect your website to be successful.