Even just ten years ago, having a dedicated and up-to-date website wasn’t necessary for most companies.
Even just ten years ago, having a dedicated and up-to-date website wasn’t necessary for most companies.
Should you run a small business in town even a larger business throughout several towns, your website used to only need a phone number and other ways to contact you.
Now, with e-commerce, online ordering, and so many other factors in play, it’s no longer feasible for you to ignore your online presence. And if you’ve already got an older website running, that may not be any better than not having a website running at all.
Many of your customer’s first experience with your business will be through search engines as well as your website. And if you’re ignoring these five signs, you may be losing more business to bad web design than you may have initially thought.
Here are five signs that you need to recognize in order to improve your site’s user experience.
- Your Website Doesn’t Work on Mobile
If your website only looks good on an older computer, chances are high that your site looks either terrible or completely broken on mobile.
Take some time to use a few different cell phones from a few different people, and see what your website looks like on each. If you’re running a website with poor wireframing, for instance, you may find that the elements of your site look jumbled and completely indecipherable on some or all mobile devices.
The fix? Find wireframe tools that can help, and make sure that the wireframe you’ve chosen can work on just about any platform, on any screen, and with any aspect ratio. Otherwise, your prospective customers may be convinced that your website is broken, and your business is either not running or not up to date on what’s important to them.
- Your Website Has No Identity
Can you easily find the logo and branding of your company right on the first page of your website? If not, you can find that your website blends into the deluge of other sites that may be your competition.
Your brand identity, whether you acknowledge it or not, is incredibly important to your overall company image, as well as sales. Your branding tells your customers that—not only are you a unique business with an experience that cannot be replicated anywhere else—but that your website is more than capable of handling their needs.
You may have recently updated your website with an all-in-one website service like Squarespace or Wix. However, many of these sites offer templates that can be found on millions of different websites across the internet. Should you want to stand out, you’ll need better branding.
- Too Much (or Too Little) SEO
Your SEO is, of course, one of the most important aspects of your website by a wide and considerable margin. And if you don’t already know what SEO is, you may be running your website with two hands tied behind your back.
Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, is the parts of your website that can be found, cataloged, and organized by Google. For instance, if your business sells tires, Google may recognize the “tire shop” keyword on your site or meta descriptions and pull you up whenever people Google the term.
Vying for the front page of Google is one of the hardest things to do—but some companies go too far in the name of getting clicks. Too much SEO, such as padded-out paragraphs with keyword-after-keyword, tend to create worse problems for your site ranking as well as your customers’ website experience?
Our advice? Work with SEO techniques that focus on unique, curated content and let Google do the rest.
- Your Customers Cannot Contact You
Gone are the days of skeleton websites forcing customers to call the available phone number to get a hold of you. If you run a small business, and especially if your business is larger or sells lots of products, you need to make it easier to contact you than forcing a phone call or email.
The internet is all about instant gratification—so give your customers the easiest possible path to success by installing features and design choices that give your customers instant access to what they need.
For example, if you run a service and want to give your customers options for customer service, why not install a live chat functionality that pushes directly to your customer service department?
In any case, you also need to make sure that your company’s social media pages are accessible right from your website—and the other way around. Interconnectivity between the various aspects of your company’s media presence is crucial—and the last thing you want is for a customer to say that they can’t get in contact with you.
- Your E-Commerce is Non-Existent
Finally, if your company makes sales that can deliver direct to people’s homes, or even makes sales over the phone that can be picked up later, you absolutely need to make sure your E-commerce is on point.
Getting E-commerce running doesn’t have to be a hassle—and you don’t have to outsource shipping and packing to other companies, either. A solid E-commerce setup will simply make it easier for your customers to get orders to you without ever having to pick up the phone.
All you’ll need to do is check your end of the E-Commerce setup for orders to make and ship, and you can build an army of patrons that have never stepped foot in your storefront.
However, all of this is only possible using proper E-Commerce techniques as well as working on the other four signs of problems often associated with business websites.
At the end of the day, only you know what sorts of web design techniques are going to be best for your business. Yet at the same time, we hope you consider these five signs and work to make your website as great as it can be for your customers and visitors.
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