Why Some Business Websites Don’t Deliver Value
You know you need an online presence, but you really don’t know how your website will deliver excellent value for your business. Websites become the online face for businesses and, in some cases, the first contact with potential customers. With so many consumers going online and searching for companies and products before purchasing, your website is vital to your success.
As you start to invest in online marketing, your business website will become even more important. Pay-per-click advertising, search engine optimization and many other forms of advertising are designed to drive traffic to your website. However, many business owners neglect to provide a good user experience on their website. This will drop the value your website can provide your business and make it harder to gain new customers.
Why Business Websites Fail
After investing thousands of dollars in ad buys, SEO, social media marketing and other types of marketing, you still don’t get enough leads to make it worth it. The easy thing to do is blame the advertising, not your website. However, the most likely reason you’re not getting the leads you want is your website. Here are a few reasons business websites often fail.
Poorly Designed
You may automatically think a poorly designed website looks cheap and doesn’t use cool features or tools. However, a poorly designed website can use all the latest technology and still be poorly designed.
Design is all about the target audience and often, simple is better. If your websites doesn’t fit with the target visitors you may struggle to hold their interest. Sometimes it’s the wrong color choices or the wrong headlines. Other times, it’s the layout or navigation that simply doesn’t fit with what your target audiences wants.
Odd Navigation
Search engines use navigation as a deciding factor in how high your site will rank for search terms. When your navigation doesn’t make much sense, it’s not only confusing to the search engines, but also the visitors. With a confusing navigation, most visitors will leave your site and head to your competition.
Landing pages must be clear about what you offer and guide users to the pages they need on your website. Think about your website as a huge guide. You need to properly place links in places where it’s easy for visitors to find the information they need and the products that make sense with that information.
Slow Load Times
One of the biggest culprits for business website failure is slow load times. When a visitor comes to your website, you have only a few seconds to grab their attention. When these precious seconds are wasted waiting for the site to load, you don’t have much of a fighting chance. Not only will visitors leave, but also the search engines will drop your ranking due to bounce rates and slow load times.
Bad Checkout Process
A complicated checkout process will send visitors away right in the middle of making a purchase. The checkout process should be very straight-forward and as fast as possible. The longer it takes and the more difficult it is, the more likely it is a customer will leave before finishing the process.
There are several reasons why your business website may not be providing the value you need it to provide. If you want to get the most out of your business website, you need to make sure it’s simple to use, provides great content and appeals to your target market.
