Your website is more than just an online placeholder; it’s the face of your business or shopfront of your store.
Every business owner or manager should ask themselves regularly: is our website working for us, or against us?
In this blog we guide you on how you evaluate your website’s performance to identify if it’s driving business growth or holding you back.
Your website should be a dynamic tool that grows with your business and helps you achieve your goals. If it’s not performing as expected, now is the time to take action. A high converting website is regularly optimised, monitored and updated to ensure it converts visitors into customers.
The Role of A Website in Business Success
A well-designed and user friendly website serves as a 24/7 salesperson, brand ambassador, and customer service representative. So it makes sense that it should:
Attract Visitors: Through search engines like Google, social media like Meta (Facebook), and other channels like paid display advertising.
Engage and Inform Visitors: Providing them with relevant, easy to digest information about how you solve the problem they’re looking for a solution for.
Turn website visitors into customers: If you’re able to see that the visitors coming to your website are turning into customers or leads your site is working - and if they’re not … there's room for improvement.
Support Retention: This isn’t just important for eCommerce websites. At any time of the day or night, existing customers can come back to your site needing more information. Providing relevant resources (blogs, guides) and support (chat bots or live chat) is a really important asset to a website for a company wanting to compete in their field.
If your website is falling short in any of these areas, it could be hurting your business more than helping it.
Signs Your Website Is Hurting Your Business
Poor User Experience (UX)
This is a massive issue for many websites as you don’t want visitors to have to think too much about what you’re able to do for them, let alone wait a long time for your website to load. Key points to monitor are:
- Non-Responsive Design: Your site must be mobile-friendly. As of October 2024, approximately 5.75 billion people worldwide use mobile phones, representing 70.3% of the global population. Website visitors expect fast page load times, and to be able to navigate through a website from their mobile devices. It’s important that when you optimise your website, you consider mobile users at every stage of this process.
- Slow Page Load Times: A delay of even a few seconds can increase bounce rates significantly. A fast loading website is expected by visitors, and should load in no more than 2 seconds.
- Difficult Navigation: Visitors should find what they need within 2-3 clicks through an easy to use navigation on your website.
Dated Design and Content
If you want to be perceived as a forward thinking and incredible business to work with - your website needs to be high quality and communicate both visually and with your content that you are just that. If your website looks like it hasn’t been updated in years or has content that’s no longer accurate or useful, you will need to improve your website.
Low Search Engine Rankings i.e. do you come up in search results?
If your website isn’t optimised for search engines (SEO), potential customers may never find your content. It’s really important to ensure you have good quality organic traffic coming to your website, and when they get there they don't bounce right off by experiencing a bad time on it.
A poor keyword strategy, absence of meta descriptions (yes it’s more common than not) or a lack of fresh content will impact your search engine results. Best you address this as soon as you can to increase traffic and improve website conversion.
No Noticeable Call To Action
Have you got clear Call to Actions (CTAs) on your website i.e. contact us, book a demo, sign up? Visitors should be guided effortlessly toward the actions you want them to take, whether that’s filling out a form, making a purchase, or scheduling a consultation. If it’s not clear, they’ll find another competitor who has easier to understand connection points. This is where Conversion Rate Optimisation comes in - once you’ve updated your Call To Actions, you can then measure if it has improved by how many people took that action you asked them to take.
High Bounce Rates and/or Low Engagement on your website
Measurements like ‘time spent on page’ and ‘bounce rates’ provide a clear picture of whether visitors find value in your site. Think of a time you’ve looked for a solution online, gone to a website and then … nothing on the landing page addresses your search need - you jump (bounce) right off and find another result don't you? High bounce rates could indicate irrelevant content or a frustrating user experience so it’s incredibly important to keep an eye on those measurements.
Lack of Trust Signals - the proof is in the pudding
Missing customer testimonials, case studies, reviews, or certifications can impact trust in your product or service. Also, a lack of secure connections in the form of Hypertext transfer protocol secure (but way more recognisable as HTTPS instead of HTTP) might drive users away, especially on eCommerce sites so it’s important to ensure your site is secure - more info on that here.
How to Turn Your Website Into a Business Asset
If you’ve identified that your website is more of a liability than an asset, don’t worry as here’s a key list of ways to remedy this:
Audit and Analyze
Use tools like Google Analytics to understand user behaviour. Where are they dropping off? What pages drive the most engagement?
Optimise for Speed and Mobile
Compress images, leverage caching, and ensure your eye catching design works seamlessly on all devices.
Update Design and Content
A modern design with fresh, relevant content can breathe new life into your site. Consistent blogging, FAQs, and updated product pages help too. Using easy to navigate templated websites through providers like WordPress is much easier than creating your very own bespoke online platform. At Virtual Marketers we have packages for website design and creation - you can find out more here.
Focus on Search Engine Optimisation
Conduct keyword research and optimise your site for search engines. Build backlinks and maintain a steady flow of new content.
Enhance Trust and Security
Add social proof like reviews and testimonials. Ensure your website is secure with SSL certificates.
Improve Conversion Rates
Use A/B testing to refine your Call To Actions and page layouts. Make it easy for users to take the next step.
By optimising your website, you’ll not only improve its effectiveness but also enhance your brand’s reputation and profitability. Don’t let an underperforming website stand in the way of your success. Evaluate, adapt, and thrive.
Need Help?
That’s exactly what we’re here for. We can run website audits, create new and beautiful websites and ensure you have epic SEO designed to get the right visitors to your site doing the right things.
.png)
