3 mistakes your website could be making right now

,

This is a digital era we live in, and in business there is an ever-increasing importance of not just an online presence but providing an online experience. Despite this there are still many businesses who are just not adjusting their online strategy accordingly.

Your website should act as a base for everything you do online. Social media, email campaigns, blogs etc. are great but it all does come back to your website.

Whether designed professionally, built in house, it was costly or free using a template, just built or built 5 years ago; here are three ways your current website might be letting you down right now.

 

It’s not responsive

Responsive design means that your website is coded to adapt to all screen sizes, which means that it can be viewed and used no matter what the device the website’s being displayed on.

According to recent Ofcom research, 44% of households have a tablet device with 61% of UK adults owning a smartphone. Mobile usage is gaining momentum at a tremendous speed so it’s vital that businesses keep up with this movement. Over 20% of Google searches are performed on a mobile device so the chances of potential customers visiting your site via a mobile device is significant; great news if your website is mobile friendly and responsive – terrible news if that’s not the case.

61% of people have a better opinion of brands when they offer a good mobile experience so by failing to provide a website that is difficult to use, unresponsive and just unsuitable to navigate on a mobile device your instantly sabotaging visitors first encounter with your company.

Beyond user experience, responsive design is preferred for SEO as it satisfies Google’s new algorithm changes and not only will it fit to current devices but it will also adapt to future devices.

 

It’s designed for you… not your customers

When hiring an agency to design and build your company website it can be quite easy to forget that although in that instance you are the client, the finished website needs to be designed for your clients. Meaning that to an extent, the functionality of the design and its ability to meet your business objectives needs to remain a higher priority than whether or not you like the colour of the menu bar.

Before any site is built it’s important to establish what do you want your website to do for your company, who your competitors are, who your target audience are/who will be visiting your website, are there any required features to be included, how does the site and what it provides support your business goals and what are your company’s grand guidelines. Fortunately, any experienced agency should go through all of this with you as it really does provide an important basis on which to build the site on.

 

There’s no call to action

Congratulations – you’ve successfully started attracting visitors to your site. Now what? What do you want them to do once they have landed on your site? Would you like them to buy a particular product? Contact you? Subscribe to your business newsletter?  You need to tell visitors clearly what the next step is and when. Your website and content should answer the question: “What’s in it for me?” and then the call to action guides them to the next stage.  A well thought out and tailored design should naturally guide a visitor to a clear call to action.

The next time you visit your website, consider if it is guilty of making any of these common mistakes, and take the right steps to fix them – you will see the difference it can have on your business.