Performance Review: Assess Your Website by Answering These Questions

You have 50 milliseconds to make a good first impression on your website. That’s fast. Roadrunner fast. Speedy Gonzales fast. “Can’t touch this” fast. You get the idea. That also means that if your website sucks, you’re losing countless opportunities every day because you made a bad first impression. What do you do about it? I’m glad you asked... We’ve compiled a list of questions for you to ask yourself about your website. They aren’t overly complicated but grade primarily the visitor experience. Most visitors aren’t tech savvy...they just want quick, easy, and simple answers to the questions that drove them to your website, to begin with. We’ll help you explore those. This will give you a solid basis for conversation when asking your webmaster to make changes for you. 

And a quick side note: any good webmaster worth his or her salt will know how to optimize your website. It should be done automatically, as the site is being built. But in the event that it wasn’t, SEO is something they can do on the back end. That’s why, for the purposes of this blog, we won’t broach the topic of search engine optimization - that’s a whole separate conversation (or probably an ebook). If you have questions or want us to assess your website’s SEO, let us know.

So grab your nerdy glasses, your white jacket, your clipboard...and let's get started. 

Website Visitor Questions

For this first list of questions, you’re off the hook (until you read the answers). This list is for you to print off and hand to someone else. Actually, a bunch of “someone else.” Give this to a random sample of people. How many? You could send it to a database, but that would get unwieldy. We recommend a group of anywhere from 10-15 folks who wouldn’t mind helping you out by going to your website and answering a few questions. It’s best if they fit the profile of your potential customers. It can be anyone...just not employees of the company.

Ask them to rank the following questions from 1-5. (1 low or 5 high...or 1 high and 5 low...doesn’t matter to us as long as it’s the same for every question).

1. What’s the first thing I see - what stands out?
   
   
2. Can you quickly tell what the business does? Is the primary message clearly stated and understood
   
   
3. Can you easily find contact information?
   
   
4. Is the navigation easy to understand and find your way around?
   
   
5. What are the top 3 impressions you get from this business in looking at their website?
   
   
6. What is the call to action? What is the website inviting me to do next?
   
   
7. Does the website load slowly? Did you find broken links?
   
   
8. Is there anything about the website that frustrates you?
   
   
9. How was your experience overall?
   
   
10. Would you return to the site? Why? For what reason?
    
    
11. What do you like most about the site?
    
    
12. What would you change or do differently to make it better for customers?

Website Conversion

This list of questions is now for you to answer. These are designed to gauge how your website converts leads. Remember, your website is more than just a pretty face. It should be doing something...welcoming new visitors and returning visitors, converting leads, engaging consumers, answering questions, etc. You won’t need to rank these. This will be pulled from data you should already have access to through Google Analytics or the marketing software you’re using.

1. How is my website traffic? New visitors vs returning visitors?  Organic traffic?
   
2. What keywords am I ranking for? What critical keywords am I missing out on?
   
3. What’s the average number of pages visited? Time on site and bounce rate?
   
4. Are my CTAs and forms converting to the degree that I want them to?
   
5. Is my website generating leads/sales to the degree that I want it to?
   
6. Is it optimized? New content regularly, alt text, meta descriptions, correct header use, etc.
   
7. How’s my mobile version? (Go to your website on your cell phone) Does it look good, work well, and is user-friendly? 

Engagement

Engagement is essential for visitors. A website should be something they can use to interact with your business. Gone are the days when people visit a site, look at it and leave. Now, they expect you to be available on demand to answer questions, provide support, or help make buying decisions. Remember, people are busy and have little patience...if they can’t get an answer or find what they want quickly...they’ll move on to someone else. 

1. Does your website have a chatbot or a live chat option?
   
2. Do you have forms sprinkled throughout your website that give visitors an opportunity to convert?
   
3. Do you have conversion options for different stages of the buying funnel? Not everyone will be ready to buy or schedule an appointment the first time on your site. But they might want to subscribe to a blog or download an ebook.
   
4. Are there links and CTAs on every page? No page should be a dead end. Every page should have at least 2-4 opportunities to click on something and explore something else.
   
5. Are there broken links? 

Things to Avoid

This is a very brief list of some of the things that make our web development team roll their eyes. 

Does your website have cheesy stock photos that feel forced?

Make sure images follow your brand, or might be a good idea to hire a professional photographer for a day to capture real-world images from your business.

Do your website design elements overshadow the message?

Sometimes a designer can really geek out on fancy elements on your website that don’t work well for you. I’ve been to websites before that were SO fancy, I actually had to download different software - i.e. Flash -  just to be able to read the site. Nope. Not going to happen. I left and never went back.

Does your website have walls of text?

Don’t puke words onto your website. Your site should be easy to skim and have the right balance of color and imagery to tell the story succinctly. Then help them find where to go or who to contact for more info. 

So...that’s our list (for now). As technology grows and changes, we’ll probably be adding to or deleting from this list, but it’s a pretty good start. Have questions? Call us. We’re happy to help.