Is Your Website Helping You, or Hurting You?

Let’s say that you have a hot sales lead. Before contacting you directly, they visit your website to check you out! Then… crickets. They don’t call for an appointment, no email inquiry, nothing. Sadly, there’s a good chance that your poorly designed website scared them away.

Instead of providing value and establishing trust as it should, your business’s website created doubt, uncertainty, and confusion regarding your businesses. Unfortunately, just because you have a website, doesn’t mean that it is necessarily benefiting you. In fact, without your website being of a certain level of quality, it could be hurting you more than it is benefiting you. But fear not, there are steps you can be aware of, and adopt, to combat this risk!

The Importance of a Quality Website

Your website is the number one way your business can make a quality first impression with potential customers, sales leads, future employees, and stakeholders. Whether people visiting your website are doing so directly, or organically through discovering you online through a particular search engine, it is important that you are engaging and delighting your customers properly after you have attracted them to your website.

By offering a well-designed, modern site that is easy to navigate, that also offers quality and helpful content for your visitors, you will see a much higher conversion rate for sales leads compared to if you put forth minimal effort with your website. Here are some points to support this claim…

Website Design That Can Hurt Your Conversion Rate

Statistics show us that people visiting your site have higher standards than ever before when it comes to their experience on your website. Here are some things related to your website design that you should consider, and statistics to back them up:

• Website Design and Navigation: According to web credibility research from Stanford, 75% of users admit to making judgments about a company's credibility based on their website's design.
• Website Load Time: According to comScore, 79% of consumers reported that they would not return to purchase from a slow-loading website.
• Mobile Friendliness: The number of users accessing content online through their mobile devices has surpassed those who use a desktop.
• Website Accessibility: 75% of Americans with disabilities report using the internet on a daily basis (Pew Research Center, 2021), meaning your website should be designed and structured in a way where those living with a disability can navigate them effectively. 

Website Content Formatting That Can Hurt Your Conversion Rate

As Google continues to perform search engine updates, scanning websites and the content that lives on them for quality and accessibility, it is not only important to make sure that your website is performing well for your human visitors to give them a positive customer experience, but for “robots” as well. If your website isn’t up-to-snuff in Google’s eyes, your poor website grading could be burying you far under page one of search results, hurting your organic traffic. Here are some things to consider putting time and energy towards in regards to the content living on your website:

• Header Formatting: When it comes to your website’s content, such as landing pages and blogs, header formattings (such as H1 and H2 tags) are of utmost importance. Structure your content around your headers, and also make sure the copy of your headers are containing the proper keywords needed.
• Video Formatting: Online video is continuing to be a crowd favorite. This being said, Google has made it clear that in order for better website grading, it is important to embed your desired videos living on your pages through YouTube.
• Alt-Text: Alt-Text relates to the naming of your graphics and images living within your content, helping define the image on the back-end of your site, helping those with disabilities better navigate your content. This all goes into the accessibility of your website to all people.
• Content Quality and Length: When it comes to content, you don’t want it on your site if it is not serving you well. So, if you have pages that are poorly formatted, outdated/containing incorrect information, poorly written, etc, they should either be fixed or removed from your website.
• Effective Call-to-Actions:  You must let your visitor know what you want them to do next on your site. Be direct and specific, and think about the most important action steps you want your visitors to take on your site. And make sure they are directing visitors to the correct page!

Needless to say, creating and managing an effective and professional website can be difficult for one person or even a small team to stay on top of. That is why it is important to have a trusted web advisor and developer by your side to help your business’s website be and stay relevant and successful. At fuze32, our full-service marketing services include a team of experienced web developers that have created and managed quality websites for a wide variety of businesses. Contact us today to start a conversation, we would love to hear from you!