Nowadays, everyone is staring at their computer screen at work or browsing their phones during their free time. The reason your business has a website, or should get a website, is because the internet is where everyone’s eyes are focused. If your business is not where everyone is looking, then you are missing out on potential leads and growth. But, just because you have a website does not mean you will grow your business exponentially. It only takes 0.05 seconds for a user to form an opinion about your website and users spend on average 5.94 seconds on the main page. What characteristics are users looking at that might drive them away and does your website have them?
Not Mobile Friendly
50% of all website views are on mobile devices. If your website is not mobile responsive, it will make your website difficult to navigate. If your website is difficult to navigate, users will become frustrated and will leave your website. Google will also penalize a website’s SEO ranking if your website is not mobile-friendly. It is not difficult to see if your website is mobile-friendly or not. If you have to zoom in to click on links and view content, then it is not mobile-friendly. If you are still not sure, use this link and enter any URL and Google will let you know.
Outdated Design
In most circumstances, if people are looking for a service to use they will compare companies that offer the same service. If your website has an outdated design and your competitors are well put together and nice to look at, then that user will stay on your competitor’s website longer than yours. To see if your design is outdated, look to see if your website takes up the entire screen and not just a portion of it. If your text is very small and cluttered in one area, then your website is outdated. Animations and flash elements are very out of date and will not display on most of today’s devices.
Grammatical Errors
In school, we all got counted off if we misspelled a word on a test or paper. The same concept applies to websites. Even though Google does not have an algorithm to read for grammatical errors and penalize your SEO ranking, the users will still see your misspellings. If you have multiple grammatical errors, then it shows that you did not take the time to fully review your work. Users will recognize this and will leave your website.
Difficult to Navigate
Your website should be set up to guide your user through your website like you are holding their hand. If there is no clear path to learn more about your business and what you can offer, then users will get frustrated and leave. You should have calls to action on your website that will encourage users to click through your website. Your menu in the header should be clear and descriptive. If your links are too close together or your text is difficult to read, then your website will have a bad user experience.
Website is Not Complete
If someone is on your website and is trying to learn more about your business and they click on a link that leads them to a blank page, then they will question your professionalism. If you have links that are broken and do not take your user anywhere, then it will annoy your user. Always double-check to make sure that you did not forget to add a section to your website and to check if your links work properly.
Poor Hosting
When a website has poor hosting or needs an upgrade in its hosting, it negatively affects the user experience. A website will start to lag or it will take a long time to load if you have a lot of pictures and videos. Make sure that your disk space and bandwidth exceeds the amount of data that your website currently stores. A website that takes a long time to load or one that lags will hurt your SEO ranking on Google. People will also go back to Google to search for a new website if they can’t even access it.
Features Do Not Work
Thanks to WordPress plugins, a website can have many unique features. You can have a photo gallery, contact form, an e-commerce feature, a donate section, etc. Before your website goes live, make sure that your website’s features work properly. Photos that are not sized correctly in the photo gallery, contact forms that do not send messages, and payment gateways that do not work, will hurt your website’s functionality and appearance. If your website does not work properly, users will think the same about your business.
Annoying Pop-Ups
It is understandable that you have a newsletter or coupons that you want people to see and use. But when you are constantly spamming your users with these, it makes for a very frustrating experience. One pop up is fine, but when you delete that one and scroll down a few inches for another one to pop up, it becomes annoying. Instead of pop-ups, you can have a sign-up column or section where people can enter their emails to see your newsletter.
Vague Information
The point of having a website is to clearly explain and inform people about your services and why they should work with you. If your homepage does not talk about what you do and who you are in a clear and concise manner, you will confuse your users and they will leave to visit another website.
No Reviews
If you are looking to get something to eat in an area you have never been to before, you are going to look at multiple restaurants and judge them based on their reviews. Reviews are a great way to see if you will have a good experience with a company based on other’s experiences. If your business has no reviews on Google while your competitor has plenty of 5-star reviews, then more people are going to visit your competitor’s website. Your business will need Google My Business for people to find you and review your services.
Interested in updating your design to get more customers from your website? Click this link to see how we can help you!