10 Reasons Why Your Website May Be Failing
As the internet has grown in popularity and become more sophisticated, the ‘build it and they will come’ approach is no longer enough to ensure online success.
If your current website is not performing as well as you hoped, it may be due to one or more of the following reasons;
- Slow loading speed
Depending on what research you read you have anything between 3 to 8 seconds to engage a visitor to your website. It’s impossible to do this if your web pages take at least that amount of time to actually appear. There are a number of free online tools that check the loading speed of your website from various locations across the world.
- Poor content
Assuming your site’s loading speed is fine, the next thing you should consider is the content on your website. You’ll need an attention grabbing headline, engaging text that’s easy to scan and is written from the prospective customer’s perspective rather than your own.
Many small businesses fall into the trap of writing the content themselves thinking they are cutting costs by not using a professional copywriter when in fact it could end up costing them far more in lost sales.
- Not updating your site
One of the worst things you can do when you have a website is nothing. Would you keep visiting a website that never changed from one week, month or year to the next?
One of the main benefits of having a website is being able to utilise it to communicate with existing and new customers, so it’s critical that you make time to update your site with interesting and relevant content as often as you can as this will benefit your search engine rankings as well as visitors to your site.
- Low levels of traffic
If not enough people are finding your website then it could be due to a number of reasons. One may be that there is little interest in what you’re selling or it may be that your website lacks even the most basic SEO principles and it’s not appearing in people’s search engine results for keywords and phrases related to your business.
Whatever the reason it’s comparable to having a shop and very few people coming through your doors so you need to address it as soon as possible.
- Poor SEO
There are millions of small business websites that lack any kind of optimisation at all. At the very least you should research and write relevant meta titles and descriptions so that the pages on your website can be indexed by the search engine robots.
If the title in your browser bar says “Home” or “Welcome” when you look at your website then you need to do something about it. There is lots of information available online on how to write optimised meta titles and descriptions.
- Irrelevant traffic
Having lots of traffic to your website can be a bad thing in that it can lead you into a false sense of security and distract you from the real issues affecting your site.
For example if you’ve signed up to a service that promised increased traffic for your site, how much of that traffic do you think is from people who are really interested in your products or services? Relevant traffic is the only thing that matters.
- Poor design
A website that has been designed poorly can have a negative impact on your business. Whether it’s the visual appeal of it that’s sub-standard or the fact that it’s hard to navigate, the end result will be that people don’t take the desired action i.e. buying online or calling you.
- A complicated checkout process
If you have an e-commerce website there are a number of issues to consider but a common barrier to online sales is having a complicated and lengthy checkout process.
People want to buy things quickly on the internet, not fill in lots of forms and go through dozens of steps before their order is placed. Streamlining your checkout procedure could have a dramatic impact on your conversion rates.
- Broken links
Broken links within a website can be frustrating for visitors. Imagine you really wanted to buy a particular product online and when you clicked a link for more information on it you were greeted with an error message, not very professional is it? It’s a good idea to periodically check all the internal links on your website to make sure they work correctly.
- Failing to monitor its performance
The key to improving your website is often found by using an analytics programme such as Google Analytics which can help you pinpoint where your site is going wrong and identify areas you need to work on. Google Analytics is free to use and could make all the difference to how your small business performs online.
If you liked this article you may also want to read how to make the most of your online marketing budget
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