Remember dating as a teenager? You’d spend hours getting your look just right. Your hair would be perfect, your breath minty fresh, your scent something that could inspire a Chanel commercial and then…just as your date is meeting your parents, your little brother yells from the hall that you left your smelly clothes from basketball practice in the bathroom, again.
And there it is. You’ve spent so much time and effort trying to be alluring and your annoying little brother killed it with just one sentence.
What may surprise you is that your website is playing the role of your little brother in your attempt to lure in new business. You’ve got a great product, your service is amazing and you’re pretty great at resolving any complaints. But it could be that your website smells of outdated design and annoying navigation, among other things that turn people away.
Too far? Guess you didn’t actually have a little brother.
Here are all the ways your website is taking on that role, effectively shutting down the relationship you’re trying to build with your visitors and sending them on to a competitor:
Bad or Outdated Design: From the time a visitor arrives at your site, it’s taking mere seconds for them to assess what kind of company you are based on your design. And according to a study completed by Dr. Elizabeth Silence, it’s the design that is usually at play when a visitor decides they don’t have confidence in your website to be a trustworthy source. The study found that when people were uneasy with a website, 94% said the design was the reason.
Maze-Like Navigation: Your customers arrive looking for your contact information or the product page, but they unintentionally find themselves snaking all over your website looking for it. This is a problem because 88% of customers say they won’t return to a website if they have a bad experience.
In addition, Google says that 60% of mobile visitors will go to a competitor if they can’t quickly find what they want on your site.
Zzzzzzz….: In other words, your website is slow to load.
Think it’s not too bad? It turns out that any delay at all is probably causing you to lose business. A delay of just one second is shown to decrease customer satisfaction by 16%. And KISSmetrics reports that 47% of consumers are looking for a website that loads in less than two seconds.
Whether you have too many images or a video that’s in a wrong format, the right website design will make your loading time too quick to measure. You don’t want someone falling asleep while they wait for your website to load!
Nobody Knows What to Do: You’ve probably coached your sales reps on this very thing, but many businesses don’t add a call-to-action on their websites. Your CTA should be matched to the metrics you’re trying to achieve, such as driving up the subscription to your email newsletter by asking visitors to subscribe. Maybe you want them to follow you on social media because that’s where you post updates on your products or promotions.
You’ve Caught a Bug: The only thing worse than an annoying little brother is one that’s got a runny nose. If this sounds like your website, teeming with bugs because you’ve been hacked here and there, it’s time to address it with a website upgrade.
Many small businesses start out with a DIY approach to their website, but these are notorious for getting buggy. A custom website design is resilient to hackers and provides the security you need to protect your company and your visitors.
You’re Stuck in the Flip Phone Era: Most people will do a double-take when they see someone using a flip phone, but a lot of businesses seem to be pretending that’s still the norm. But 60% of all Internet traffic and 50% of all commerce transactions are happening on mobile devices.
If your website isn’t responsive, it’s time. If your customers have to scroll to the right and left to read your page, if they can’t see your buttons on a smartphone or if it doesn’t load equally well on different browsers, these are all signs to your customers that your company is out of touch.
We have no doubt that you have some growth goals for 2023. If you’ve got a website that’s starting to remind you of a kid that’s sticking a “kick me” sign to your back just as you leave for a first date, you’ve got a site that’s impeding your growth. Contact us at SJC Marketing for website development that looks a lot more like an older sister that’s showing you the latest styles, letting you ride past school in her convertible and loaning you her best lines so you can reel in that catch.