How to Ensure your Website is Bringing you Business
You can have a shop on 5th avenue in New York and a have a lot of people visit, but if it’s interior is not designed well, it won’t bring you any business. All that money spent on rent is going to waste.
Websites are exactly the same. Before you spend any money on SEO work or digital marketing, make sure your website meets some basic standards. Here are a few red flags you can look for:
Not Mobile Friendly
Open your website on a mobile device and observe how it looks. If the text is hard to read and you have to zoom in to make sense of the words, it is a clear sign that you need to redesign your website.
Nowadays everyone uses their mobile devices to browse the internet. Here is a graph provided by Statista:
Not to mention that Google search also takes mobile friendliness into consideration for SEO purposes.
Stranded Visitors
Open your website on a computer or phone. Is it clear what you want visitors to do? Is there a button for them to click, is there a clear path for them to follow without having to scroll down?
If not then chances are you need to redesign your website, or at least move some elements around.
For example, if you are a dentist, is there a button for visitors to request an appointment? Here is an example of a website we redesigned for a pediatric dentist.
Old Website
Redesigned Website
As you can see in the redesign, the focus is on the “request an appointment” button. There are also testimonials there for visitors to read to give them social proof of the doctor’s great work. On the old website, the visitor does not know where to click or what to do, they have to try to find what they are looking for.
54% of website visitors don’t scroll down below the fold based on research by the Nielson Norman Group. That is too high of a percentage to ignore.
Cluttered Pages
If your website is cluttered with information then it needs a redesign. Our attention and time is very limited, especially in this fast moving world.
When a page is cluttered with information and flashing images and buttons and ads, it confuses visitors. Open Google and open Yahoo and compare them.
This is one of the reasons why Google is the goto for search. They give their customers what they need to see and remove everything else.
Too Many Options
If you are offering too many options on the homepage, it’s a sign of bad design.
If you were asked to pick between 2 pens, it would be easy to pick. As soon as you have to pick between 20 pens, life becomes unbearable (okay, I am exaggerating a bit here, but you get the point). Try it, pick a pen…
It’s the same concept with website design. Make life easy for your visitors. Don’t make them question their existence while trying to pick one of your many options.
Pick a goal and cater your page design to that specific goal. If you have multiple products/services then make multiple landing pages for them.
Too Much Text
If there is too much writing on your pages, no one is going to read them. People don’t read websites, they skim through it.
Your visitors either search and land on your website, or come through social media or other referring links. They are looking for something.
They don’t want to read paragraphs of dense text, it will scare them away. Keep it simple, keep it brief and to the point. After all fear is the brother of death ( too much? yeah, I thought so too…).
Break up your text. Don’t write more than 2-3 sentences in a paragraph. Add visuals, after all a picture is worth a thousand words. Just make sure the picture does indeed add value rather than just putting a picture for the sake of putting a picture.
Conclusion
Website design is as critical as interior shop design. It needs to be catered to customer and visitor needs. If you spend thousands of dollars on bringing people to your business without a good design, it’s a complete waste of money.
Make sure you always keep an eye out for these simple design red flags:
- Not Mobile Friendly
- Confusing Design
- Cluttered Pages
- Offering Too Many Options
- Too Much Text
If you built your website yourself, you can read our blogs and listen to our podcasts and make these changes yourself. If you need help redesigning your website or want us to do a free evaluation, we would be happy to help as well.