You’ve already got a website for your small business? That’s great! You’ve taken the first step.
The next step? Determining whether your website is actually helping or if it’s hurting your business.
“Wait, I thought having a website is better than not having one!”
In some cases, a bad website can actually do more harm than good, so you might actually be better off without it. Of course, the more obvious solution is to fix your bad website so it actually works for you. Here’s a few ways to determine if your website might be hurting your business:
Is your website hard to navigate?
If people can’t find what they’re looking for – they’ll go somewhere (somebody else’s site) where they can find it.
Does the design look dated or use outdated technology?
An excellent example of this is if your website uses Flash. Guess what? Some Apple products (iPhones, iPads) can’t run Flash. So right off the bat, these users cannot utilize your site to find what they’re looking for. Back to Google they go – and straight to your competitors.
Is your content old?
Dated content can be just as detrimental to your business as having a bad design or forgetting import information. Did you forget to remove a brand that you no longer sell? People may come looking for it and be frustrated when they find out you don’t sell the brand anymore.
Did you forget to put even the most basic information on your site?
Phone number? Email address? What you do? If you can’t find it, how can you expect your users to find it?
How does your site look on a mobile device?
If you don’t think this is important – then here’s an interesting fact: Mobile device usage exceeded PC usage in early 2014. And, nearly half of consumers say they won’t return to a website if it doesn’t load properly on their mobile devices.
Does your site make any of these mistakes? It’s probably time to think about redesigning your site to fix some of these issues!
In our next article, we’ll discuss what you should expect your small business website to cost.