Is your website stunting your business growth?
It’s rare for a business not to have a website. But having a presence online is not enough to secure leads. In fact, a poor website could be damaging your business growth by pushing customers towards your competitors.
Is your website failing your business?
If alarm bells are ringing you might be wondering how you can tell whether your website is stunting your business growth. Here are a few ways:
- Check your Google Analytics and Google Search Console to see how many visits your website gets, how long people stick around and what words they are using to find you
- Open a private or incognito browser and type in some keywords related to your business and location
- Use a free trial of SimilarWeb to check how your website performs against your competitors.
If the results don’t match your expectations here’s five ways your website could be failing you:
It leaves customers none the wiser
If your website doesn’t answer basic questions that customers ask about your products and services then they will not hang around.
In fact, they may not even find your site in the first place. One-third of Google searches include four or more words. They could be a question like ‘what’s the best X?’, ‘where can I buy Y?’, or ‘how do I Z?’.
People ask the internet very specific questions and expect spot-on results. If you don’t have the answer, then one of your competitors might.
It’s dormant
Google favours sites that are updated regularly and will rank these sites higher in its search results. If you aren’t updating pages and creating new content, like blog posts, Google will think your website is dormant and not the freshest source of information for its users.
It’s not secure
Data security is a hot potato for consumers. If a website asks them to reveal important personal and financial information they want to know it is in safe hands.
If you don’t have an SSL Certificate for your website your customers can’t be sure it’s secure. You can easily spot when a site uses an SSL certificate to encrypt its data; the web address will start with https:// rather than http://. There will also be a lock symbol at the beginning of the URL bar. The lack of these will make people think twice about using your website.
Security matters to Google too. It gives more credit to e-commerce and business websites with SSL certificates, so you’ll see them higher up the search results.
It’s not navigable
If people find it difficult to navigate around your site they may miss something important. Ask someone independent to look for specific information on your site and see how long it takes them to find it.
Building internal links will also help keep people clicking around your site until they are convinced to make a purchase or contact you.
It’s not discoverable
If you haven’t optimised your website with pages and posts using the right keywords then it’s not going to show up in search results.
Think about the terms your customers use to describe your products. Think about your location. And, as mentioned earlier, answer the common questions people ask about your business and services.
If your website isn’t doing you any favours, what can you do? It’s highly likely your website needs new content or even a redesign. Amplify PR is a Southampton-based PR and content marketing agency that works with clients to refresh their webpages, write regular blog posts and redesign their websites.
Get in touch to find out more about our website packages and copywriting services.