As a business owner, I’m going to go ahead and assume that you’re busy.
But is your website as busy as you are?
Many people fall into the trap of thinking, “I must have a business website.”
But why?
What does your website do for you? It should be complementary to your business activities, educate and provide your prospects with solutions, and identify your business as the authority in your industry.
Unpopular opinion incoming: quickly whacking up a website because you feel you “should” – without paying attention to the content, SEO, or with your customers in mind, is almost entirely a waste of time.
With this in mind, let’s discover if your website is working as hard as you are.
1. Is your website about your target audience?
That is to say, is it all, “Me, me, me”, or “You, you, you.” It should be the latter.
Your website should be focused around and include content that provides answers to the questions your target audience are asking.
When a prospect lands on your site, they need immediate reassurance that they’re in the right place. That your business is the one that is capable of solving their pain points. If these factors are not apparent (within around 5 seconds), they’ll disappear – probably never to be seen again.
How to fix this: Create valuable content that addresses your customers.
Things like FAQs are great for this (and happily, search engines like them, too). FAQs are simply common questions that your customers ask you, created in an easy to read format. They deliver bags of reassurance and make your website visitors confident in your business.
2. Is your website inspiring action?
Fantastic content is all well and good. But what do your website visitors do after reading this content? They should be inspired to take action – whether that’s filling in a contact form, calling you, signing up for a newsletter, or buying something if you’re an eCommerce business.
How to fix this: Make it easy for your website visitors to navigate your site. Clear menus, suggested reading, and bold call-to-actions are all tactics I suggest you implement.
3. Is your website fast enough?
If you haven’t realised by now, website users are typically impatient. They want to be entertained and engaged. They also don’t tend to respond well to slow websites.
Google tells us that website page speed is a direct ranking factor.
After all, if Google directs users to a website that loads slower than the time it takes to boil a kettle, it’s not delivering a great service.
Check out these shocking stats:
The probability of a visitor leaving a page without interacting increases 32% as page load time goes from 1 second to 3 seconds.
The probability of a visitor leaving a page without interacting increases to 90% as page load time goes from 1 second to 5.
How to fix this: Firstly, determine your website’s speed. Chrome has a useful Lighthouse report tool for you to do this. It will also tell you how to make improvements. For instance, your images might be too huge to load quickly. Likewise with video content.
Your website is your secret weapon
When designed well, with the most relevant and valuable content that your users love, your website is working as hard as you are.
These tips are just the very beginning of a topic that I could go on for hours about.
However – even if you take advantage of these three suggestions, you’ll level up your website and experience more traffic and conversions than you had before.
Final note: If you need content, an SEO audit, or just to chat – get in touch.
