Does your website "suck"?
In my travels around the interwebs, I see and interact with a lot of websites. Most websites I visit have been created by larger companies with big budgets and possibly in-house design teams. They look great and function as they should, providing the user an informative, useful and enjoyable experience. But some websites are surprisingly bad, for multiple reasons.
As a small business owner, you might think that having a sucky website would be inexcusable for a big company, but people will understand that I don't have the budget to have a great website. Right? It's not really that important to have a great website when you're a "local" business, right? No one comes to my website, so why bother, right?
Wrong. Your website IS your business online. Don't drive customers away with a sucky website.
Here are some reasons your website might suck:
It's Old Tech
I don't want to sound ageist here, but in terms of online technology, things get old pretty fast and old isn't good. If your site is older than 5 years, and hasn't had much done to it in the way of updates or fixes, it's probably in need of a rebuild. Even 5 years ago, sites might still have had a lot of Flash elements in them, which is not good for a modern site. With so many people accessing websites on their iPhones or iPads, which does not support Flash, your site will not function as it is meant to.
Even parts of the fundamental website code, HTML, have been downgraded or replaced with new standards. Back in the day, tables were big in laying out a website. Now, tables are for displaying information... in a table. Maybe.
Dated or Bad Interface Design
Website design has changed a lot in the past few years, too. A dated design takes your business down a notch in the minds our ever online culture. Design used to be determined by the technology available, hence those aforementioned tables, but now with higher bandwidth, better code and new website builders, the sky is almost the limit (you still need to watch for large files slowing down your site).
Some sites are impossible to navigate easily. You have to search around the interface to find what you are looking for. In today's world, people don't spend a lot of time looking for something that should be easy to find on your site. They just hit the back button and go on to your competitors site. That isn't good. Good interface design may be above the skills of the business owner, but if you have it you'll know it.
With most new sites being built in applications that use professionally designed templates, its never been easier to have a website with great design. With this ease also comes affordability. So there goes the "budget" excuse for a sucky site.
It Isn't Mobile Friendly
Another danger of using an old website design is that it is most likely not mobile friendly. Have you ever gone to a website on your phone and the text is so small you need a microscope, you have to zoom in and the menu doesn't work? Well I have and it makes me make the face our emoji friend above is making.
The numbers are in, and now mobile traffic has surpassed desktop traffic to most major websites. Most articles put it over the 50% mark. So if your site is not mobile friendly, that means that 50% of your traffic is not getting the best online experience from you. That's not good. If you have analytics measuring your site traffic, take a look to see how much traffic you actually get from mobile. I'd venture to guess that the numbers are similar.
It Isn't Updated Regularly
One thing that drives me crazy (crazier?), is a nice looking website that hasn't been updated in months. Many people think, "Ok, I've got my new website. I'm set." Unfortunately, for a website to be a good tool to drive customers to your business, It needs to be updated with fresh content on a regular basis.
Search engines like fresh content. Websites that are updated regularly are crawled by the Googlebots more often, giving you better search engine results. Good search engine results help drive traffic to your site and then to your business.
Fresh content also shows your website visitors that you are active and open for business. If your news section or latest blog is from 6 months ago, people might think that you aren't in business anymore, and that is not good. This segues me into the next section...
It Isn't Easy to Update
This is a sucky thing that isn't apparent to your website visitors, but definitely adds to the suck factor. If your site has to be professionally updated because the platform it was built on is not easily to manage by you or your staff, the chances are it won't be updated that often.
Day to day content updating, like news, blogs, features, events and product changes should be easily manageable from within the company. If your site is built on a platform or with technology that you as a business owner can't easily understand and take on, then it sucks. Today, there are more choices than ever for Content Management systems that anyone who has decent computer skills can use effectively. I'll be covering many of those in future blogs.
A lot of business owners tell me that they don't have the time for managing their site (or social media!!!). If you don't have staff that could take on the task for you, you need to incorporate it into your business practices, just like bookkeeping and sales. If you make it a habit it will pay off in the end.
It's not "On Brand"
Brand and branding is a whole other blog post, but basically, it means all the things that represent your image/identity/promise. Many people just think it's your logo, and while your logo makes up part of it, but it also includes colours, tone of copy, design style... anything that a customer might associate with your business's image or personality.
Your website should incorporate all the things that would identify your business brand and build your value with possible customers/clients. If you are a funky and fresh photographer and your site is all dark and serious, it isn't going to project your brand to the customers you want. Branding is a complex subject, but once you have an established brand, it's not hard to build good design and function around it.
So I hope this helps you figure out if your website sucks. If it does, you know where to find me. I'd love to make you a website that doesn't suck. Contact me here
