So you've built yourself a website, now what? Â It probably took you weeks to get everything the way you want it, but you still seem to hate it? People never seem to get very far, your business hasn't gotten anywhere since the launch, nothing seems to be going right. You probably want to #BeWebProud. Instead, you're sitting there thinking "How can I improve my website?" We're going to look at some things that cause issues in the first place.
One of the biggest reasons people will instantly leave your website is because it isn't loading fast enough. For most users, they've already backed out of your site if it takes longer than 2 seconds to load. If your website is slow, there can be many reasons why and the best thing to do is to run a check on it. This is a really good thing to keep checking up on as it can look unprofessional if you have a business website that is much slower compared to the next. In the age of the internet, clients want their information quick and easy to read.
This can be a tricky one. Maybe you love how your website looks when you view it on your laptop, but the second you try to view it on a mobile device, it looks awful.
This can be an issue if someone is trying to view your website on their phone but it doesn't load well. A lot of people don't always browse the internet or do business on their computers anymore. It can be very common to use a mobile device instead and it's very important that your website also looks great across all digital platforms.
If you've decided to use a website host, you most likely chose one of their templates and edited it to fit your style. Well, the issue is here, is that hundreds of others have also done that exact same thing. If you want to improve your website, it's best to start off with getting a custom-built website, instead of something that's simply a drag-and-drop template. While it might be good to look at what your competitors have done for their business website, it's not good to have yours look like you copied theirs. You want to be original and stand out, not blend it with the crowd.
Did you get carried away when deciding what different areas you wanted your website to have? Maybe you added a different page for each separate thing. Well, that can make it really hard for people to navigate. If your pages aren't clear about what they are or exactly what they can do for the client, it can be hard for the client to want to spend much time there.
Similar to your website being hard to navigate, if you have so many options in your drop-down menu that the client doesn't know where to start, that's not going to be a very effective business website. People like to scroll down on a page, so if you've been stuck thinking to yourself "How can I improve my website?" getting rid of a lot of drop-down menus is a good place to start. You can put a couple of things on a single landing page. Each topic doesn't always need its own separate page. You can help judge this by looking at the overall word count of a particular page.
Having a weak CTA (Call To Action) can be one of the biggest things that are making your website not gain a lot of attraction. If you want people to use your services and want to find out more about you, then you need to have a strong CTA. Identify people's pain points and appeal to them. You need to tell future clients why they need you and how you're going to help them.
If people don't know what you're going to be able to do for them, they'll be likely move on.
If you've been frustrated with your ranking on Google and you wish it were higher, it might be partly because of backlinks. Backlinks play a large part in how your website ranks and are very important. So then, what is a backlink exactly? It's when another website has a link to your website, albeit it a directory, a vendor, a news article or a blog post.
This is another thing that can really mess up your ranking on Google. If you don't have enough SEO, it can be a big issue when you're wanting people to be able to find you on Google. While a lot of website hosts offer SEO to be put into your site in certain places, it's not as good as approaching it from the start, you'd be able to generally get better results by building a business website from the ground up.
Maybe you've got all the copy written for your website and you're thinking "I did it! This is it!" But when you look over it, you don"t quite like how it sounds.
Something that you need to watch out for is talking too much about yourself, you want to talk about your business and what you do without putting the spotlight all on you.
If you talk too much about yourself, you run the risk of sounding too proud of yourself and that doesn't come across well. Look over your copy again and make sure that you're focusing more on the client instead of yourself. If you put your clients first, then you're already going in the right direction
While a simple one, this can be frustrating to some. Say you've got a colour idea picked out, so you put them all together but it just doesn't look right. Depending on your level of artistic abilities, you may just give up with your colour scheme that's slightly off and just hate it the whole time.
So, if this is something that's been bothering you take a step back from your screen and really look at how the colours will look to the user. Are they attractive? Do they appeal to you desired clients, other than yourself? If you need it, it can be good to ask a friend what their opinion is and then go from there.
So, have you ever thought "I just don't know how to improve my website?" While it can seem simple and easy to build your website through a host, it's even better if you hire someone to do it professionally for you.
By having someone design you a custom website, it saves you time and helps you to avoid all these things that people can end up hating about their website. If you want to #BeWebProud, check out the services I offer and we can build your dream website today!
