It is important that you periodically review your website to be able to spot and issues and resolve them in a timely manner.
Did you know 88% of users are less likely to return to a website after a bad user experience?
Source: https://www.toptal.com/designers/ux/ux-statistics-insights-infographic
Keeping that in mind, here are four reasons your website is under performing;
Reason #1: Poor design
It takes around 0.05 seconds for visitors to form an opinion about your website that determines whether they like your site or not, whether they’ll stay or leave.
Think about the blurry or low-resolution images of your products that can’t showcase the proper visuals of how your product appear in real. Or the fonts that appear to be too large, too small, faded, or even unreadable. Or the icons that make no sense to the user that they don’t know which option to select next. What do you think will happen?
You guessed it right – your customers will get irritated and leave the site because of their quick and ruthless judgement. 38% of people will stop engaging with a website if the content or layout is unattractive. Whatever the platform, the website plays an important role. 57% of users claim they won’t recommend a business with a poorly designed website on mobile. This can immensely impact your business and brand image negatively.
How to fix poor design
The following is a checklist of good website design:
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Clear and easy navigation
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Mobile-friendly
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Appropriate font size
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Proper animations
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Great and soothing colour scheme
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Clean layout
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A visually appealing interface
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Organized content and interface
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Appropriate themes and topics
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High-resolution images
Reason #2: Out of date information
Content and data are two essential elements that can make you stand out from your competitors. However, many of us don’t realize that in order to get ahead we should stop providing clichéd or out of date information. It looks neglected and old. It can raise a question on your brand credibility, hamper your reviews, and make you look unprofessional. Not only this, it can also bring down your search engine rankings on Google, Bing, or Yahoo.
Going by the statistics, 94% of online consumers don’t trust outdated websites. 81% think less of a brand if their website is outdated. Also, 39% would think twice about using a service or product if the website isn’t fresh or recently updated.
But how to know if your content is outdated? Well, it’s simple any content or data on your site or page that lacks value, is inaccurate, or doesn’t match with your current brand positioning, is outdated! So what next?
How to fix out of date information
The answer is to remove, improve, update, or delete the content or info that you find outdated. This can bring in several rewards for your business, such as bring in traffic, increase rankings, bring conversions, and increase the engagement. Don’t believe it yet? Search Engine Journal increased their page views and organic traffic by more than 60% when they removed and updated their old content. Also, Siege Media audited 15% of their site and increased organic traffic by 50%. So, this proves that accurate and fresh content is really important for your website.
Reason #3: Slow site speed
What can be more annoying than a slow loading website? Many visitors simply leave the webpage or don’t convert because of the too-long loading/waiting time of the page. Plus, slow-loading websites can make you lose up to 2.6 billion dollars every year. Did you also know that 83% of visitors wish that the site loading speed be reduced to 3 seconds or less? Well, even a study found this to be true.
The research conducted by the Nielsen Norman Group reveals the importance of three-time limits while optimizing web and application performance. It says, if a site takes 0.1 seconds to load, the site is optimum for the visitors’ use. If it takes 1 second, the visitors can encounter some discomfort and may or may not leave the site. But, if the site takes around 10 seconds to load, then the visitors will abandon the site. According to Hubspot, 39% people leave the site if it takes too long to load.
So, your website must load in 1 second or less. People must access the information as fast as they can in all platforms whether it is desktop or mobile. Factors such as unoptimized, high-resolution images, JavaScript having errors, too much flash content, and excessive ads display can hinder your site’s loading speed.
How to fix slow site speed
The first and foremost thing to do is reduce the loading speed to 1 second or less, both on desktop and mobile versions. Mobile sites that load in less than 2 seconds have 15% higher conversion rates. For this, you can remove the bugs and unnecessary elements on your site.
For further assistance, you can use Google PageSpeed Insights to check for the causes of slow loading time.
Reason #4: No SSL certificate
We are constantly told that website should have an SSL certificate (HTTPS) but what about those sites that don’t have ‘HTTPS’ in their URL? Well, these sites can be risky for the users to use as they can pose a threat to visitors’ data which can be further misused or stolen by hackers. Small businesses websites are viewed with suspicion and generally have poor user retention. For this reason, many websites use SSL certificates. Let’s find out what is it and why is it so important.
SSL certificate helps in encrypting the data while passing it between web servers and websites. In simple words, via an SSL certificate, only the intended recipient can unlock the hidden data. It provides authentication for your website and builds trust among your visitors by securing their sensitive info.
Having ‘HTTPS’ instead of ‘HTTP’ can extremely affect your Google rankings and in a good way. For example, Cloudtec’s webpages saw almost double the number of top 10 search engine rankings after they switched from http:// to https://. Meaning – greater ranking, greater viewers, greater leads and conversions, and greater profit.
Still not convinced? Well, according to a recent study, 46% of your audience wouldn’t do business online with you if your website is ‘not secure’. Also, the same study pointed out that 64% of the audience will leave the site instantly, affecting your brand reputation.
So, your priority must be to make your site safe and secure for your users.
How to fix no SSL certificate issue
To make your website free from hackers and threats, the best way is to get an SSL certificate. You may do so by either of the following:
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Contact your hosting provider and find out if they provide SSL certificate options.
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Buy a valid SSL certificate from a certified provider.
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Get in touch with a web developer and have SSL installed.
The Final Word
Your website is the often the first impression for your potential clients and their judgements can be based on that. But these judgments aren’t only limited to your website, they also represent your brand, your business, and your company as a whole.
A poor website can instantly degrade your company’s reputation and credibility. On the other hand, a good and user-friendly website can extend its sphere of influence and generate numerous leads. Apart from this, good UX and responsiveness of your site also play a great role in the same.
Your goal must be to refine your website so that your users make have a great first impression when they come across and click on your website for the first time. Your first impressions can scale your business to a whole new level. So make them count.
FREE Website Audit
Our FREE website audit – https://wearelens.co.uk/lp/10-minute-free-website-audit/ can help identify the key areas where your website is under performing.
Lens Digital is an Ascot based WordPress web design and SEO agency – https://wearelens.co.uk
