7 Reasons Your Website Is Failing
There are a number of reasons why your website might be failing. As a business owner, you intend for a new website to bring in new customers, however, there are certain steps to follow to achieve that – don’t just wait for them to stumble across it.
A well-optimised website makes for a good user experience. On the flip side, a poor website leads to a poor user experience. Here are 7 reasons your website is failing and how to fix them!
1. Your Website Is Not Mobile Friendly
57.38% of all web traffic is from mobile.
Having a responsive website design that can be navigated on mobile is essential for improving your website and therefore the user experience. Without a responsive website, you are setting yourself up to potentially lose 57% of potential customers before they even read your content.
It takes only 0.05 seconds for somebody to get a first impression of your website. And so displaying a web page that appears outdated or broken on a mobile device is likely to drive traffic away.
How To Fix It
A good place to start when looking into the responsive design of your website is to test it out on your mobile phone! Visiting your site through a mobile helps you gain an insight into what your mobile visitors can see when they are on your pages.
If you are working with a website design agency, who haven’t already made the website adaptable, flag the adaptability issues that you notice during your own mobile crawl.
2. Slow Loading Pages
Here is another issue directly linked to the user experience. So, you may have developed a site that is accessible to both mobile and desktop users, but the loading time of pages is super slow. 40% of website visitors will abandon a web page if it takes more than 3 seconds to load, so time is crucial!
Again, this comes down to optimisation – lots of large files and plug-ins can make your website speed much slower.
How To Fix It
Running a speed test on your website is relatively simple. As before, running a speed test and identifying issues offers you suggestions on how to improve the speed and smooth running of your site.
3. Lacking SEO
SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) in a nutshell, is making your website more attractive for Google, thus pushing your pages higher up the rankings, resulting in page one of SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages).
When developing a website initially, it should be in your strategy to identify significant keywords that you want to rank for. Working around these keywords and producing pointing content will enable your web pages to rank higher on Google, which in turn, means more people will find you!
How To Fix It
You probably guessed it, work on your SEO! Developing a good SEO strategy is essential if you want to beat competitors and take place at the top of Google’s search pages.
Identifying reasons why you may not be ranking is the key factor in improving your SEO. Getting an SEO audit for your site allows you to identify issues and strive for higher rankings.
4. Poor Website Design
This comes back to those ever-important first impressions. A poorly designed website is one of the key reasons why websites fail. Sure, website design is subjective but there is a list of do’s when it comes to designing a web page.
- Make it clear to navigate
- Include a clear call to action
- Short and punchy written content
- Well optimised images
To fix this problem is easy, do your research! Develop a strong and personal branding and stick to it but look at the competitors, what does their website look like and how is it achieving?
Target audience and competitor research are crucial when it comes to monitoring what you need to improve on.
How To Fix It
Working with a website design agency is useful here as they can aid you in creating a design that both you and your customers will be happy with. Whether this means fixing what isn’t working or a total redesign.
If you are wanting to manage your website design yourself, using a website platform like Pagio Website Builder has plenty of templates to choose from, no coding experience needed, making it as simple as possible to work on your website design.
5. Lacking CTA’s
A CTA (Call To Action) is essential on any website. It is one thing having content there but for your users to know what to do with it, you need to tell them.
Whatever it is that’s important to you or what you are trying to achieve from your website, you need to signpost this to your visitors. Website users can often become confused on a website that doesn’t clearly signpost what they should do with the information. Whether it be to call you, buy something or book a demo, tell them!
How To Fix It
Again, this comes down to doing your research. Primarily, what do you want your business to achieve? But also, who is your target audience and what are they likely to do. Don’t overwhelm your audience with instructions, keep it to one CTA per web page in order to make navigation clear.
Further Reading: Calls to Action (CTAs) and How Important They Are on a Website
6. Broken Links
A broken link simply refers to a link taking your users to a webpage that cannot be found or accessed. This often shows up as an error. This has a detrimental effect on your website, making it look unprofessional and unhelpful to those users seeking specific information.
There are several causes of broken links; human error, URL changes and CMS updates.
Keeping on top of your links and updating them if URL addresses change is crucial for the smooth running of your website.
How To Fix It
Using a 301 redirect on the old URL allows you to communicate the new page address to search engines meaning all old links are then forward to the new address. Working with a website agency that monitors broken links, or doing it yourself is essential to quickly fix broken links and keep the site working optimally.
7. Not Promoting Your Website
This goes back to our initial point in our introduction, waiting for visitors to stumble across your page is a reason your website is failing. SEO is a key element here, for getting it seen. Millions of websites are added to the internet every day, so it should be your priority to beat the rest and drive traffic to your site.
How To Fix It
There are a number of other ways in which you can promote your website:
- Social Media
- Paid Advertising (both PPC and paid social)
- Email Marketing Campaigns
Improving your marketing strategy is key to allowing your website to reach its full potential.
Final Thoughts
There are a number of reasons why your website might be failing, the main ones we often see, are highlighted in this blog. If your website is reflected in this list, there are a number of things you can do about it! Whether it be action it yourself or get in touch with somebody who can offer the right advice for you.
Want to know more about why your website is failing and need some advice to fix it?
Get in touch!
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Or drop us an email at hello@pagiodigital.co.uk