All websites are not created equal.
Here are 4 mistakes that will cause your website to underperform.
- Bad user experience
- Designs that Don’t Work
- Slow Loading Pages
- Pages that All Look The Same
Bad User Experience
Your viewers are impatient, they want what they want and they want it NOW!
The worst indicator for Google is the back button. When a viewer comes to your website and hits the back button and bounces straight back out, Google sees that as a bad sign. Now to be fair, the viewer may only be looking for your phone number and they got exactly what they needed; however, in most cases, they bounce because they didn’t get what they were looking for.
Google is a business too and if your website is not making their customers happy by delivering them with what they are looking for, Google will send them to other websites that do.
Designs That Don’t Work
If your design is too hard to navigate around or your viewers are left confused, it is unlikely that they will find what they are looking for and probably will leave. People are impatient and have lots of choices, so are more likely to leave than try and find it within your site.
Your design needs to be clear, concise and on brand so that you don’t confuse your viewer.
Be careful going too MINIMALIST, or you won’t have enough information for Google to verify that your website is trustworthy. Minimalist design looks great however, you still need to provide “the meat in the sandwich”; the content that backs up your images and let Google and your viewers now they are in the right place.
Let your viewers know that you can help them with your products and services to solve the problem they are looking to have solved.
Slow Loading Pages
With a lot of people are viewing your website on mobile devices, slow loading pages will be the death of your website. There are many things that can cause your pages to load slowly.
- Large image file sizes
- Old and redundant code in the back of your website
- Bad code
- Badly designed pages
- Videos that haven’t been optimised or embedded properly
- And many other reasons
If you only do 1 thing to fix your current website, check out your page loading speed.
Pages that Look All the Same
If all your pages have the same large header that takes up most of the top of the page and it is all your viewer will see when the page first loads. Your viewers won’t know that a different page has loaded.
Large headers are a great visual on your homepage, it gives immediate validation that your viewer is in the right place. Once your viewer clicks on something else and wants to learn more, you need to show them a different look so that they know they have loaded a new page. If your product is very visual, you may want to stay with a large image at the top of the page (although there are better ways to do this). If you do stay with a large image, then make sure that you can change the images for each page so that there is no doubt that a new page has loaded.
4 Mistakes That Will Cause Your Website to Underperform
By correcting these 4 common mistakes, your website will give the user a much better experience and they stay longer on your site because they are getting the results they want; finding the information they need to solve their problems.
Need help with your website?
Contact Cathy and the team at CATCO Enterprises for a website audit of your current website.
