A website is a powerful tool. It’s the first thing people see when they’re trying to find out more about your company or brand, and it can help you reach new customers and grow your business. However, if your website isn’t working properly, none of that matters.
If a visitor can’t navigate through your site or find what they’re looking for in the first two seconds (and sometimes even before), then they’ll just leave and never come back again. Here are just a few areas where things can go wrong.
Navigation
Navigation for the user may be in the form of buttons and menus, or it may also include links within text. It’s important for your website to have clear, easy-to-use navigation features so that visitors can find what they’re looking for. This is especially crucial if you sell products or provide services—how will people be able to buy from you if they can’t navigate?
Search function
The search function should be easy to use, and the results should be accurate and relevant. It’s also important that you can search by keyword, category, date and author.
Functionality
The website should be easy to navigate and find what you are looking for. It shouldn’t take hours of your time or frustration trying to figure out what the site is trying to tell you, and if it does, it’s probably not worth using.
Also, if it’s going to take more than two minutes of your life every time you want to update the content on your site (and this could happen monthly), then maybe that’s not a good idea either.
Speed
Speed is a factor of web design and should be considered when you’re building your website. A slow website can be frustrating for users, especially if they’re trying to navigate the site or load content. If your site takes too long to load, it can crash browsers or make it impossible for people on slower connections (such as mobile) to access your content at all.
For these reasons, Google has taken steps over the years to penalize websites that have poor performance: if your pages take more than 3 seconds longer than average in their tests, Google will lower your rankings in search results.
Mobile-friendly
Mobile-friendly is not the same as mobile-compatible. A site that is “mobile-compatible” means it has been designed for use on a mobile device, but it may not be optimized for that purpose. For example, if you visit a website on your phone and zoom in or out of the text using pinch gestures (a typical feature on many smartphones), this can cause the page to load slowly or even crash altogether.
Mobile-friendly means that your website has been specifically designed for use on smaller screens like those found in most phones today. Your site should be
- easy to navigate with your fingers;
- links should be large enough so they’re easily tapped;
- images should be sized properly so they don’t appear pixelated when viewed at lower resolutions;
- videos should play without buffering issues;
- forms should have fields large enough so users don’t have trouble filling them out correctly.
Contact information
It’s important to make sure that your website has contact information. You want people to easily reach out if they have a question or concern, so include an easy-to-find “Contact Us” form on your site. Make sure you have both an email address and phone number for potential customers who might prefer one method over another. You may also want to include your address and social media links (like Facebook or Twitter) so people can follow along with what you’re up to in real time.
A website that doesn’t work can hurt you.
There are many reasons a website can fail to meet expectations. The most common are:
- Lack of visibility. If your site doesn’t rank well in search results, you won’t get as many visitors as you want or need.
- Loss of business. If potential customers can’t find your website, they may go elsewhere to do business with someone else—and never come back! That’s why it’s so important that your site be easy for people to find (and not just on Google).
- Loss of customers: We all know that word-of-mouth advertising works like crazy; but you have to be able to find the business your friend recommended online.
There are consequences to leaving your website unattended. While it’s great that you have a website, it can work against you if you leave it online without attention.
