In today’s digital era, having a web presence can make or break your business – and we believe that every business deserves a really great website.
Since more and more people are searching for products and services on their computers and smart devices, and, on average, you have less than 10 seconds to leave an impression on someone visiting your site, we often get asked the following question: is any website (even a “bad” one) better than no website?
Here’s a scenario:
Someone sends a warm, maybe even a hot lead your way. Before they contact you, they decide to, just like pretty much everyone else does nowadays, check you out by visiting your website.
But then you never hear from this prospective client, which leaves you disappointed and puzzled. And you remain oblivious to a great possibility that your poorly designed website scared them away.
Instead of getting a sense that you are good at what you do and that they can trust your service(s), your site actually provided the opposite – a general feeling of lack of credibility and nervousness about you and your company.
The sad part is that your services may be of high quality, and yet those visitors likely went to one of your competitors with inferior services, but with a better website.
Here are some things that are missing, or are poorly done on your website, that could be hurting your business:
- Having user-friendly website navigation that is intuitive and simple, and makes it easy for visitors to quickly find what they need is a must. However, creating user-friendly website navigation is far more complex and nuanced than you may think.
- Your website needs to be professionally designed – and not look and feel like it was built by a novice.
- Data shows that more people today access the Internet from smart devices than from desktop computers, therefore, your site must be mobile-friendly. In addition to providing a good user experience to your visitor, this is also important for search engine rankings.
- Web content should be up to date, organized, relevant, and free of typos and errors. Misspelled words and grammatical errors show nothing but unprofessionalism.
- Prospective clients are interested in one thing: can you help them? Avoid superfluous content, endless descriptions of features, benefits or your accolades. Instead, quickly explain what’s in it for them, and how they can easily get in touch with you. And definitely display testimonials from actual customers/clients, as well as any and other credibility essentials, such as BBB and other well-known accreditations.
- We do business with other people, and your prospective clients want to know whom they’ll be dealing with. So make sure to profile your team members (unless you are a one-person company) and tell your story to help people get to know you. Explain details about why your company is different, and what they can expect when they do business with you.
- Another thing that will make you look insincere are tacky stock photos that everyone uses, unless they are custom stock imagery that’s professional and high quality. Whenever possible, use your own personal and custom images.
- What looks great does not mean it’s performing well. We’ve had clients come to us after using a DIY website builder, like Wix, to launch a website, asking for our help in making their sites more visible. While Wix makes it very easy to build a great looking website and publish it, the problem is that it also makes it very easy to build a very badly performing website.
You need to first carefully consider what your business needs for your online presence, your target audience, content structures, search engine optimization (SEO), on and off site reputation management, and marketing and ongoing growth. You also need to ensure you have implemented some online tracking, so you know how your site is performing, and set up essential Google tools to get insights that may drive your marketing decisions.
Beware of all the trickier parts that make up your web presence, such as SEO, off site business listings, reviews and more – without those elements you may not get found by your customers, which makes just having a good looking website futile.
Is your website designed and built well and with quality content that is original, relevant, and engaging, bringing you more profits rather than hurting your business?
At RODA marketing, a nationally recognized Internet marketing company, our team of seasoned marketers work together with you to build and implement a well thought out website with Internet Marketing strategies that include SEO, social media, blogging, infographics and more.
When you choose RODA marketing, you are choosing our passion, experience, and proficiency – check out our portfolio and contact us to see how together we can take your business to higher levels of success with website design and development, SEO, and digital and Internet marketing.