“Our website sucks!”

“Our website sucks!”.  Those are the words a client recently used to convey his feelings.  A website for your business has long passed the phase of being a luxury.  Customers both current and prospective expect businesses to have a web presence.  Now, more than ever, customers are not just looking to your website to learn more about you, they are wanting to interact with your business online.  A website is the single most valuable marketing tool yet many business owners give it little or no attention.

Let’s look at some common reasons your website may not be working for you:

  • Auto sound: this is something that makes people leave your website quickly. It is possible that at times when you visit a website a sound or a video starts playing automatically. This distracts the visitors to the website and they avoid it altogether the next time they log in. many people also have background music of their choice playing on their website and they think it might please the visitors however this is not the case. The background music might annoy your visitors and they might leave it before viewing the content. Therefore auto sound or background music on your website is one major reason for its failure.
  • Complex or bad navigation: if the visitors find the navigation system on your website complex or bad they might leave your website within seconds. It is important therefore to make your navigation system as simple and as effective as possible.
  • Slow loading: slow loading of your website even on a high speed network connection might make people leave your website or not visit it altogether.
  • Too many pop-ups: if your site has too many pop-ups, it will be responsible for fewer visitors visiting it. Pop-ups distract the visitors and they try to avoid sites which have too many of them.
  • Lack of relevant information or useless content: the main reason somebody will stick to your website despite everything else will be its content. If your website does not contain relevant content then there is a big chance that people will avoid it altogether.  This is also the main thing search engines, like Google, use to rank your site.  If your content is not relevant or is outdated the website will fall quickly in rankings.
  • Outdated information: if your site contains outdated information, people will stop referring or getting back to it in the future. You need to make sure your website remains up-to-date all the time.
  • Boring: your content might be boring or the appearance of your website might just be plain dull. Make sure you make your website colorful, in an accepted manner and try to add only relevant yet interesting content.
  • Not Engaging: If you want visitors to return to your site again and again, you must give them something that causes them to want to come back.  You accomplish this by engaging your visitors.  The most common and best way to do this is by creating a Blog on your site (which is what you’re reading now).  A Blog is simply a way to add relevant content to your site without having to constantly redesign pages and it keeps visitors coming back (if they find your blog content appealing) to read your newest posts.

Your website must be the focal point of your business.  It should be where the vast majority of your advertising dollars go… or at least your advertising efforts.  Everything your business does should tie back to your website… printed advertising, commercials, radio, social media, business cards, vehicle lettering, etc… every single other form of marketing you do should push people to your website.  Then the website should hook visitors and transform them from a curious visitor to a paying customer.

If you expect your marketing efforts to pay big dividends you can’t ignore your website.  No longer can a business just put a website on the Internet, ignore it for years… and then wonder why they can’t get new customers.  Your website is many times the #1 salesperson in your business.  A visitor to your site will judge everything about your business based solely on your website, how it looks and it’s content.  Think about it… how many times have you went to a business’s website to check into their product or service only to go elsewhere because you were put off or not impressed at their website?

Today, not only does your website have to be top-notch but you also have to incorporate social media marketing such as Facebook, Twitter or Google+.  Couple that with email marketing, event marketing, customer surveys and polls and you can see how it can get overwhelming, yet necessary to compete in today’s market.

So how do you keep up with all these items?  Well, if you’re lucky you may have someone in your organization that is talented and capable of doing these things for you while on the clock or after hours for some extra pay.  Another option is to hire a website designer, a copy editor, a social media marketing specialist, an email marketing specialist and a tech savvy person to keep all these people working together toward the common goal of marketing your business and increasing your revenue.  However, the best solution is to hire a Managed Services Provider (MSP).  MSPs are to the IT world what contractors are to the construction world.  When you hire a contractor and you need electrical work, they send out an electrician.  When you need plumbing work, they send out a plumber.  In the same way MSPs have all the necessary people and resources to get all these focused jobs done under one umbrella of their business.  This makes the task much easier to handle, more affordable and more efficient.

Carolina Computer Concepts is one of only a few Managed Service Providers in the Carolinas that focus their services and solutions primarily to the small business client.  Contact us to find out how we can help turn your website from a cost to a revenue stream.  After all, do you want your website to continue to suck?!?