Here’s your Low Traffic, High Bounce Rate, Abysmal Conversion Rate, so you can put Google to Work for You Medicine.
Have you ever thought about going to medical school? Neither have we. But when it comes to creating excellent websites, it helps to have some basic understanding of illness prevention — website illness, that is.
If your web traffic isn’t where you’d like it to be, don’t just grumble and sigh and then accept that that’s the way the world works. It isn’t. Clear your desk, roll up your sleeves and take a real close look at what might be killing your website. Because when neglect and poor design allow websites to die, they don’t go to some big search engine in the sky. No, they go to a cold, dark corner of the World Wide Web with nary a click to keep them company. Meanwhile, your business’s success hangs by a thread.
If your website is dying, we’re here to help you pull it out of low traffic and minimal conversion rate misery and into strapping website health. Take a look at these common website mistakes.
Your Website Is Not Well Optimized for Search
If you’re of the mind that all websites were created equal, we’re sorry to break it to you that you may have confused website planning with a certain civil rights movement of the 1960s. The cold, hard truth is that websites are not equal and search engines do not treat them as such.
If you don’t have at least basic knowledge of search engine optimization, we highly recommend a little SEO training or consulting with experts in the field. Optimization is absolutely critical in earning your business’s rank, and it’s well worth investing in. Low optimization means fewer visitors, which ultimately means fewer customers.
Fact: Google owns 65-70 percent of the search engine market share. (imFORZA)
Your Website Is Not Mobile-Friendly
Google has been forthcoming about the importance of mobile-friendly web design, and recently announced a new algorithm that will favour mobile-friendly sites on mobile search. Makes perfect sense, right? We think so too.
The truth is, this announcement served as a sort of Bat Signal to all inbound marketers who have been up in arms at the mere thought that some businesses have continued hold off on optimizingtheir sites for mobile use.
Fact: 60 percent of all online traffic now comes from mobile platforms. (comScore)
Your Body Copy Is Giving Readers a Headache
And we’re not talking about the quality of your content. Anything on your website that you actually want people to read should be a minimum of 16 pixels. If that sounds large to you, take our word for it: it’s not. Take into account that over 600,000 Canadians live with vision impairment that cannot be treated with lenses, and you really don’t want to risk going too small.
Another headache-inducing trend is low contrast fonts. We assume that somewhere along the lines of black text on white backgrounds, some designers thought they were being real cool by switching things up. Turns out, a colored background with a low contrast font not only looks terrible, but can be near-impossible to read without perfect vision or a whole lot of patience. As fascinating as your business may be, unless your content is more gripping than a Jack Reacher novel, readers are not going to put up with your low contrast fonts.
Fact: The average human attention span is 8 seconds — one second less than that of a goldfish. (Statistic Brain)
Your Website Lacks Clear Calls to Action
If your website waxes poetic about the value of your business but neglects to clearly direct users with a call to action, it’s bad news bears. Want to connect with leads right from the get go? Offer an email subscription button smack dab on your landing page. How about increasing engagement with your blog readership? Throw a whitepaper at them.
Every single page on your website should have a clear call to action, and yes, that includes your landing page. Don’t by shy.
Fact: 70 percent of small business websites don’t display a clear call to action on their landing page. (Online Marketing Coach)
Conclusion
Putting some critical thought into maximizing your website’s effectiveness can help pull your business up by its bootstraps and get conversion rates moving on up. To avoid banishing your website to that cold lonely corner of the Internet, consider what you can alter about your layout, design and content to enhance the user experience.
What are some other common website mistakes you can think of? How will you update your website for increased traffic and conversions?
