When it comes to your online presence, website mistakes that hurt business are more common than you think. A great website can be your best salesperson, but a poorly managed one can quietly drive customers away without you even realizing it.
In our previous post, Top 6 Ways Your Website Can Help Your Business, we reviewed the best ways your website can make your business better.
Well, it can go the other way around, too. Kinda acting like a double-edged sword.
A great website can be your best salesperson, but a poorly managed one can quietly drive away customers without you even realizing it.
Your website can actually hurt your business!
We’ve come up with the top 5 ways that this can happen, and if your website has one or more of these problems, then it’s time to address it.
Sometimes it can be an easy fix, but other times it needs to be a full redesign, depending upon how severe the problem is; you can find out by simply letting us know via our contact form and we’ll take a look!
Here are the top 5 ways your website may be hurting your business.
1. Your Website Looks Old or Unprofessional
You’ll know this is you if you look at your website, and you’re almost embarrassed to share it, or are slightly hesitant.
Or maybe you cringe just a little...
Or someone asks you about it, and you say “Gosh, this has been on my list to do forever!”
While you may not be embarrassed, your website might just be old, or unprofessional.
So if you haven’t upgraded it in the last couple of years, it’s time to at least make a few tweaks.
One of our clients, https://www.sowandreappt.com/, had great text but blurry, pixelated images. Not good - images should always be crisp and clear. We revamped the site with professional visuals that aligned with their brand, and the difference is night and day.
Furthermore, If your website looks unprofessional, visitors subconsciously assume your service or product is too - so if they don’t have any way to overcome that, like a strong referral, the casual observer will be gone.
There are several other things to watch that give you an indication if you need to make some changes:
- You don’t have some type of cookie banner or privacy policy.
- The message doesn’t match or doesn’t properly reflect what you currently do.
- The copyright date in your footer doesn’t reflect the current year.
If any of these sound familiar, it’s time for at least a refresh.
2. Your Website Is Slow
A slow website hurts the user experience, and especially conversions; people just aren’t going to wait around forever for your site to load.
In fact, google does prioritize faster sites in their rankings as it is a confirmed ranking factor for them.
Well then, how do you know if it’s slow or not?
Simply ask us to do an analysis for you. If not, you’ll want to make sure your mobile and desktop performance in google’s pagespeed insights analysis is at least above 50.
See the hiremyva.com website below as an example.
Here are a few quick wins to improve speed:
- Reduce image sizes
- Use quality hosting
- Enable caching
The faster your site, the more likely visitors are to stay, engage, and convert.
3. Your Website Is Inferior to Your Competition
If any of your top three competitors have a website that does better than you in the categories we talk about here as well as helps their company better than yours according to our previous blog post, you need to do something about it.
If they look great and you don’t, you’re out of consideration quickly!
One key way they could be better than you is how they rank for some important keywords in search results. If they outrank you, then you’re missing out on revenue - they’re getting traffic and leads that could have been yours.
How do we know that? At Pro Website Creators, we’ve had several clients come from search, and one has turned into a source for three websites.
Additionally, a large percentage of one of our client’s online sales comes from people discovering them through search (we do SEO for them).
Action step for you:
- Visit your top three competitors’ sites.
- Browse like a potential customer and take notes while doing so.
- Run an incognito Google search on your main product or service and compare your results to your competitors.
If you don’t like what you see, it’s time to step up.
4. Your Website Doesn’t Make It Easy to Contact You
Friction kills conversions. If people struggle to find your contact information, they’ll move on.
Your primary or secondary Call-To-Action (CTA) should be allowing your client to contact you by calling you or by quickly filling out a form.
Any phone numbers on your site should be click-to-call so that on mobile, they press the phone number, and they are immediately given an option to call you.
A contact form or button linking to a contact form should also be readily available.
The easier it is to connect, the more likely someone will take the next step.
5. Your Website Doesn’t Answer Questions
People are coming to your website to find out more about you. It should do at least the following:
- Sum up what you do so that within a few seconds, people know what you do.
- Answer some basic questions, normally via a faq, as that builds trust before a sales call.
- Have a 3-5 step plan of how you’re going to help them.
- Include some type of social proof such as reviews and/or testimonials.
As a bonus, having a chatbot so they can ask questions and get answers is helpful. And it’s answering questions outside of your normal business hours.
A potential customer who’s browsing should be able to answer these questions without forcing them to dig:
- Who Are You?
- What Do You Do?
- Whom Do You Serve?
- Why Should I Trust You?
- How Do I Get Started?
Every day your website underperforms, you’re losing potential clients to competitors.
And remember, your website is your 24/7 salesperson, so make sure it’s actually selling FOR you and not AGAINST you!
If you’re not sure where your website stands, we’d be happy to take a look and give you a free evaluation.
Is Your Website Hurting Your Business?
If your website looks outdated, loads slowly, or makes it hard for customers to trust you, it may be costing you sales. The good news is you can fix it. Whether you need a refresh, better performance, or a site that wins against your competition, we’re here to help.
📬 Submit a help request anytime at https://prowebsitecreators.com/help
📧 Or email us directly at help@prowebsitecreators.com
Let’s make your website your hardest-working business partner.
