Why your company website is killing your business

Before diving into the details of this interesting topic: Why your company website is killing your business and how to solve that
Let me ask you some questions:
When did you purchase your company website and from whom?
Does it enhance or detract from your business goals and mission?
How many people visit your company website every hour, day, week, or month?
What do they do when they get there? Do they find what they are looking for?
What page do they land on first and why?
How are you capturing these hot leads for your business? (Or, are you even capturing them? Or have a strategy to convert them into loyal customers?)
Do you know the answers to these critical questions?
Let me rephrase all these questions in one question: Is your company website an expense (a liability) or a money generating machine (an asset)?
Come on now! And let us face this hard truth and opportunity at the same time, we are in the second decade of the 21st century! Trillions of dollars of business are being done online.
People are using their Smartphones right now and every day to search for your products and services, and if they can’t find your business, they’re headed straight to your competition.
Don’t you think it is the right time to audit your business website and check how it works (or doesn’t work) for your business or against it?
I think it is the right time now and I am sure you agree with me..
Ok let’s dive into the meat of this article, but before doing that close all sources of distractions and read this article careful till the end and most important take notes.
I’m going to share with you some valuable features of doing business online as pertains to your business’s main website.
If at any time you feel overwhelmed, or need some help with this, let me know by contacting me here and I am ready to audit your online presence for free and answer all your questions.

Common Issues Facing Businesses as Pertains to Their Business Company Websites And How To Solve Them!

Nowadays most businesses have websites and most of them get a great deal of their revenue from their website. Making sure that your business website is up to snuff, as it were, is critical for anyone doing business.
During my 12 years journey of helping businesses just like yours with lead generation and digital marketing strategies, I’ve noticed five sets of issues facing modern business websites.
They are…
1.       Website Usability
2.       Lack of analytics
3.       Mobile friendliness
4.       Secure web hosting
5.       Overall website security

Let’s talk about each of these in order. Usability first.

Website Usability

Usability is defined as how easy and fast it is for your website visitors to find required information from your website.
Websites have changed dramatically over the past five to ten years.
They used to be static. Static means they didn’t change their dimensions according to the size of the screen they were being viewed on. (Phones have different dimensions from computers, for instance.)
Not only that, but the technology behind the look and feel of the website has changed dramatically as well.
HTML5 and Bootstrap have revolutionized the way websites look and function.

Of course, all of this modern technology doesn’t mean any sense if people can’t find what they’re looking for.
Are they looking for more information about products or services? Directions to your store? Contact information? Or maybe they are looking for testimonials and Case studies?
In addition to that, there’s the angle of sales psychology. You’re in business to sell products and/or services. How do people decide to take whatever next step they need to take in your sales process? What exactly does your online sales process (sometimes called a sales funnel) look like?
I guess now you had a better idea and understanding of website usability and it is time to jump on to the second issue:

Lack of Website Analytics

Have you heard before of Peter Drucker?
Peter Drucker, is a management guru from the middle of the last century, a brilliant guy, he said, “You can’t manage what you don’t measure.”
“Analytics” is the term used to talk about the measurement of things (metrics) like amount of traffic (visits) a website gets, where the visitors come from, what they do when they reach your website, How much time they spend on your website, on specific pages, and what actions did they take toward your goals (If you set goals in your analytics).
Sadly, most business owners and managers have no idea and no clue of where their website traffic comes from and what it does when it hits their website.
If you don’t have any clue about your website analytics, you can’t optimize and increase what we call your “conversion rate”.
Conversion rate optimization is the process of increasing the percentage of your website visitors into leads and buyers.
The measurement part of analytics and conversions is not an easy task.
You need to use tools and various other snippets of code to measure traffic, click-through rates (how many people actually took action and clicked on links), and conversions (ratio of sales to visitors).
Measuring this is fairly straightforward, as long as you have access to the right technology. The harder part is actually understanding what the numbers mean and how to set and measure goals.
Of course, your main goal is to convert as many visitors into buyers.
But, what percentage of your website visitors should turn into buyers? And what is reasonable?
What percentage of your website visitors should end up on your list as leads? And what is reasonable there?
And, if the results aren’t what you want and not aligned with your overall marketing strategy, how do you actually go about adjusting elements and tactics so that you get better conversions? All of this takes the experience to figure out and put into action.
After all, marketing is an experiential process.
Do you know that:
Google says 61% of users are unlikely to return to a mobile site they had trouble accessing and 40% visit a competitor’s site instead.
And that 57% of users say they won’t recommend a business or a company with a poorly-designed mobile site. (socPub)
And this leads us to our next issue:

Mobile Friendliness Websites

Talking about usability let us quickly glance at the mobile revolution.
When it comes to mobile marketing you have three options: Dominate, Survive or Die
If you are like every other business out there, most of your visitors are looking at your website on their phones.
If that’s the case, and it is, what does your website look like on a phone?
Is it easy to navigate?
Does it load quickly?
Does your website brand your business in a professional way that makes sense for you and in a way that harmonizes with all your other branding?
Even more, Google keeps track of which websites are “responsive” and which are not.
Responsive means that your website changes shape, layout and even rearranges the elements so that it’s more easily viewed on Smartphones and Tablets.
In Fact, in April 21, 2015, Google released a significant new mobile-friendly ranking algorithm that’s designed to give a boost to mobile-friendly websites in Google’s mobile search results Called Mobilegeddon.
Amazing!
More than half of your website visitors are looking at your website on their phones? The question is:
How did they get to your website at first place?
The majority of them probably Googled your business name or at least something that made Google decide that your business would be a good fit for their search query.
For example, Googling “Spa near me” or “Facebook advertising companies in Lebanon” and then all the spas within a five-mile radius or Facebook advertising companies in Lebanon show up.
If your business website doesn’t pass Google’s mobile test criteria, then it’s not going to show up nearly as well in the search results’ pages as those that do. Makes sense right!
Google wants its users to have the optimum user experience. So, if your website won’t display and look good to Google’s users, Google doesn’t reward it with the best placement.
You probably don’t even know if your website has this problem.
If you do though, you need to ignore or postpone solving this issue. You will be losing a lot of business fast to your competitors.

Secure Web Hosting

Have you tried recently to visit a website and your browser, either on your computer or on your phone, tells you it’s not safe.
We all have seen this issue!
Well, there could be two reasons for that.
The website might be hacked and contain harmful viruses and malware. In that event, it’s actually not safe to visit and load.
Often, though, the website itself is just fine but the hosting of the website is not secure and lacks the necessary elements so that your browsing session is encrypted.
Encryption on websites is very important, especially if you’re browsing and visiting websites through public WIFI.
If your connection to the website you are visiting isn’t encrypted, a nefarious third-party could intercept the data going from your computer to the website and potentially use it to compromise your own website, steal your identity, install viruses and malware or more.
I know this sounds a little far-fetched, but it’s not! It is a serious issue since web security is a serious issue after all!
It is very serious so that Google insists that websites should have the necessary encryption technology installed and configured properly.
Even more, Google’s own browser, Chrome, is warning visitors when they’re viewing a website that’s not encrypted.
The question is if Google is doing it, will the other browsers and social media platforms follow the suit soon? I bet they will.
A quick note here: I not talking about e-commerce website, e-commerce websites require a higher level of security, what I am talking about here are normal business websites.
To cut long story short: The solution to this security issue is to have your host install the latest encryption technology on your site.

Overall Website Security Issues

Most business websites nowadays aren’t developed or built from scratch.
They’re built using Content Management Systems (CMS) like WordPress, Joomla or Drupal.
These platforms are open source platforms. They are free to use, and WordPress is extremely popular while Joomla was very popular CMS platform a few years ago.
WordPress powers close to 30% of all websites online and Joomla comes second at just 3.1%.
This is cool because you get a lot of developers and companies develop and create software that runs on WordPress.
It’s problematic, though, because being open source and very popular, WordPress (and all the other platforms) are susceptible to hacking.
What’s so scary is that your website could be hacked and you’d never know it is.
You may ask why Hackers hack websites?

Hackers hack websites and their hosting for many reasons, not all of which is to disrupt or steal the website itself.
For example, DDOS attacks on other websites are very common nowadays. (DDOS means Denial of Service Attack.) Hackers use automation and bots to plant files on other people’s web hosting and then use those files in their attacks.
Pornographers do the same job! Your website links could be now compromised and might redirect visitors to a porn site…and unless one of your website visitors complains, you’d never know about it!
The horror story begins when Google figures out that your website has been hacked!
It will remove your website from its index which means no one will find your website during a search. Your traffic, at least the organic part of it, will vanish and disappear.
And the story will not end here when paid traffic platforms like (Google Adwords, Facebook advertising, Bing Ads and Others) figure out your website has been hacked, they do the same. They quit serving up your ads on their networks.
A complete disaster! Since this will ruin your brand and on the other hand solving this issue by cleaning your website and removing this penalty takes time.
Don’t let this happen to you and your business! There are precautions you can take and software and tools you can use to prevent hacking.

Bonus section: Other Common Website Issues

The five crucial issues mentioned above happen quite frequently, and it’s very rare that I meet a potential client whose website doesn’t have at least one or two of these issues.
But because there are other website problems and issues that can really expose your business to catastrophic loss! I have added this section.
Let me ask you some questions:
Do you know where did the images come from on your website?
Do you have the legal authority to use those images?
Where did your website developer or web design agency get the pictures?
If you are like a lot of business owners, you don’t have answers to those questions and don’t have any clue where your website images come from.
And because of that, you’re potentially exposing yourself and your business to lawsuits, including hiring an attorney to defend you. Don’t think this scenario doesn’t happen! It happens a lot!
That’s not all, your website will also be filed a DMCA notice and will be penalized if proper actions are not taken quickly.
Another important issue which is not as ominous as the previous one.
Do you know your website speed? Does it load fast? Does it have unnecessarily large nonoptimized image files and other files that slow it down?
Web visitors are in hurry and they want sites that load fast. If your website takes few seconds to load is too long, your website visitors are going to one of your competitors’ website.
What about website integration? Nowadays, all online marketing platforms and channels should be all integrated together properly in order to create the best brand exposure and user experience. What about your integration? Are you missing any piece of the puzzle that could potentially prevent your visitors from doing more business with you?
Another important issue: Do you know that most web design agencies don’t understand online marketing!
They are coder and developers but not marketers!
When they built your website they will not implement best Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Strategies and Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) Strategies because they simply do not know and understand how online marketing works.
All of these issues and many others argue one very critical point. If you haven’t had your company or business website updated in the past couple of years, it’s probably the best time to do so now.
Sometimes very old websites are hard to fix, In fact, fixing them will be waste of time and money it is like trying to repair a leaky boat. As soon as you have one leak plugged, another pumps up.
What you should do right now is to take a look at your website, both from the users’ (visitors’) point of view and the back-end workings and check carefully if you have one or more of these issues.
Chances are you do! If you do have some or all of the above issues don’t neglect them, I am sure you will not neglect them unless you don’t care about your business and your brand.
Also, don’t panic because my team and I will help you solve and fix all of these issues and will build your business a sales machine website.
A website that is optimized properly, a website that generates results 24 hours a day 7 days a week, a real money generating machine.
Bottom Line: Websites have to be updated, or even replaced, more often than business owners think. Technologies and things change fast in the online world, and in order to survive, you have to stay up to date with the changes, both from a usability point of view and from a more technical point of view.
We are here to keep your business on the top of the digital marketing game. Book your free consultation now.
Hope you found our post: Why your company website is killing your business and how to solve that helpful and let us know your thoughts in the comments section.

The article Why your company website is killing your business is republished from: Web Marketing Lions PPC Advertising Agency in Lebanon