As a business owner, you probably spend a lot of your time thinking about how you can make your business more efficient. One of the key measures to achieve this is to ensure that your business' website is actually efficient and generating revenue for you.
For a website to be successful and help you achieve your desired goals, you need to consider a number of aspects, often overlooked, that go far beyond just having an attractive design. If you're not sure if your website is up to the job for your business, here are 3 important things to consider.
Your website is slow
Every second lost is money lost. According to this study, 47% of visitors expect a page to load in less than 2 seconds, and if it takes 3 seconds to load, 40% of visitors abandon the page. The author has also concluded that on average, for every extra second of loading, conversions (purchases of a product) decrease by 7%.
In addition, performance is an important ranking factor for Google's search algorithm, which is why whenever you search for something, Google prefers to show you faster websites at the top.
Here at Google, we're obsessed with speed. Faster sites create happy users.
If your website is slow, you are lowering your ranking in Google and you are losing a lot of customers. The solution is obvious: if you want to gain more visitors and keep them on your website, you have to make sure it performs well.
Sometimes it is possible to improve the performance of your WordPress website a little. However, often the best option is to have a new one. Here are two options:
- Ideally, it should be custom-built (programmed from scratch, without platforms like WordPress), which offers maximum performance and can be between 2 and 5 times faster than a Wordpress website.
- But if you have a limited budget, I suggest you look for and hire a professional who has more experience and knows how to optimize WordPress websites.
How can I check the speed of my website?
You may think that you visit your own website often and it always loads fast. The problem is that when you visit a website for the first time, your browser saves a part of the files needed to display that page, and the next time you visit it, the browser instead of downloading everything again, will use the files saved in the cache, thus displaying the page much faster than for a first time visitor.
Therefore, to measure the speed of your website as objectively and accurately as possible, you have to resort to other methods.
The quickest and most effortless option is to open an incognito window in your browser and visit your website from there. Although this way you can't get accurate measurements, and also if you have fast internet, you won't be able to simulate the experience of an average visitor of your website.
The option I recommend the most is to use "Google PageSpeed Insights". It is a free tool developed by Google, which evaluates your website on aspects such as performance, accessibility, best practices and SEO, and gives you a score between 0 and 100 for each of the aspects. It is recommended to have more than 90 for performance, although 80 may also be sufficient in some cases, if competitors in your industry do not usually invest in professional websites.
The only metric that is useful for me is performance. The SEO test that is included can also be useful if it shows you that you have things that could be improved, but keep in mind that it is a bit basic and if you have a 100, it doesn't necessarily mean that your website has very good SEO. There are much more advanced paid tools for that.
Your website looks old and unattractive
The most important question: are you happy/proud of your website and do you think it leaves a good impression of your business to your potential customers? If the answer is no, you probably need a new website.
Although it is the most obvious aspect, many people underestimate its importance. Keep in mind that people often unconsciously relate your competence in one area to another, even if they have no relation to each other.
Imagine this: if a restaurant has ugly and unkempt premises, customers will assume that the quality of the food will also be bad. Similarly, if your business has an unattractive website, the perceived value of your business to outsiders will also be very low.
Therefore, as the perceived value of your business is directly correlated to your public image, which is the website, the difference that a typical WordPress website made by a non-technical person using a template can make to the appearance of your business is abysmal compared to a 100% custom-made one by a professional.
Just by the right professional design alone, you can gain much more customer trust and double your conversions, because they will have more trust in your company and will see more value in what you offer.
Your website has confusing navigation
This is a very typical problem for websites made by non-technical people. Examples of this could be: the navigation bar is overly complex and unintuitive, with lots of pages that have little relevance and an obvious lack of structure.
It is essential that all websites have a clear structure, which guides visitors as smoothly as possible to all pages. If people visiting your website don't know what to do or where to go because there are too many pages or the navigation is confusing, you should seriously consider having a new website.
Other things to consider
The following situations do not require the creation of a new website, but together with the problems mentioned above, they can make the need for a new website more obvious.
Your website is not well positioned in Google (SEO)
SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) in simple terms is about making your website more attractive and easier to find for people searching for things on Google. It involves employing certain tactics and optimisations to make your site appear at the top of the search results, which helps to generate more visitors and in turn more customers.
Imagine a shop that is tucked away on a quiet street. No matter how good what it has to offer, it won't attract many customers simply because people won't find it. In the same way, a website without good SEO will be hidden on the internet, which means fewer visitors and fewer conversions for your business.
If your website does not rank well in Google and you want to improve it, the best option is to hire a freelancer or an SEO agency, and they will do a several months campaign to optimize your website. But if you are interested in working with me, contact me and we will talk about what we can do for your website.
Your web page does not have good copywriting
Copywriting is the art of writing persuasive and attractive texts, with the objective of capturing the reader's attention, arousing their interest, generating trust and motivating them to perform a specific action, such as buying a product or subscribing to a service. It is an extremely important skill to make a business more profitable, because it is what converts all the traffic coming from Google to your website into customers.
Careful choice of words, tone and style are essential to establish a relationship of trust. Effective copywriting communicates the unique value proposition of your business and creates a positive image in the minds of users. By reading copy that resonates with their own experiences and aspirations, visitors feel understood and valued.
If you are interested in hiring a copywriter to write all the texts for your website, keep in mind that the design of your website will also have to change, this may involve changes or creation of new sections or even pages. Therefore, if you feel that the design of your website is not up to par, my recommendation is to take the opportunity to create a completely new one, and that adapts to the content written by the copywriter.
The decision is yours
I hope this guide has helped you be more sure that your website is good enough, or to realize the aspects that you could improve.
If you have made the decision or you are considering having a new website, and you don't know how much it might cost, in this post I talk in detail about how much a website might cost in 2024 (including exact figures).
But if you are not sure and you need to consult a professional or someone who knows about it, contact me and I will help you to make the best decision for you. It will be free and with total objectivity and honesty, because if for any reason it turns out that you should not have a new web page or hire my service, I will be the first one to tell you.