5 Ways Your Website Is Costing You New Business

Your website can be a great tool to help you grow your business, but it can also repel potential new customers and work against you. Out of date websites and a poor design can cost you new business and revenue each month. If your business is suffering and you're not sure why it might be that your website is to blame.

Good Design is Good Business
Thomas J. Watson Jr.

1. Your website doesn't have a clear call to action on each page

As a matter of fact, each page should really have one main call to action. Clear call to actions to let potential customers/clients know how to purchase your products or work with you. You want to encourage or direct your customer to exactly what you want them to do. This is usually in the form of a button placed strategically on the page. This could be "Schedule a Call", "Buy Now", "Sign Up For a Free Trial", etc. It really depends on what kind of business you have.

2. Your site layout is confusing or messy

It only takes a few seconds for someone to evaluate your website before they click the back button. Each section of the page should be easy to understand and lead the customer to keep reading or scanning further on down the page. Most people scan through a page, reading the headlines and looking at images. The layout of the page content is one of the most important factors to consider when creating your website for your business. It's recommended to hire a professional who will work with you on a strategy on how to integrate your messaging, content and design together.

3. Your site's design is outdated

Great website design can show consumers that your business is a legit and professional business that they would like to work with. It can boost your reputation and it can also turn potential customers away. You can always try to build a website yourself, but you might waste a lot of time trying to figure it out. In the end, you might have a lot of questions about how to make your site look good on mobile and how to implement search engine optimization into your site.

4. Your site is not mobile friendly

Smart phones and tablets are very common, most people are always on their phone. Google is putting more and more emphasis on mobile search. How your site looks on mobile devices is really important. If your website is not mobile responsive - you can be losing out on a lot of customers and business. The importance of mobile responsive design has been around for a while now, and the majority of websites nowadays are. Even so, I still come across older, dated sites for active businesses.

5. Your site has broken links

Does your website have broken links or broken images that aren't working? Do you have a lot of "page not founds", or maybe your embedded google map is is broken or missing? If you've noticed that, then your site visitors definitely have noticed that. This can cost you lost business and a loss of reputation. When is the last time you've updated your site? Broken links can make it seem that the site was just left on its own, or worse - that you're out of business.