The Top 3 Things Every Bad Website Has in Common

Did you know that all bad websites have these 3 things in common?

If your website is not generating enough traffic, attracting customers, and performing as well as you expect it should, it’s important to ask “why?”

Knowing this can help solve three of the most common issues associated with bad website design. Often the symptoms of an under-performing website fall into three basic areas:

1. Irrelevant Content
2. Lack of SEO
3. Bad User Experience

We’ll now look at the 3 things that every bad website has in common and offer a few tips.

Content is King

One of the issues with inexpensive website design packages is that the web designer often ends up writing the content for the web pages themselves.

If you hire a builder to erect a brick wall, would you trust that same builder to fix your plumbing? Probably not. Masonry and plumbing are two completely different professions and when getting work like this done, you need a specialist.

The same concept applies to the content that appears on your new website.

When feasible, hire a content writer or wordsmith who can work in tandem with your designer to create effective prose that positions you and your products in the best possible light.

Indeed, it is important to get the colors, fonts, background images, and other visual elements correct. But if you don’t solve common mistakes associated with content, you can have the most beautiful web design in the world and you’ll still lose out on hundreds of potential sales each month because your web pages have low quality content.

SEO & FAQs

Having solid, relevant content on each web page is just the start, whether it’s your own website or a business website. That content has to be “search engine optimized” (SEO).

This process is extremely important for making the content on your website easily found by potential customers searching for keywords or phrases via search engines such as Google, Bing, Yahoo, Firefox, YouTube and others.

Of course, getting the SEO right isn’t a walk in the park. It takes time, research and constant care to help move your website’s rankings higher and higher in the search results. Despite the effort, it’s worth it.

Better SEO results helps boost your website’s (and company’s) perceived authority and credibility, increases traffic to your site as well as engagement and conversions, and ultimately brings down your per customer acquisition costs.

There are a number of SEO tools that can be used to help optimize your website. Again, a savvy content writer can assist by crafting copy that will result in higher search engine rankings, but so too can the talented site design team at The Social Firm.

Frequently Asked for Good Reason

Your potential customer will most often find your site via search engine queries. So, having your main page optimized along with the other most important pages on your website will help draw in many more visitors.

Indeed, because most people who come to your site will be seeking company info, it’s important to offer as much relevant information as possible.

Many websites feature product reviews, testimonials, blogs, and an entire About Us page that is filled with substantive facts and data, and contact details. Not fluff. Included as well are Frequently Asked Questions.

The Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) section of your website is a great way to satisfy your visitors’ need for solid information while also helping to increase your site’s SEO ranking. Simply put, FAQs help SEO.

A Bad User Experience

Is your website user friendly?

Your website’s user experience is critical to how a visitor interacts with the content on the site and how he or she feels about your brand once they leave the site. And bad usability can determine whether they ever return to your site.

One of the main issues is that a lot of website owners don’t realize that their website design is bad. They think that because they have gone through the web design process, all the design elements must be right and that there should be no important links on the site that are missing or broken. Unfortunately, this isn’t always the case.

Fast Beats Slow Everyday

Despite the tale of a very illustrious tortoise and a hapless hare, fast typically beats slow every day. This is especially true where your web visitors are concerned. Designers must keep in mind that customers hate visiting websites with bad user experience and poor navigation, or websites that simply don’t load quickly enough!

It doesn’t matter how gripping your content might be, because visitors to your site are not going to stick around if your site takes forever to load.

40% of people give up on a site if it takes over 3 seconds of load time. They simply won’t wait that long. A long load time on your site can mean as much as a 7% drop in your conversion rate.

Get the Most Out of Your Website with Optimization

Does the web design accommodate visitors using different devices? Will mobile users have access to the same features as desktop users?

Nearly all Americans own mobile phones. 79% of smartphone users have made purchases using their mobile device, and nearly 85% of Americans read news stories via mobile.

Advancing technology and user demand have made it nearly impossible to get away with a website that doesn’t have mobile responsiveness. Moreover, a lack of mobile optimization will show up in your Google analytics and negatively impact your search engine rankings.

Thanks to mobile devices, we’re all connected all the time. The result is that your website MUST BE mobile friendly.

Web Design Success is Possible with a Little Help

It can seem quite daunting to get your website design right. With not only the design elements to figure out, there’s the technology support and content to worry about. But you don’t have to go it alone. Want to find out more? Contact us at Social Firm to see how we can help you to turn your poorly designed website around, by incorporating a responsive design, relevant information and more. Your user journey is our first priority.