It’s pretty much impossible at this point to deny just how important it is for your business to have some kind of online presence. Something that was once considered to be something of a luxury is now an integral part of any business’s brand in the modern age. Now that so many people are living such a large portion of their lives online, you simply cannot run a business without a website. The truth is if you don’t have a website, as far as many customers are concerned, you don’t exist. That being said, things are a fair amount more complicated than just having a website that your customers can visit. The truth is that there are plenty of businesses who are unable to bring any real traffic to their website and, let’s be honest, a website without any traffic is pretty much useless. But how can you encourage potential customers to actually engage with your website in the first place? Here are a few simple reasons why your website might be turning them away, and what you can do to fix it.
Ugly design
This might sound rather shallow, but the truth is that customers simply do not want to engage with ugly websites. There was a time when you could get away with a website that looked like it was made in 1995. It was in 1995. If your website looks dated and amateurishly designed, then you’ve got to consider how that reflects on your business as a whole. Customers are going to assume that your business doesn’t have all that much to offer. Even if the content of your website and the products and services that you provide are amazing, if you can’t present them properly then you’re going to lose your customers interests incredibly quickly. If you really want to customers to stay on your website, then you need to keep things simple and elegant. Don’t muddy things with flashy graphics and decoration. Keep things streamlined and clean. Look to companies like Apple for design ideas; they’ve made an entire brand based on these design principles. Of course, if you really want to get the most out of your web design then handing it over to companies like MEDIA tribe online who specialize in it is one of the best things that you can do. That way you can still have control over the appearance of your website without having to take up huge amounts of time and effort making sure that it all looks the way that you want it to.
Difficult to navigate
Of course, even if your website is absolutely beautiful if your customers can’t find their way around then it won’t take long before they get frustrated and move on to something else. You need to make sure that customers can find their way around your website quickly and easily. This means that it should not only be clear and easily readable but also that it actually functions properly. This might not be much of an issue if your business is very small and you get relatively light amounts of traffic to it each week. However, if your business starts to grow more significantly, the increased traffic could end up putting a lot of pressure on your network which could lead it to work slowly or even crash altogether. When this happens there’s no real incentive for your customers to wait around for it to be fixed, they’ll just go and look elsewhere for whatever they need.
Poor SEO
Of course, there is a chance that the issue isn’t that customers have found your website and are clicking away, it could be that they simply can’t find it in the first place. Where they might have looked in the phonebook to find a business twenty years ago, customers now go straight to search engines like Google when they need something. Because of this, you need to make sure that your website is as high up the ranks of Google’s search results as possible. The best possible way to do this is through Search Engine Optimization or SEO. SEO is essentially the use of keywords and phrases that make sure that your website is the first one people see when they search those terms. There was a time when companies would just fill their websites will keywords without much care and attention but these days search engines like Google actually blacklist sites that do this. The very best thing that you can do is to make sure that you use your keywords carefully and that you combined them with interesting, engaging, well-written content.
Unengaging content
Speaking of content, this is something that far too many businesses end up falling down on. Their website might be beautiful, it might function perfectly, and it might be right at the top of the Google search results. None of that is going to mean a thing if you don’t give your customers a reason to be there. Your website should always serve a clear purpose and communicate that purpose clearly to the customer. This goes for your website whether you’re using it as an ecommerce store, a marketing tool, a blog, or a combination of all three. You need to create content that your customers actually want to engage with directly rather than something that will leave them bored confused and frustrated. This isn’t always easy, but there are plenty of resources online that can help you do this as well as freelance writers that you can hire to make the process much faster and easier.
Of course, just doing these things isn’t always going to guarantee that customers will come flooding to your business. Just because an online presence is important doesn’t mean that you should neglect the other aspects of your business. Even online there are things beyond your website that you should be doing, including email marketing and the use of social media. The key is to make sure that your customers can interact with your business at all times no matter what format it’s in.
