10 Ways Your Website is Failing You!

If your website is not mobile friendly, Google is already punishing you in their rankings. In fact, they just released yet ANOTHER algorithm update punishing non-mobile friendly websites even more! In fact, Google actually prefers that your website be responsive meaning it automatically adjusts to the various screen sizes it is being displayed on.

QUICK FIX: This is a tough one to fix without a website re-design. However, there are services out there that will create a separate version of your website that will come up on mobile. However, Google recommends you have a responsive website (one that adjusts no matter what device you are on) and you could end up spending as much on that mobile only version as it would cost to just build a responsive site.

We are talking here from a design perspective as well as from a technological perspective. Is your site up to date design-wise? Does it have the modern look that the major brands use, or does it look like it is a small time site, designed by a small time designer? Are the fonts on your site the older style fonts like Tahoma, Times New Roman or Verdana? Are the fonts used on your site tiny? Are the images used too small for today’s monitors and internet speeds? Have you looked at the sites of some of the best brands out there and compared them with your site? What is different? This is a good way to tell if your site is out of date or up to date.

QUICK FIX: If possible, remove any out of date technologies like flash. Some easy ways to bring your site into the now design wise are use a white background for most of the site. Use newer fonts rather than the tired old Arial, Tahoma or Verdana. As we will talk about later, try to de-clutter a bit (but don’t remove important content that could be why you are ranking.)

If your website is trying to do too much, your website is not focused on your primary goals. Do you want to gain leads? Have people call you? Deliver important information? What is your primary goal? Is your site focused on that goal or have you included a lot of unnecessary information that is distracting your potential customers from your primary goal?

QUICK FIX: Think about your primary goal. Then make sure you have calls to action based on that goal throughout your website. Also, provide a number of ways for people to respond to you. Phone, email, contact form, appointment making form or app, instant chat. There are many ways to reach out and different people prefer different methods. Personally, I almost always prefer instant chat and if it is there, I will use it rather than email or phone.

In order to rank in today’s search engines your site cannot be thin on content. Does your home page have a reasonable amount of content explaining who you are and what you do? Do you have a blog? Does it have any articles? If your site is full of pictures, but no text, this is a problem. Google will see your site as low quality because you aren’t providing any content for your end user to consume.

QUICK FIX: Make sure you have paragraphs of content on each page with a few critical keywords in each for Google to grab on to. But, be careful how you lay these out. Too much content on the wrong kind of page can look cluttered. Therefore it is better to have a blog and write your heavy content in the form of blog posts.

While it seems crazy that Google can tell if the content (Text, Videos, Images) on your site is low quality, somehow they do just that. If your blogs consist of a few posts with a few paragraphs of content that no one really cares about, your site is filled with low quality content.

In order to succeed today, your site needs to have high quality content. Ideally your blog posts should be 1,700 to 2,000 word posts that are well researched and provide the reader with substantial value that will actually HELP them. You have to put yourself in the shoes of those coming to your site. Does your content help them do something? Understand something? Get somewhere? The more high quality content you have on your site, the more your site will rank and the more traffic you will receive.

QUICK FIX: Go through your most important pages and double check all of your content for quality issues. Improve where you can.

When someone comes to your website, the content you provide them should make it worth their while. Those on the other end are more likely to want to engage with you if you are providing them something of value. If you have downloaded this PDF, it’s because we promised you something valuable and hopefully at the end of it, you feel that the information we provided here is valuable information that can help you! (If not, please let us know!!)

If you want people to engage with you, or give you their email address, or return to your site, or recommend you to someone else, you need to provide them something seriously valuable in return.

QUICK FIX: This is where the blog comes in. Start blogging. Start writing HELPFUL and VALUABLE articles that will impact people. Give things away. The old way of web design was to hide everything and make your clients pay for it forcing your clients to pay you for it. Today, it makes more sense to build connections with people by giving away free content.

Remember how good it feels after you have cleaned your room? All the clutter is gone and all of a sudden it is as if the clouds have parted and the sun is shining again! This is all about design and quite frankly, you need a good designer to make this happen.

Good designers understand the importance of layout, spacing, white-space, composition, color, transparency, font choice, font size, organization and so on. ALL OF THESE MATTER. An inexperienced designer is unlikely to have the skill or understanding needed to make sure your site is clean and uncluttered, but a clean site will almost surely set you apart from your cluttered competition. (And there is plenty of cluttered & out of date competition for you to beat…)

If you want people to engage with you, or give you their email address, or return to your site, or recommend you to someone else, you need to provide them something seriously valuable in return.

QUICK FIX: As with the quality content section, clean things up! Remove unnecessary pages. Keep the main thing the main thing. If something isn’t focused on your primary goals then remove it. If you can clean it up and update it do so. Remove tacky clipart and replace it with a high quality photo. Remove serif fonts and replace them with clean sans-serif fonts.

Believe it or not, speed is one of the factors that Google takes into consideration when they decide how to rank your website. If your website is heavy on images or videos and those images or videos have not been set up correctly, your site could be loading too slow. In this day and age, every millisecond counts, so make sure your site is fast enough for the Big G. They have provided this handy tool to help you determine if your site is up to snuff. Google has provided a tool where you can test your website out to see where it stands. You can have that clue by clicking the button below.

QUICK FIX: Click the button below for Google’s recommendations on repairing your website’s speed issues. If your site is speed because of a server issue you may need to consider upgrading your server. If your site is slow because the platform it was built on is slow it is likely time for a re-design on a new platform.

While this isn’t directly tied into your site, it is definitely connected. Your branding includes your business name, logo, color scheme, identity, slogan, etc. Ultimately your entire site should be designed OFF OF YOUR BRANDING, so if your branding is weak, then it is going to be difficult to design a site around it. In my humble opinion, branding spreads out from the idea of your business to a number of different variables like this:
Biz Idea->Name->Slogan->Logo->Icon->Color Scheme->Website->Marketing Materials and so on…

If your logo is a weak logo, or your color scheme is bland or your icon is odd, then your site is likely to be off as well. When I design a site, I start with the logo which tells me what the color scheme should be as well as what imagery I should use in the site. This is important stuff. If the logo is bad, it makes it more difficult to really crush the site. BRANDING IS CRITICAL and sometimes it is better to start over and re-brand.

QUICK FIX: Just because your logo is lame doesn’t mean you have to scratch it. Maybe it is just out of date. A great designer can take your logo and tweak it providing you with a new version that holds true to the original intent, but holds a modern and up-to-date look.

This is almost a given, but I will mention it anyway. A well designed site should be intuitive. It should be simple to use focusing first on the most important areas, but the other important areas should be easy to find via properly designed and placed menus and links.

Additionally, your website could be user unfriendly in a number of other ways. If you have TOO MUCH content, your site can be unfriendly. In other words, if you have jammed your site full of information that isn’t helpful to your end-user, your site can be unfriendly as it makes it difficult for them to find what is actually important to them.

QUICK FIX: Once you go through and test your site or have friends or colleagues go through and test it and provide feedback, I recommend making necessary changes. It may be as simple as changing your menu or putting buttons in more prominent places. Generally, making a site more user-friendly doesn’t require an entire site re-design, just some thoughtful changes.