Here are the most common factors that may prevent your website from achieving your goals.

If you landed here you probably understand how important having a website for the business is. This time we will have a small workshop on the topic “why my website doesn’t …(basically, anything website may potentially not do)“ - sell, generate leads, appear on Google, build loyalty, attract new stakeholders, have a lot of traffic, etc.

Let’s discuss 2 potential scenarios:

• Website is done well but needs marketing efforts. Alright, check the article about the online presence (/magazine/how-to-make-your-website-visible-on-the-web) and go ahead!
• Website has issues - how to identify them? Let’s see the most common:

1. Website speed is slow. It just loads slowly.

Well, users may even not notice this additional 2-3 seconds, but for Google bots, it’s crucial to have the best websites listed on the first page, especially after Google launched the page experience update and while core web vitals slowly becoming SEO KPIs from May to mid-June 2021.

Key points to consider

• Largest Contentful Paint (LCP): the time in seconds from when the page starts loading to when the largest text block or image element is rendered on the screen.

• First Input Delay (FID): the time in milliseconds from when a user first interacts with your site (i.e. when they click a link, tap a button, or press a key) to when the browser is able to respond to that interaction.

• Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS): the cumulative score of all unexpected layout shifts within the viewport that occur during a page’s entire lifecycle. Its aim is to measure a page’s “visual stability,” as that heavily influences the user experience.

It may look like some dev stuff and “why do I need to know it?“ but trust me, it’s crucial when it comes to identifying your website’s weak areas and choosing the proper people to fix it. Often, especially when the website is more than 3-5 years old, the web vitals of the website look so bad that it requires a total rebuild in order to have a chance to appear in SERP.

2. Website design is outdated or looks bad.

This is a huge topic, but I’ll try to be brief.

Obviously, we all understand, that WordArt graphics are not the point of discussion at all, but even among “professionally designed websites“ there are cases when in 2021 design looks like the 80’th grocery store commercial (not to be mistaken with the old-school 80’th trend or even older Bauhaus, that’s not the same), or when entering the website you just feel uncomfortable using it, or text looks like imported from the basic Word document, etc.

All issues with design end up at a point where the user simply doesn’t like the website and the chance of building loyalty rapidly decreases. We have a whole separate article dedicated to the website design process, but here let’s focus on the essentials.

Key factors to consider while analyzing your website’s design:

• Minimalism. It may sound like a trend, but now it became the fundamental standard of web design. Minimalistic practices are everywhere now. It allows user to quickly find what he’s looking for, it looks great, it builds loyalty.

• User Experience. There’re 2 cases when you as a user may remember a website’s user experience - when it’s uncomfortably bad and when it’s outstandingly good with some additional features. Most of the websites focus on just good user experience so users won’t probably remember it as it’s just a background thing. But it’s the incredibly important “background thing” as it focuses on users' interaction with a website and making it comfortable.

• Quality custom images. Remember the core web vitals? That’s actually what influences it much - image format, size. Now think about users. How user will feel and what he will think about your company if he sees the low-quality stock photos? The answer is obvious though…

3. Website is not optimized.

We’ve already mentioned few times why SEO is important, and there is a close connection between this topic and the first. Here also comes the copywriting. Keywords are one of the most important SEO techniques when it goes to ranking high on Google.

Key factors to consider:

• Hero section. Hero should be the image and/or text that describes best your business. Try to keep it short but catchy.

• Headings. Heading should have keywords you want to rank by. Use only one H1 on the main page.

• Keep the main page short. I don’t want to say it should be just a page without scrolling, but try to keep only essential information on the main page.

• Services and products. No matter what is your product or service - if you have a business it means you want to earn money. Describe clearly what do you offer your potential customer.

4. Website technology is outdated.

There are a lot of different technologies and tools devs use to create a website. One thing you need to know - the world is dynamic and progress never stops, especially when it comes to technology. Tools developers used 5 years ago may already be too old to fit modern standards. But how can you discover if your website is built using tools that are up-to-date? Well, just think about when the website was made. Month ago? Two? Or few years? If the answer is closer to the third option it’s probably doesn’t meet the modern web requirements. Would like to have a broader picture of this topic? Just ask us, we’re here to help!

5. Bugs.

I won’t be joking about insects, I’ll just tell that this is an important separate thing that could be included in the fourth point, but I think it’s worth attention as a separate. First of all, because it’s a thing that may come with up-to-date technology. Every technology has its own bugs, it’s a normal thing, but dev’s job is to eliminate them and give you the complete product. Next thing is, and it’s basically the continuation of the first - bugs are easily notable. Just something went wrong and you don’t know why it affects you, your business, your users. Unpleasant thing, isn’t it? That is the point where you should start thinking about doing something with your website.

Conclusion

Here are the top 5 struggles you may potentially face on your website. Obviously, those are very complex topics that include a lot of information inside each other and complexity sometimes is so big that you may not want to even think about it.
Well, we understand you, that’s why we’re here to help. Book a call with us and let’s deal with it!

Face some of those problems?

Don’t hesitate to send us a note at hello@unikorns.work or visit our website: www.unikorns.work

Originally published at https://www.unikorns.work.