4 Ways Your Website is Actually Driving Customers Away

When you’re building an online presence for your business, your website serves as the core of your digital strategy. An effective, professional website can help you establish credibility, connect with potential customers, and generate more sales and leads.

While your website can be an incredibly effective tool for growing your business, a poorly-designed site can have a negative impact. A poorly-designed site that doesn’t meet the needs of your customers can actually drive them away. Here are four different ways your website might be making a negative first impression on your customers:

1 | It Isn't Mobile Friendly

Users who are accessing your website from a mobile device are typically trying to find specific information quickly. To accomplish this, you need to be able to provide them with an optimal experience. If your website doesn’t load quickly, provide easy navigation, and offer a complete experience that is comparable to a desktop, users aren’t likely to stick around.

A site that isn’t mobile friendly probably won’t be viewed favorably by users, and also won’t help your visibility in search engines. Sites with a quality mobile experience are viewed more favorably by search engines, so if your competitors are mobile-friendly and you aren’t, they may be outranking you in key search results.

How To Fix It | With responsive design, you can ensure that your website offers a quality experience on any device. Responsive websites are created with a flexible layout that adjusts to suit any screen size.

2 | It Isn't User-Friendly

The primary purpose of your website is to serve the needs of your visitors. If your website isn’t designed in a way that is user-friendly, it won’t drive results for your business. Clumsy navigation and unclear content can drive potential customers away, so make sure you are putting your visitors’ needs first as you plan out every element of your website.

How To Fix It | One of the simplest ways to build a user-friendly website is to start with a strategic layout. Build out each of your pages based on your core products and services, and then organize them by category or theme. From there, you can start planning out content for each page. As you develop your content, put yourself in your customers’ shoes and think about what they would need to know before making a purchase decision. Read “5 Ways User Experience Improves Your Conversion Rate” to learn more about how to create a user-friendly website.

3 | It Doesn't Drive Action

A quality user experience will encourage visitors to spend more time on your site, but you want users to do more than just read your content. You also want users to take some sort of action, such as signing up for a newsletter, making a purchase, or filling out a contact form on your site. With effective calls-to-action (also known as CTAs), you can help guide visitors to the next step.

Calls-to-action are specific phrases that encourage visitors to take some sort of action. Typically, CTAs appear as a button or link that directs visitors toward the next step. If your website doesn’t include strong CTAs, users may be unsure how to get started and are more likely to leave your site without taking any action.

How To Fix It | If you want to encourage your website visitors to take action, you need to incorporate some CTAs into your web design. You may need to spend some time experimenting with your CTAs in order to find the perfect strategy. Elements such as wording, design, and location on each page can all impact the effectiveness of your CTAs. For tips on creating CTAs, check out our blog “3 Ways to Increase Your Website Conversions”.

4 | It's Hard To Scan

Rich, quality content can be beneficial to your users and your search engine optimization strategy, but you do need to be strategic with how you lay out the content on each of your web pages. Your users are typically visiting your site looking for specific information and will skim through until they find that information. Search engines perform a similar sort of crawl through your content in an attempt to decipher what each page is about and determine where it should rank in search results.

How To Fix It | Properly structuring your content will have a positive impact for both users and search engines. By using headings, subheadings, and other helpful markup, search engines can more easily “read” your content and determine its ranking in search results. Breaking up your content this way will also make it easier for users to skim through content and find what they need.

Your website can be a highly effective tool for promoting your business, so it’s crucial that it represents you and serves the needs of your customers. Fortunately, you don’t need to have a massive budget to create a website that generates results. Even a simple website can still provide users with informative content and a quality experience.

If you need help building a stronger digital presence for your business, contact our team today for a free Digital Marketing Plan! We will take a look at your current digital presence, and provide you with feedback and solutions that are tailored to your needs and goals.