Having a website for your business is crucial in today’s digital environment. And when it comes to a website, just “good enough” doesn’t cut it anymore. This is a dangerous idea that could possibly affect your sales – if you don’t innovate and offer amazing experiences to your users, they will immediately find other businesses to give their money to. You need to grab their attention and keep them engaged.

In this article, we’ll be taking a look at a few ways your website might be driving away potential customers. Of course, we’ll also be giving you advice on how to fix those issues. So keep on reading to find out more!

1. Bad Website Design

There’s nothing scarier than bad website design. Your website design is your chance at making a first impression. And because it’s hard to change the first impression – especially because the visitors might never even return – your website has to look good. If the design is dated or unprofessional, it will immediately destroy any credibility and trust you’d want to build with a customer.

If you’re taking your business seriously, you should absolutely invest in good web design. And luckily, it doesn’t have to cost an arm and a leg. You can always put together something that looks stunning and professional using one of the many website creators available online.

2. Grammar Errors in Copy

Badly written copy is one of the most common factors that put off visitors. You might think the typos or grammar errors are not that easy to spot but they’ll actually stick out like a sore thumb. Just think about it – how many times have you left a website just because you read something like “You’re opinion matters to us”?

So do yourself – and your business – a favor and proofread every line of copy on your website. Give the whole text a couple of reads, correct what you can find and then use tools such as Grammarly to spot anything you might have missed. Tedious? Absolutely! But good grammar, spelling and punctuation can make or break your visitors’ experience.

3. It’s Too Flashy

Using lots of heavy images and videos will not only slow down the loading times on your website but will also cause eye strain on your visitors. That only serves to ruin the experience, causing annoyance and frustration amongst your potential customers. Are these feelings you want to instill in your website visitors?

Keep everything clean and simple. When you use images, use high quality ones and make sure they’re compressed and optimized for faster loading times. Try to avoid stock photography as much as possible and make sure every piece of media has a clear purpose.

4. It’s Too Slow

According to a few statistics from Kissmetrics:

• 47% of website visitors expect a page to load in 2 second or less;
• 40% of users will leave any website that takes more than 3 seconds to load;
• Every 1 second of delay results in a 7% decrease in conversions.

If your website takes too long to load, your visitors will leave. Plain and simple. You can check the loading speed of your website using tools such as Google’s PageSpeed Insights. This free tool will analyze your website and give you suggestions of things you can adjust to get faster loading times.

Another solution could be enabling compression on your server by talking to your hosting provider. This can sometimes instantly boost your website speed by a couple of seconds, time that is crucial in conversions.

5. It Has No Social Media

As much as we wouldn’t like to admit it, social media plays a huge part in our daily lives. Every modern business has at least a couple of active social media accounts (mainly Facebook and Instagram) that allow them to promote their products and services to a larger audience. On top of that, it’s a great way to keep in touch with customers and directly answer any questions they might have.

If your visitors see that you’re not active on social media, they will immediately make the assumption that your business is behind on the times, resulting in a not-so-great image online. Customers now expect a venture to be on social media, as this is a sure sign of a reputable business with nothing to hide.

6. Your Content Is Below Average

People are “assaulted” by bombastic marketing terms and copy every day. So don’t write your website’s content assuming they won’t see through all the gibberish and nonsense that sounds unnatural and obviously salesy. When writing your copy, make it readable. Might sound obvious but too many businesses fall into the trap of overcomplicating text just to seem more professional.

We’ll let you in on a secret. Write as you speak – plain, simple and in terms that everyone understands. No one uses terms like “KPIs”, “agile” or “touch base” in real life. And if you can’t do it yourself, hire a professional writer – if your content is lousy or cliche, this will tell the potential customers that you don’t really care about your business. So why should they?

7. It’s Not Responsive

According to data from Statista, mobile accounts for approximately half of the web traffic worldwide. At the beginning of 2021, mobile devices generated 54.8% of global web traffic. Keeping that in mind, it’s of utmost importance that your website is perfectly responsive and optimized for mobile.

People are spending more and more time on their phones, browsing through products and even making purchases from these devices. Having a website that’s not optimized for the smaller screen will drive away these potential customers, hurting your business in the long run.

Final Thoughts

Your website is crucial in the success of your business. It’s the first impression a potential client will get about your services and naturally, it must be perfect. Keep your website updated with the latest tech, optimize it for faster loading times and offer your users a smooth and seamless experience.