In this article AJR will answer the question of “Why Don’t Customers Visit Our Website?” This is a very common question that carries huge importance. You have just designed your brand new business website and your expecting to be inundated with emails, phone calls and messages on social media asking for your service. However, this isn’t the case. But don’t worry your not the only business out there with this issue.
Firstly, your competitors are likely to have been building their website’s magnetism for customers for some time and have progressed to an extent that they are taking most of the clients available in that market area. You cannot expect success over night with a new website and this is what most people think for day one they expect results, but it takes time and financial investment. Here are a few reasons why your website could be lacking the high number of visitors and web traffic you expected:
Your Website Speed Is Slow
Website speed is of huge importance in the website world when we speak about the internet in general. ‘We know what we want and we want it now’ is the general tone from the public. If your site takes too long to load, your visitors aren’t going to hang around to wait for the web page to load. This means you have lost a potential customer before they have even gained access to your website. There are several important reasons why your website could be running slow, but the main ones are likely to be un-optimised images and coding areas on the back-end that need resolving. Make sure you use sites like compresspng.com and compressjpeg.com to compress your website images. This will make the file size of the image smaller, so the image will load faster on the browser. Compressing all your website images can save you valuable seconds on your loading time. If your site is on WordPress, a popular plugin called Autoptimise can be used to compress HTML, CSS and Javascript. You can also ensure that the browser loads the ‘above the fold’ content first. This is the part of the page that fills the screen first. This means that while the lower half and footer may still be downloading, your screen is presented with the top section straight away.
You may also have heard people say, “Do you use a CDN on your website?”. This is a Content Delivery Network which can save bandwidth and boost performance by hosting all your static resources such as images, videos, audio clips and even coding like CSS and Javascript. Also, if you use the Google CDN there’s a good chance someone has already visited a site using one and therefore the files will be cached by your browser and won’t need to be downloaded again.
Your Website Is Boring
You want your website to grab the user’s attention in order to retain their interest and make sure they continue browsing your site. If the site is full of small text with poor use of imagery, this isn’t likely to grab anyone’s attention. Using imagery or catchy headlines is a great way to attract interest from the word go. This is why design is so important when building a website if your not a designer this will show in your website.
Bad User Interface Design (UI)
Maybe you haven’t checked what your website looks like on all devices and the mobile version of your site looks like a disaster. If your site looks great on desktop, this only accounts for around 50% of devices currently used to connect to the internet. This would mean you are losing 50% of your visitors due to poor design on mobiles, tablets, e-readers etc. Poor use of colour and typography can also cause users to leave a site. Maybe the colours used in the design make text difficult to read with limited or no contrast with the background maybe the font used is not very readable. I personally think you shouldn’t need more than 3 colours in the design of your site.
User Experience (UX)
Its also very important to think about your website form a customers point of view and how you want them to navigate your website to get what they are looking for, this is known as a breadcrumb trail. this adds to the overall user experience your website visitor has while browsing your website. the easier it is for them to get the information they require the better the user experience.
Bad Navigation
I always try to stick to a rule of thumb that each page on a website can be reachable within 3 clicks this is known as the “3 click rule”. If a user has to dig deeper into your site to find what they’re looking for, you might find them using the browser back button to help navigate or exiting the site completely. There should be consistency when positioning your navigational menu. The user should be familiar with how to navigate the site within the first 5 seconds. Make sure to offer back buttons when necessary and ensure the logo will always take the user back to the home page.
You Haven’t Promoted Your Site
So, you have managed to make your site interesting, it’s fast, it’s easily navigable and the design is superb. Yet the customers still aren’t coming. You can’t expect people to find your site unless you tell them about it. Advertise, Advertise, Advertise! Create a social media presence with Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, Google+, Instagram and start posting. You can use Google ad words to help users find you from the Google search engine i personally never used them as i never needed to but its your choise. Tell your family and friends about it. Get business cards and hand them out when you mention your site to potential customers. Share your link underneath posts on blogs and forums and ask politely if customers you have worked with can include link to your site.
Your Site Isn’t SEO Friendly
An easy way to begin with SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) is to ensure you think about keyword placement. Think about what people would be searching for in search engines to find your service. Use at least 5 key words or phrases and try to include them in titles, headings, main content and alt tags even images. You should also think about your meta tag title and description. This is the title and description users will see when they see your page in search engines. Make it catchy, obvious what kind of site/business you have and ensure it isn’t too long, so it fits on the placement properly without cutting the end off. If you are using WordPress, the Yoast SEO plugin is a great way to begin with SEO on your site. This plugin helps with keyword placement, creates an XML sitemap you can submit to search engines and helps plan social media sharing.
Content Is King
Search engines especially google love websites that have fresh content this helps with google rankings and also website traffic it also gives website visitors a reason to return to your site to view your new content. This can be new blog posts and articles, it can also be new pictures in your galleries, Sharing out your content on social media including your links to that content will help drive traffic to your website. we get tens of thousands of monthly visits on our articles and some of theses turn into customers. So it’s always worth spending time writing new content it pays in the long run if done correctly. We release a new article every Wednesday.
To Conclude
Be aware that success doesn’t happen overnight and will mean lots of hard work and financial backing. You can choose to spend as much or as little as you like promoting your site, but if you advertise to the right people via social media and use Google adwords, you will begin to see a noticeable rise in interest and visitors to your site. Majority of our clients find us through our website some come through social media or they are recommended to us by another customer. Agood website for your business is golden remember you dont need to pay a fortune to get a solid web design.
If your looking to have a website design or redesign contact AJR we ave helped many new and established businesses increase there business online.
In the past i have worked for a leading IT Solutions & Managed service provider in Rotherham dealing with a range of IT platforms, such as - on site field engineering and remote support, dealing with all types of servers such as Virtual & Physical, Hyper–V, VMware, Windows server 2012 R2, SBS - Small Business Server 2008 2011, SQL, Terminal, Exchange, Active Directory, Group Policy, TCP, IP, DNS, DHCP, VPN, RDP, hybrid & cloud, Office 365 and managed security solutions such as Antivirus and Spam filtering.
Prior to this, I worked for Wickersley School & Sports College as the Lead IT & Network Technician and also supporting local primary schools with IT Support and engineering visits & Project Management, while also running my own company AJR Solutions, providing IT & Creative Solutions.
I’m very creative and have a huge passion for design and love how design can have a massive impact on a business image, presence and value also visit -
www.thelogocreative.co.uk | www.ajr-designs.co.uk | www.rotherhamwebdesign.co.uk
Also part of the AJR Solutions Group of businesses.