How Much Does My Website Matter or Contribute to My Business?

Is your website visually appealing?  

For many industries, your website is the only time your client base interacts with you. The ease of use to obtain the information, product, or service that your visitor is looking for should be clearly identified and easy to access. Websites that do not have visually pleasing and well-structured pages experience bounce rates and in turn, these bounce rates negatively affect your sites overall ability to be indexed by major search engines. Your website should be fun to use, make sense to the end user, and should not look like a B movie poster from the 80’s.

Do you have relevant and optimized content? 

There is a saying here: “Online, content is king”. This may be a stretch, but current and articulate content is a major player in defining your sites overall ability to reduce your bounce rate. As nebulous as a bounce rate may appear to some industries, keeping this as low as possible is still the best practice. Content that is researched and current informs your potential client base that you are a professional in your practice, business, and even opinion, while building a level of trust through reliability. Your website may be the only chance you have to captivate your audience and prospective clients. Some websites are very disciplined at targeting keywords that are relevant to a search query, but only tangentially relevant to the page. If the information is not directly relevant and optimized, you can expect a higher bounce rate percentage.

Do you have responsive load times? 

Imagine you have 2 websites to choose from for a product you are ordering online. Now, one loads almost instantaneously and the other one… well if you find what you are looking for firstly, you probably wont wait or even visit the second site.

Load times over roughly 5 seconds have largely been perceived as too long in providing an overall positive user experience. Are your larger images optimized correctly? Is your hosting underpowered? Is it time for an update?

Is your website secure? 

Online security is paramount. Have you ever collected email addresses or payment information over your website? If your website’s security is compromised, so is your client information. Current encryption, 2048-bit DigiCerts or SSL’s are recommended for websites to maintain the current level of standards in online security protocols. Keep your clients safe and you will earn their trust.

The intention of your site and the user experience is what this all comes down to. Sites that are difficult to navigate are abandoned very quickly. Your information should be relevant, optimized, and easy to find. New products or services that you are offering should be referenced on your main page and allow the user to select what they were searching for from the start of their experience on your website.

Mobile is the future. Well, the future is here. More searches are done from mobile devices than all other devices combined. Keep in mind that some time ago, Google shifted their focus toward mobile sites. This is, after all, where the majority of searches within Google originate.

How effective is your SEO? 

Search Engine Optimization is a crucial part for how major search engines read your site. SEO is the practice of increasing the quality and quantity of traffic to your site. Search engines are sort of like advanced filters. They peruse billions of pieces of content, using thousands of variable factors to determine which content will provide the best search result to the end user, your prospects.