Do you know if your website is contributing to your bottom line? Chances are you don’t, and it’s a sad thing because you’d be surprised how much your site affects your reputation, your chances of being discovered (via local search) and converts visitors into paying customers.
Whether helping or hurting, your website plays a significant role in your business and you’d better take advantage, or you could be losing tons of cash to your competition.
The purpose of this article is to help you determine whether or not your website is contributing to or taking away from your bottom line.
Do websites lead to more sales?
Yes and no. If a prominent developer or firm built your site, and your primary goal was to increase sales, it probably will. However, If you created your website using a low-cost site application like SquareSpace or Wix, then my guess is probably not.
Notice, I used the word “probably,” but how can you be sure? Track and measure your website analytics, ask for customer feedback and continue to make adjustments.
Hurting your bottom line?
Whoa, you didn’t realize your website could hurt your bottom line? It can and here’s how:
Site is NOT Responsive
If your site isn’t yet optimized for mobile devices (including tablets), you could be losing much of your potential business to competitors. According to eMarketer, mobile devices dominate local search queries, and Google’s 2016 algorithm favors mobile friendly websites over websites not optimized for mobile.
It makes sense, if your customers are searching for a business like yours by way of cell phone, it makes sense that the search results should return phone friendly websites. If your site isn’t mobile-friendly, you’re losing money.
If you’re unsure about responsive web design, I encourage you to check out What The Heck is Responsive Web Design? (a presentation by Chicago-based developer, Jack Polacek).
Slow loading speeds
I’m sure we’ve all been to at least one website that loaded slow enough to cause us to bounce. Make sure your site is running as fast as possible. If your site is running slow, I’d be glad to take a look and offer recommendations, if not; there are thousands of resources out there.
Calls to action (CTA)
Your website lacks or has too many Calls to Actions. A well-placed call to action gives you the ability to control the flow or path a user takes when visiting your website. Perfect CTA placement leads to higher conversion rates plus lessens the chance a user will miss an action step that could potentially put money in your pocket.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
If you own a website or plan to in the future, be sure to learn at least the basics of optimizing your website for search engines. SEO is a big deal these days and is imperative to the success of your site.
This subject is sensitive to many people, and there’s plenty of bad information out there. For a quick read to learn why SEO is important, check out this article on posted LinkedIn Pulse and written by Steven Krohn, Online Traffic Consultant.
If you plan to hire an SEO expert, be sure to do your due diligence as many so called experts could get you into trouble with the search engines.
Conclusion
I realize much of this can be overwhelming and may seem to be a full-time job on its own. You have to love being an Entrepreneur where you sign up to work 100 hours per week to avoid 40.
To recap, remember local search queries (on mobile) dominate the search market, and your competition is already taking advantage of it. If your website:
- Isn’t optimized for mobile devices
- Is slow
- Has too many or not enough CTA’s and
- Isn’t optimized for search engines
Then your site is hurting your bottom line.
If you’re unsure how your website is performing, check out this free website grader powered by HubSpot. Let me know if you need help addressing any issues by sending me a link to your results page, and I’ll show you what to do. You can contact me by visiting my contact/hire me page.