I’m going to kick this off with a cliché you’ve heard a million times before: A chain is no stronger than its weakest link. You know what that means, of course. But here’s a thought. If your business isn’t quite making the headway you’d hoped, what if the weak link isn’t your sales department or the marketing team? What if it’s the one team member nobody ever suspects – your website?
Just because it’s sitting over there in the corner beavering away, everyone assumes their website is working hard and pulling its weight. But is it really?
To get an idea of how strong your website is, ask yourself these questions, and give yourself a point for every positive answer – we’ll tally them up at the end.
Is it mobile friendly?
We’ve had smartphones for over a decade. Something like 70% of all web browsing now happens on a mobile device. If your website doesn’t have a design that responds to the size of the screen your customer is viewing it on, it’s making your business feel out of date. It’s that simple.
Does it look good?
Never underestimate the importance of looks. As well as being aligned with your brand’s colours, imagery, fonts and so on, your site also needs to be beautifully designed – because beautifully designed websites are more rewarding to use and achieve much longer dwell times.
Is it easily found?
You can have the best looking site out there, but if you’re not showing up in search results, nobody will ever know. You can use Google Search console to make sure you have submitted your sitemap and monitor your Domain Authority.
Is it optimised?
If you’re seeing high bounce rates or a low number of conversions, your site’s content probably isn’t optimised to speak to your potential customer. You should be using something like Google Analytics at the bare minimum which will help you to target pages that need work.
Is it fast?
Obviously you can’t control your users’ internet speeds. But there are lots of things you can do – compressing codes, using cache, optimising images – to make sure your site loads as quickly as possible. If you’re not sure how quickly your site loads, try this tool.
Is it current?
The chances are that over the last few years your business has gone through change. Maybe you’ve shifted focus, updated your brand, grown-up a bit. Are those changes reflected in your website? If not, it’s stuck in the past, showing the world who you were, not who you are today. There’s a cost to that.
Is it safe?
Website security is about more than getting an SSL certificate. It extends to the code, plugins, forms, how you request and store data. Hundreds of business sites are hacked or attacked every day. Having a site that’s not secure is risking your reputation and your customers’ trust.
Is it aligned with the rest of your business?
This one’s a biggy. Your website could be all of the above and still not fulfilling its potential, simply because you haven’t thought about everything it could be doing for you. Your website should be making the whole of your business more efficient by automating processes and integrating with back office systems, as well as delivering the promises of all of your departments. To learn how your site could optimise your whole operation, check out our ebook.
So, how did your website score?
1-3
Yikes! Looks like we’ve found the weakest link. Your business would almost certainly benefit from a new website. Let’s tear it down and rebuild something stronger.
4 or 5
Honestly, your website is probably letting your business down. When budget becomes available, a redesign could be money well spent. We can help with that.
6 to 8
Sweet. Looks like your website isn’t shirking after all. Don’t forget to keep on top of it though, staying current is a constant job.
If you are considering a new website, stay tuned for our blog series. Next we’ll be blogging about preparing for a website redesign project and how to get the most from it.