Poor performing websites with low traffic levels

POOR PERFORMING WEBSITES WITH LOW TRAFFIC LEVELS

Poor performing websites with low traffic levels are always the fault of poor website design including design faults and lack of search engine optimisation

Even if your website designer manages to avoid falling into any of the above traps, there are still design mistakes which can be made. The menu may be too cluttered, there may be too much text on the page, and important features might not stand out enough. In particular, there might not be any obvious "call to action".

DESIGN FAULTS

All websites should have a call to action. To work out what this ought to be, ask yourself what the purpose of your website is and what you want your website visitors to do. If you are running an online shop, then you want your visitors to get their credit cards out and buy something. If you are offering some kind of service (e.g. if you are an architect) then you want people to get in touch and request a consultation or quotation. If you're running an information site, your goal might be for your visitors to sign up to your mailing list.

POOR PERFORMING WEBSITES

Whatever it is you want people to do, you need to use a call to action to encourage them to do it. Let me give you an example.

The Clean Slate Mortgages website (www.cleanslatemortgages.co.uk) is a website that I am involved with that offers information about mortgages and gives people the facility to request a consultation with a mortgage broker. The aim of the site is to get people who visit it to fill in an enquiry form requesting a call-back from a mortgage consultant. Have a look at the site. You'll see that on the home page alone, there are three prominent calls to action: in the top right hand corner there is an "apply now" link, a bit lower down is a "Request a quote" link, and then in the main body of the page there is a prominent graphical link with the message "get a quote click here".

Build web pages here and drive traffic to your website

Advertise here and get more visitors to your website

LOW TRAFFIC LEVELS

All pretty simple and obvious stuff you might think. But you'd be surprised how many website designers do not take this kind of thing into account. Even some designers who are extremely talented in terms of their graphic design skills sometimes overlook the "business" aspect of a website and simply go all out to create something that looks good whilst forgetting that it also needs to generate sales or enquiries for the website owner.

Sometimes it takes an outsider to spot problems like this with an existing website. A couple of years ago, I got a phone call from someone (I forget his name) who had a website for his flooring business. He said he was fairly happy with his existing website apart from the fact that no-one ever bought anything from the online shop section of it.

POOR WEBSITE DESIGN

I took a look at the site whilst this guy was on the phone to me and was able to see several pages of information about different types of flooring, but I couldn't see any sign of a section where I could actually buy anything. I pointed this out to the site owner and he told me I needed to click the "Enter shop" link. I looked really carefully for ten to fifteen seconds or so (much longer than a casual visitor would have spent looking for something they weren't even sure existed anyway) and eventually found the link to the shop part of the site. The reason this link was so hard to spot was because it used pale blue text on a dark blue background with a font size of about 8pt and was hidden away in the corner of the screen. It was no wonder the site was not generating any sales, but the reason for the problem had clearly never occurred to the site owner or to his original website designer.

Development & Programming

If you simply need what I call a brochure website (i.e. something that simply provides details of who you are, what you do, what kind of services you offer, how to find you, etc) then you do not need to worry about web development and programming.

SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMISATION

But if your website needs a content management system so as you can update sections of it yourself, or if you want an online shop, or if you need any additional features such as forums, newsletter systems, or automated quotation systems then you are going to need to make sure that the people creating your website have programming skills as well as web design expertise....

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Poor performing websites with low traffic levels are always the fault of poor website design including design faults and lack of search engine optimisation