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6 critical elements that will transform your failed website into a successful one

Your business has a failed website.

You’ve spent the last of your marketing budget on building a brand new website for your business.  With all its bells and whistles you were confident that once your website was discovered, it would be just a matter of time before the new business would start to roll in.    Unfortunately months down the line (if not years later) your website has done absolutely nothing for your business.  Not one enquiry received, no sales via your website and sadly it appears that there isn’t any traffic to your website either.

Why have a website if there isn’t any benefit to your business?  Or perhaps you wondering how to convert your failed website into a successful website that works for your business.  With a few tweaks and a change in your website marketing strategy, your website could be transformed into an effective marketing tool that enables and grows your business.  And whilst there are a million and one strategies that can be followed, we’ve addressed the top 6 elements which we believe are critical.

1. Website Design

With a website often being the front door to most businesses, it’s essential that you create the best first impression.  You increase your opportunity to convert a reader to a customer when their experience is a pleasant one.  Precision Marketing notes two interesting facts:

“48% of people cite a website design as the number one factor in deciding the credibility of a business.”

“94% of people cited that poor web design was the main reason why they mistrusted or rejected a website”.

Good web design takes into account a range of elements such as colour scheme, professional images, fonts, F-pattern layout which understands the eye pattern in which website visitors track information; consistent look and functionality across all web pages as well as website load times to name just a few factors.

2. User-friendly and easy navigation

You’ll lose visitors if your website is not user-friendly and easy to navigate.  If a visitor cannot find what they are looking for in 3 clicks or less, they’ll quickly ditch your website and move onto your competitor’s website.

When laying out content, consider the 3 click rule along with the F-pattern layout.  Add clear call to action buttons; constantly check hyperlinks to ensure that there are no dead links on your website which will create confusion and frustration for your visitor.

3. Content

A common mistake that businesses make is developing a website for themselves forgetting that when a visitor finds your website, they not searching to learn about your company, but rather they searching for solutions to problems or questions that they have.  A website and its content should be created keeping the visitor in mind.  Part of your content marketing strategy should be considering who your target audience is, what questions they have and providing answers and solutions to their problems and questions.  Content should be well structured and organised and must be quick and easy, short and concise to read considering that visitors would more likely skim than read word for word articles and blogs.  Creating content that answers your visitors questions and demonstrates your knowledge builds credibility and trust for your business and this goes a long way to influencing the visitor for when they are ready to convert from a visitor to a customer.

Google also recognizes when your website is consistently updated with high quality content that visitors find useful and relevant.  This helps Google determine the importance of your website for search engine ranking purposes and makes your website more visible to visitors.

4. Search engine optimization (SEO)

Like Facebook and Twitter, you may think that in order for your website to be found, you need to promote it through paid advertising.  This may be a useful tactic to use however when it comes to increasing the natural visibility of your website without spending a small fortune, your website has to be optimized for search engines.  Backlinko provides a comprehensive list of the Google ranking factors that are considered for ranking your website, however keep things simple and follow these basic guidelines.

  • produce high quality and relevant content on a consistent and regular basis.
  • Use important keywords and keyword variations frequently and throughout your copy.
  • Consider your links – the way you link to other pages within your website, the number of outbound links you have is important. In addition if you offer high quality content that provides answers and solutions, this would encourage inbound links from other websites to yours.  The more inbound links you have, the more Google will consider and recognise your website as offering value and the more visible your website will become ranking higher in search engine .  Make sure that your links include keywords to help search engines find the relevant pages.

 

5. Responsive Websites

We Are Social conducted a survey around what the 24.9 million South African internet users  spent their time doing online and discovered that more South Africans are turning to mobile as a primary means of accessing the internet, followed by desktop.

Google also confirmed via their mobile friendliness survey that that 48% of website visitors felt that if a company ignored mobile, it simply did not care about them.  Google further confirmed that more Google searches take place on mobile than on desktop.

If your website is not responsive to mobile or to different screen sizes yet, the chances are that you’ve probably lost the opportunity to convert the visitor who arrived at your website via a mobile device.

6. Social Media integration & Critical information

You’d be surprised to find that there are a number of websites that make it almost impossible to find a way to contact a company.  There is nothing more frustrating for a visitor than not knowing how to contact your company and chances are that if they struggle to find a method to contact you, they’ll quickly move onto your competitor.

Have a page dedicated to how the visitor can contact you.  Offer different ways for the visitor to contact your company.  Not everyone would pick up the phone to call you;  offer an email contact form as well and offer links so that the visitor can find you on social media.  Consider clear call to action buttons throughout your website and include a contact form or your contact details within the footer of your web page too.

Having listed the 6 elements that we consider critical, it is easy to identify which areas have contributed to your business failed website.  It is also evident that the visitors experience when arriving at your website is key.  Implementing the above changes will guarantee that you’ll see a different and positive result over a period of time.  If you cannot implement all these changes all at once, implement the changes one at a time and work towards transforming your website into a successful and effective marketing tool for your business.

Over to you

Which of the elements would be the easiest for you to implement?  What other elements do you consider as critical?

Ignite Media = Website Design Company

Ignite Media is a website design company based in Cape Town working with B2B companies across South Africa.  We design and develop websites so that they solve marketing and sales challenges, build trust and credibility and grow your revenue with leads and sales.  Ask us for a website solution today.  

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