Like the shop window of yesteryear, your website is where you explain your wares. It’s often the first point of contact for new clients and is confirmation for existing ones that you’re still around.
Your website also lets speculative clients know you are a legitimate business, along the lines of ‘if you don’t have a website then, er, do you actually exist?
So, your website is a showcase of all you can offer your clients. Doesn’t it make sense then to ensure it’s ‘the best it can be.’ If it’s not then it’s time for an update. Here are various reasons why that might very well be the case:
- It’s old-fashioned. Business owners can be guilty of neglecting their website because they’re too busy getting on with the ‘day job.’ But time moves on, and so do web design trends. No business wants to appear as if its stuck in the Noughties.
- It’s not mobile-enabled. This is a biggie. Not only will potential clients click off your website when checking it out on Smartphone because it’s all over the place, but your website won’t be picked up by Google search engines for mobile websites.
- It’s not optimized. Search engines aren’t picking up on it because you haven’t put in tags, categories, key phrases and words for content etc. You’ve never even heard of a meta-description. In fact, you though Yoast was just a mis-spelling of toast…
- It’s taking too long to load. If you find your website excrutiatingly slow to load up and navigate, then think how visitors to it feel – some of whom were potential customers until they got fed up waiting and moved on…
- It’s too ‘wordy.’ We’re forever being told our attention spans as a human race are falling. Past research shows that the average visitor to a website stays an average of just 15 seconds. If they can’t even get through your intro paragraph in 15 seconds then you need something to catch their attention. Quick.
- It’s not giving you leads. In fact, you can’t even remember the last time you had a client say they signed up because they loved your website. Maybe it’s time to get it working for you again?
- It’s hard to understand. You avoid updating content and images etc on your website because you don’t know how to. You did, once, but you’ve since forgotten and it takes ages anyway to get your head round it all.
- It’s all your own work. When you first started out in business you didn’t have much cash for ‘extras’ so you built your own website using Weebly or some other low-cost design service. And it shows.
- You have website envy. You find yourself checking out your competitor’s websites and admiring them. You’re thinking of getting a friend to ring them anonymously and ask who designed the site for them.
The above is all reason enough to consider getting your website redesigned and up-to-date, but what should really make you stop and think is that one look from a visitor is all you’ll get. Very rarely do visitors return to a website that bored them.
So, how about getting it right this time round? If so, get in touch with us here at Doctor Media. We’ll be happy to help get both you – and your website – noticed. Tel: 07756 649 700 or email: info@doctormedia.co.uk.
