14 Warning Signs of an Ineffective Website that Works Against You
This post was originally published on PixoLabo
Is Your Website Working Against You and Your Business Objectives?
The two main reasons businesses have a website are to introduce their business and services to their audience and sell their products. Therefore, a business website needs certain elements and functionality to meet these objectives.
But over time, the effectiveness of your business website can diminish. To help you determine if your website still meets your business objectives, you should look for these warning signs of an ineffective website.
Did you launch your website a few years ago? If so, it's time for a redesign. The internet, web development standards, and best practices are constantly evolving. How people consume information and access your website has changed with the times. Have you?
14 Tell-Tale Signs that your Website Needs a Refresh
1. High Bounce Rate
Bounce rate shows how long a website visitor stays on your site after viewing one page. For example, suppose the bounce rate of your website is over 50%. In that case, it means 50% of visitors leave without navigating to different pages on your site.
There are many reasons for high bounce rates, including bot traffic, web design issues, information architecture, etc. And suppose you did not create your current website with user experience (UX) in mind. In that case, it is likely the reason for a high bounce rate, signaling it's time to redesign your website.
2. Not Mobile-Friendly
According to Statista, “In 2021, the number of mobile users worldwide stood at 7.1 billion, with forecasts suggesting this is likely to rise to 7.26 billion by 2022. In 2025, the number of mobile users worldwide is projected to reach 7.49 billion.”
And according to Oberlo, “Smartphone usage is expected to continue to increase in the coming years, breaching seven billion in 2024 before rising further to 7.5 billion by 2026.”
Can online visitors access your site from any device? If not, when a mobile visitor visits your site and cannot view your content, they will quickly click away and bounce from your site.
In 2018 Google switched to mobile-first indexing to rank websites. So if your website is mobile-friendly, the search engine will give you a boost in organic rankings. If not, Google will penalize you.
Your website should be mobile-friendly, meaning users can access it from all devices, regardless of screen size. Take Google’s mobile-friendly test and analyze your website to see if it has a mobile-friendly design.
3. Poor Website Health
Check out your Google search console or Bing webmaster accounts for deep insights into your website's overall health. Then, take a look at Google Analytics to view key website performance metrics.
Find out if there are any 404 errors, crawl errors, or other errors that decrease your website's performance. Also, look into how often your website appears in search results along with click-through rates. If your site doesn't pass these basic website health measures, it might be time to update your website.
4. Bad User Experience
Suppose Google Analytics shows a decrease in organic visitors, high bounce rates, or a large number of online visitors who don't move past your homepage. In that case, there is something wrong with your website design.
Visitors don't like something on it. And if they drop off repeatedly, then it's time to consider a website redesign to make your site easier to navigate.
5. Slow Pageload Speed
The average website users' attention span is very short. When a visitor lands on your site, you have a few seconds to impress them. If your website takes longer than 3 seconds to load, they will likely leave your website. Use GTMetrix or Pingdom, free tools that will let you test the load time of any page, analyze it and find bottlenecks.
6. Infrequent Website Updates
Don’t expect loads of website traffic just by buying a domain and launching a template or DIY website. Your website needs TLC from time to time. You’ll have to work proactively on a website and tweak it to get serious business results out of it.
If you do not update your website regularly, then it’s time for a website makeover. You’ll need to start creating compelling content, increase social media activity and monitor website traffic.
7. Unclear or Ineffective Call to Action
Call to Action (CTA) is an essential element in web design. It helps if you placed CTA buttons intelligently within web pages to increase conversions. In addition, CTA buttons inspire website visitors to engage with you.
A well-placed CTA button will improve your website conversion rate by 15 to 20%. CTA's could include sign-up forms for service quotes or an email newsletter, a contact form, free downloads, product sample requests, etc.
8. Insufficient Lead Generation
Online visitors are more likely to trust and buy from a well-designed website rather than a mediocre one. If you are not getting enough leads from your site, it's time to redesign a website to help bring new clients. Great web design will imply trust and authority in visitors' minds and motivate prospects to reach you via email or fill out the contact form.
9. Little or No Social Media Activity
Do you use social media for marketing your products and services? Today it's a boomtown for social commerce and social selling. You can use social media for brand building, social awareness, customer interaction, feedback gathering, etc.
The role of social media in business is expanding, and more businesses are finding new customers from their social channels. According to an iMedia Connection report, 57% of companies have acquired customers through LinkedIn, 48% have acquired customers through Twitter, and 42% have generated customers through Facebook.
10. No Company Blog
One of the best and simplest ways to gain organic search engine traffic is to write blog entries. Creating new content on the website gives site visitors incentives to come back for more insightful content. If you don't have a blog on your website, consider adding one to your site.
11. Change of Brand or Audience
Business is fluid, and inevitably you will pivot and grow over time. Maybe you've developed a new product offering, revenue model, secondary target audience, or changed your address?
If you've gone through a business change with customer-facing implications, it needs to reflect on your website. Access to updated and correct information on your website builds credibility and contributes to your "know, like and trust" factor.
12. Outdated Web Design Elements
Web design has hanged a lot in only a few short years. But, unfortunately, many websites have not kept up. And outdated web design elements do not provide the user experience demanding mobile consumers expect. For example, suppose you want your website or online store to appear relevant and trustworthy. In that case, these outdated web design elements have to go!
13. Unable to Make Website Updates
Do you need to contact your website developer or programmer for every little change or update you need on your website? If so, I highly recommend you consider using one of these small business content Management Systems (CMS.)
Considering 37% of websites are powered by WordPress and 64 Million websites use a CMS, a CMS is a no-brainer. You can do much of your editing and tweaks from the back-end with little to no technical experience.
14. Outdated Website Content
If you have not updated your website for a long time, there is a very high chance that your content is outdated. So to support your business objectives, you should ensure content is fresh and relevant. And if you desire organic traffic from search engines, don't forget to craft content with keyword research in mind to boost SEO results.
If you're unsure whether your website is up to par, hire a web development company of your choice to perform a content audit of your website. A comprehensive website audit will allow you to identify the shortcomings of your current site and improve upon them.
What to Do if You Have an Ineffective Website?
You may already be aware that your website is not working as well as before. For example, perhaps you noticed a significant drop in website visitors. Maybe you are not getting as many inbound leads as before. Or your business associates or clients mentioned a specific problem, such as pages not loading fast enough or not providing optimal mobile user experience.
Whatever the reason, you must remove these obstacles or risk a further decline of your online reach and engagement.
You can quickly fix many of these errors through a simple website redesign or perhaps a new site altogether. But, of course, the specific action or remedy will be determined by the state of your business website.
If you only lack some fresh content or a company blog, the fix will be relatively simple. On the other hand, if your website is not mobile-first to start with, you have a more significant project on your hands.
Take a look at how to get the most out of a website redesign, and learn more about establishing a successful business website. Find out how to improve your website UX and how many business website pages you will need. That should give you a better idea of what you must do to fix your ineffective website!
Need more help? Here are a few tips for reducing shopping cart abandonment and increasing landing page conversions.
I am here to help!
By Gregor Saita
Gregor is Co-Founder and CXO of PixoLabo, a multinational web design agency. With over 25 years of experience in web, UX, and information design, Gregor consults for startups in Asia and the US. He is also an adjunct professor of design and user experience, and a creative technologist and consultant at EnLinx Partners, LLC. Gregor lives with his wife, an award-winning Japanese designer, and photographer, in Sendai, Japan. When he is not working, he enjoys writing, exploring, gardening, and sampling new street food. You can connect with Gregor on LinkedIn or Twitter.