6 Reasons Your Website is Ineffective (Introduction)

Note: This series was originally posted here as “6 Reasons Your Website is Not Working For You.” This series was revised and expanded in June 2016.

In this series of articles I identify 6 reasons your website is ineffective (doesn’t work for you). You will see that websites are more than just design. It takes many parts working together to make a website perform well (convert well) online. If one of these areas is off, results will suffer. Don’t worry, I will also provide proven solutions to correct each of the six common problem areas with websites. Sound good? Let’s get started.

You finally did it! You made the big leap and put up a website for your small business. Months later you are still not seeing the desired results. So, you begin to ask yourself, “Why isn’t my website working for me?” After some research, you find out that there are as many opinions on what is wrong as there are on how to fix them! How do you even know where to begin? Before you can solve a problem, you must first be able to define it. So, let’s get some definitions out of the way.

In-ef-fec-tive (adjective) “Not producing the desired result.” (Merriam-Webster)

Let’s start by taking a look at what most people mean when they say their website isn’t effective. Here are four common questions I hear from new clients about their websites:

• Why doesn’t my website show up in Google search results?
• Why aren’t more people visiting my website?
• Why don’t people stay and interact with my website?
• Why don’t people buy stuff from my website?

These are all important questions to be asking. But, it’s important to understand that these are only symptoms (indicators) of a greater problem. People only begin to complain about symptoms like these when they see their website isn’t making them money! No traffic + no conversions = no money! To help alleviate the actual problems your website is having, I will separate them into the 6 Reasons Your Website is Ineffective.

There are many reasons websites do not convert well, but we are only going to focus on the six biggest ones. By the way, conversion means that someone took action after visiting your website. Some examples of this are when a visitor buys something, makes an appointment, or fills out a form.

Summary of the six problem areas we will cover:

1. Content. There is a lack of focused, quality written content on the website. The content that is there is not written with the target market in mind or specific goal in place.
2. Direction. The website itself is not engaging. There is little direction, the website does not encourage its visitors to take action. There is no reason for a visitor to stay on the website.
3. Focus. The website does not contain a focused keyword strategy. This means that Google has to guess what your site is about.
4. Usability. The layout on the website and its pages do not provide a good user experience. For example, the website may not look good on mobile devices.
5. Performance. The website may load too slow. Or, the website may have missing images, broken links or parts of the site just do not work.
6. Promotion. There is no online strategy in place to drive traffic to the website. There is no social media, email marketing, or other traffic generating plan in play.

When any one (or more) of these areas is off, your website will leak visitors faster than you can attract them! And, when website visitors flee before taking action, you lose in more ways than one! The first step to stop any leaks is to understand that just like the human body, websites are holistic.

I am sure you are familiar with holistic medicine. This kind of treatment views a person’s mind, body, emotional and spiritual health as a whole. The belief is that all parts are interconnected, if one part is sick, the whole body will be affected.

These days, a website and its web presence are inseparably interconnected. From keyword strategy to social media to site security and everything between, each part affects the other. All parts working in concert with each other make for an effective or ineffective web presence. The kinds of changes Google has been making to its search algorithm (based on its mission) over the past few years reinforces this fact.

Keeping this holistic web design concept in mind, let’s take a look at the 6 problem areas I will cover in this series of articles.

• Reason #1 – Lack of Quality Content
• Reason #2 – Lack of Direction
• Reason #3 – Lack of Focus
• Reason #4 – Lack of Usability
• Reason #5 – Lack of Performance
• Reason #6 – Lack of Momentum

I suggest you read through each post in order. That way you can begin to see how connected each of these areas is to one another. As you are reading each post, write down any problem areas you think your site might be encountering. When you finish, go through your entire website and see how you can begin to apply my suggested solutions to repair the problem areas.

If you need a pair of trained eyes on your website, feel free to give me a call for a free 30-minute evaluation. Call me at (714) 662-2203 or fill in the contact form.

First up, problem #1 –“Lack of Quality Content”