5 Signs Your Website Is Not Working

There are many ways to determine whether or not your website is at the peak of its effectiveness. Below are 5 major factors that will help you judge whether your website is driving your online business or slowing it down.

1 – Your Traffic is Low

You can spend thousands of dollars on a stunning and gorgeous website you’re certain will make your customers fall in love with you. But whether that love translates into buying your T-shirts or visiting your coffee shop, you have to focus on getting them there first.

Increase your website ranking and your web traffic with an SEO strategy that incorporates content marketing, social media marketing, on-page SEO and pay per click campaigns. A well-rounded approach that relies on several of these SEO concentrations will help target and drive the right audience to your website.

2 – Your Traffic is High but so is Your Bounce Rate

So, let’s say you’ve succeeded in targeting your audience and you’re driving tons of great traffic to your site. However, a look at your web analytics and you find they’re leaving your website as soon as they arrive. This is a telltale sign it’s time to redesign your website.

A satisfactory bounce rate (which refers to whether or not your visitors click into the rest of your site from the page they entered) is anywhere between 0% and 35%, according to analytics master, Avinash Kaushik. (Note: Kaushik also thinks you already have a major problem if your bounce rate is anywhere near 35%. A good bounce rate varies from business-to-business and is determined by many factors.) If your bounce rate is higher than 35%, it’s probably time to freshen your design, navigation and content.

Some typical questions you may want to ask yourself are: Is my homepage welcoming? Is my content engaging? Can visitors easily find what they are looking for? Am I driving the right type of traffic (or audience) to my website?

3 – You Aren’t Selling

Traffic means nothing without conversions, also known as sales. If you’re getting great traffic but you aren’t converting your visitors, it may be time to examine the functionality of your website. Where are the places you’re losing visitors the most often? It’s probably time to rethink that area of the site, especially if it’s your shopping cart.

From your homepage, to your websites navigation and content, every element of your site should strive to gently and intuitively guide your visitors to your calls to action and ask them for the sale.

4 – You Receive A Lot of Phone Calls and A Lot of Questions

This is one of the first signs that it’s time to examine the content on your website. Finding out what your audience wants to know when they visit your site is the first and most important step. So, while you’re getting those phone calls, take notes on what your customers want to know the most and use them to improve the content on your website.

5 – You Haven’t Redesigned Your Website In Several Years

Things change quickly on the web. Just think about where Facebook was five years ago. Ok, so you don’t want to be the next big social network. But chances are, your business is suffering if you haven’t redesigned your website in several years. An outdated design and a poor infrastructure will turn customers away.

Simply from a functionality standpoint, user expectations evolve over and over. Today’s web users expect websites to be clean, interactive and intuitive. Simple aesthetics and tastes evolve, as well. Look at big brand websites and take cues from them. Determine whether or not the functionality of your website design and functionality is up to par. If you can’t remember the last time you thought about it … it’s probably not.

Camella Mendez is a content strategist for Internet Exposure, a Minneapolis web design agency that specializes in SEO and Internet marketing