How is your website contributing to your business? It’s not often we start a new blog article by asking a question, but if you’re going to talk about website design for businesses, this is one of the most important questions you need to ask.

Is your website improving your sales rate? Is it bringing in new leads and clients? Do people use it to achieve something they wouldn’t otherwise have been able to do?

If you’ve answered “No” to all of these questions, there’s a chance your website isn’t working. Websites serve a whole lot of different purposes for businesses, but each website should still be aiming to achieve some level of success – and if your website isn’t achieving that success, there’s probably a good reason why.

Here’s a quick look at 5 of the more common issues that prevent a website from functioning well and contributing to your business.

1. Bad Design

Did you know that 38% of users will stop engaging with a website if the layout is unappealing? Or that 48% of users claim a website design is the top factor in assessing the credibility of a business.

Web design has a huge impact on people’s perception of your business – if your website sucks, people assume you do too!

Good design is essential, but that doesn’t mean your website needs to have all the latest web design trends. Some business websites will need complex designs and levels of interaction to communicate with their target audience, while others will need a clean and minimal design to best communicate with theirs.

There’s no single fundamental web design that all web designers should follow, but a good design will encourage people to stay longer on your website, and help them find the information they need.

2. Ignoring your target audience

If your business has a website, you probably know the type of person you want to be finding and using your website. These are your target users – the ones most likely to purchase from you, submit an enquiry, or use your contact details to get in touch.

But is your website optimised and built with these people in mind? A common mistake is losing focus on your target user, and building a website that’s based on your personal preferences, rather than those of your target audience.

If your website is going to be successful, every element, from design and layout to images and content needs to be targeted to your ideal audience.

3. No promotional or marketing strategy

Even if your website is designed well, people still need to be able to find it. It doesn’t matter how good your site is, if people can’t find it, you’re not going to be able to achieve any level of success with that website.

There are a number of different ways you could implement a marketing strategy to make it so that people – specifically your target audience – can find your website. One is by running a social media campaign, using advertising platforms to push visual ads in front of social media users. Another could be an SEO campaign; optimising your website so that people using Google are more likely to click your site. And another could be using targeted pay-per-click ads on search engines, such as Google’s AdWords platform.

There are many different options and combinations for promoting your site – so if your website isn’t getting the traffic you’d like, it might be time to implement or adjust your marketing strategy.

4. Poor content

Search engines are getting better at providing users with the information they need. They analyse your website to assess whether you have the answers within your content, and decide whether to present your site in the search results based on their findings.

If your website doesn’t provide content that offers value to an audience, your website isn’t going to be found or shown. One of the best ways to do this is with a blog – which allows you to present a continuous stream of content and information that people can view.

5. No commitment

Most businesses with a website rely on repeat visitors to continue to drive their sales. After all, it’s much easier to maintain a client than convert new ones. And one of the best ways to encourage people to come back to your site is to be adding and offering new content. This isn’t the case for all sites, but if your website isn’t going to be changing at all for a long period of time, why would someone want to come back?

Again, a blog is a great way to achieve this purpose. Publishing new articles on content that’s interesting and relevant to your audience is going to give them a reason to keep coming back to your site.

But here’s a word of warning – you need to be committed to the cause. Many business owners who launch a site and a blog are excited and enthused when things get kicked off. They write a few blogs and add new pages, but after a short amount of time the gloss wears off and they stop adding new content.
Visitors to the site see that the blog page hasn’t been updated in 2 years, and so either assume that you’re no longer in business, or that you’re not committed to your business and industry, and so the service isn’t going to be that great.

A little commitment, even just a single blog article every month, shows that your determined to offer a good service.

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There are a significant number of factors that could be contributing to your website’s poor success rate. We’ve chosen just a few of the most common issues we encounter on a regular basis.