Under performing website? Here’s why your website is under performing

Today I’m going to cover why most websites fail to deliver on their promise and why the amount you spend on your website does not necessarily affect your websites performance.

Your websites performance is not dictated by the amount you spend on it!

This may seem like a bit of a strange thing for a Web Design Agency to say, but it’s actually true. Spending £10,000 on a website does not necessarily mean it will perform better than a £395 website – As detailed in the Accenture/Hertz post here.

What you should first consider is the purpose of your website followed by your strategy to achieve the core purpose of your website.

Most people want a vague purpose for their website such as “get me more sales”, however this needs to be dialled in a lot more, whilst it is a purpose, you may want to strengthen it by planning to give away a free white paper related to your product to start a relationship with a potential new client.

Another purpose for your website might be to increase the average order value per sale. This would involve your strategy looking at improving upsells during the browsing and checkout phase and a strategy around upselling, maybe using email or direct mail once someone has purchased from you and you have a clearer understanding of their buyer persona.

Don’t go over the top with design elements – Keep focused!

Many people forget the core purpose of their website when it comes to the design and web development phase. More often than not, once a designer has sent a first draft for review, clients often forget about their core purpose and start getting carried away with the bells & whistles and making their website look pretty.

It is better to look at your design and ask yourself “what can I remove?” as opposed to “what can I add?”

By removing the unnecessary you are reducing clutter – this makes your website more visually appealing and less overwhelming at a first glance.

Secondly you are making your website more focused as there will be little to no distractions, meaning visitors will be more focused and more likely to complete the journey you have in mind for them.

Think of it like this…. your website is a work in progress, it’s never finished!

Your website needs constant on-going tweaks, it’s never really finished. The big players like Amazon etc. are always running tests on the background in their website.

Why settle for a 12% conversion rate when the slightest change, as outlined in our guide to Online Sales Psychology, could lift your conversions to 13-14%?

Failing to maintain and test things on your website is a sure way to get what you’ve always get and in some cases even take a step backwards – so be sure to be always testing and improving your website and moving forwards not standing still as standing still in the online world is still moving backwards!

Should you be looking for help improving your under performing website, contact our Birmingham Web Design team who are happy to help you on 0121 663 0202 or email hello@altagency.co.uk

Improving your website under performance in 2019

2019 has seen some great ways to improve your website – The great thing is that it’s not just design tweaks you need to make now.

This may sound like a hassle, but it actually makes the web a better place and as with anything that’s a chunk of hard work it’s likely that your competitors aren’t doing as much as they should and as much as you can do to make their website better.

Fixing your underperforming website starts with your title tags, your meta title & descriptions – This is the little bits that get seen in the Google search results.

This is important as the more enticing and click worthy your title tags and meta descriptions the more visitors you will get to your website and a higher click through rate from the Google search results can help boost your SEO rankings.

The second thing that you can do is little tiny tweaks to your webpages and closely monitor your bounce and site on time metrics.
Simple changes such as aligning content better, changing a headline, changing an image can help make your website more usable and engaging – Again linking in with your SEO efforts tweaking these metrics to keep more people on your site for a longer period of time and looking at more pages will help as Google loves these types of user experience metrics.

Improving your website under performance doesn’t have to be a big overhaul – tiny tiny tweaks add up to bigger returns.

2020 Update

Website design and website development does not need to be a difficult process, it came be time consuming and full of confusing terminology but at its core it should always be very simple.

With SEO now being hugely about user experience, it’s more important than ever to get your website right.

By always asking yourself “Does this add value to the end user”, “Does this answer the website visitors questions?” “Does the website visitor know what to do and what to expect next?”, then you will always be improving your website and outing the user first and getting more benefit from your website design.