Your website needs to be built with your customers’ needs in mind. If they’re not enjoying what you have to offer, they could easily leave and find someone else to deliver what they’re looking for.
You might have built a site that you feel is what your customers need, but then it turns out that it’s not getting as much traction as you had hoped. However, you might be unaware that your website isn’t performing as it should be.
Looking out for the signs that your site might not be impressing customers is really important if you want to reach the right people.
If you’re not sure whether your site is doing its job and impressing your customers, look out for these signs that you need to make a change.
1. High Bounce Rate
Your site’s bounce rate isn’t necessarily the main indicator of how well it performs. For some sites, bounce rates might not be that important, particularly sites that only have one main page.
However, it’s a good idea to keep an eye on your bounce rate, as it can be a good indicator of what people think of your site.
Your bounce rate is the percentage of people who land on your site and don’t go any further than the original page that they land on. A lot of people leaving without exploring your site or taking any actions would suggest there’s something wrong.
The average bounce rate is 40.5% but it does vary by industry. A lot of factors will affect your bounce rate, from having pop-up ads on the page to your site ranking in search engines for irrelevant terms.
2. Slow Loading Times
A website that loads slowly is another factor that affects bounce rate, and it could be a key reason your site isn’t impressing your customers. When a site loads slowly, people get impatient and they will often decide to just leave rather than put up with it.
But how quickly should a website load? Ideally, the content on a page should load in just a couple of seconds. If your site loads in 2.9 seconds, it makes it faster than 50% of websites on the web.
You can use a variety of techniques to speed up loading times for the pages on your site. First, use Google’s PageSpeed Insights to check the loading time of a page. You can speed up pages by optimizing code, reducing redirects, removing render-blocking JavaScript, and doing multiple other things to remove lag and decrease loading times. Remember that faster sites perform better on search engines too.
3. Low Conversion Rate
Low conversion rates are a good indication that your site isn’t doing its job. Whatever conversions you’re measuring, whether it’s collecting leads, sales, newsletter signups, or anything else, low numbers show that you need to do something differently. Even if you’re getting a lot of traffic to your site, it doesn’t help you much if those visitors don’t convert.
There could be many changes you can make to your site to improve conversion rates. You need to work out what could be the cause of your low conversion rate, and it could be a number of things.
You could be getting few conversions because your landing pages aren’t optimized, because your site is too slow, or because your PPC ads don’t accurately represent what your site is about. One thing is certain – if your conversion rates are low, something on your site probably needs to be fixed.
4. Your Site isn’t Responsive
A responsive website design is a must for any website. Responsive design means that the site adapts to different devices and browsers so that it looks good and offers great usability for everyone.
Modern websites need to be responsive because people use a range of devices when they go online. More than 50% of global online traffic now comes from mobile devices, so you will definitely be missing out if you don’t make sure your site is responsive.
If your site isn’t responsive, you could find that you have a high bounce rate or a low conversion rate. A small business web design agency can help you to think about all of the important things that ensure your site is responsive.
For example, you need to have forms on your landing pages that work well on mobile devices. If you don’t, it will frustrate mobile users.
5. Poor SEO Traffic
Search engines take into account how well your site performs when deciding how to rank it in search results. They consider elements like page speed and bounce rate to determine whether your site is one that should be shown to users.
If you find that you don’t have much traffic coming from organic SEO, it’s likely because your site isn’t ranking well. If your site’s not ranking well, it’s because search engines have found it lacking. But search engines are looking for things that make users happy, so if your site isn’t pleasing search engines, it’s most likely not pleasing people either.
You should create a good SEO strategy if you want to improve your organic traffic. This will involve paying attention to on-page SEO, off-page SEO, and technical elements to optimize your site. SEO is partly about doing what search engines want but it’s also about humans and what they’re looking for.
6. Abandoned Carts
Have you found that you have a high rate of abandoned carts? People start to make a purchase from you but often leave their cart and don’t come back. This could be due to several things, including your checkout process, shipping costs, or lack of transparent information during checkout.
If sending abandoned cart emails doesn’t tempt them back, you might need to make some important changes to your site. The checkout process might need to be simplified or made more secure or you might need to provide more information about shipping and returns.
You can even use exit-intent popups to entice potential customers to continue with their purchases before they leave your site.
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Your website might not be doing its job. If you’re not getting the traction you desire, you might need to rethink the design of your site!
