townsquareinteractive.com | @TS_Interactive | facebook.com/townsquareinteractive | 855-493-2435 28 Reasons Your Website Isn’t Bringing in New Business Common Issues with Content It’s boring. Does your website sound like this? “Hi, we provide the best customer service and highest quality products around. Buy from us today!” Snooze-fest. Everyone’s site says that. It’s out of date. The deal from 3 months ago is still being advertised! Your hours aren’t accurate. The map isn’t accurate. What a hassle for the website visitor to get basic information. There’s no useful information on it. The site is filled with generic marketing fluff used on every other site out there. There are no humanizing elements or information that shows how you are different from your competitor down the street. Visitors don’t know what you do. Ever been to a site where you can’t exactly tell what the company does? Website visitors form a first impression in fractions of a second. If your website visitor doesn’t understand your business in a few seconds, they’re likely to leave and find a site that is more easily understood. Common Issues with Design The site ignores design conventions. Everyone wants their site to stand out in a crowd, to ‘pop.’ But ignoring design conventions forces the visitor search harder for the information they want and need. Web users want information easily, conveniently and instantly. Check out Don’t Make Me Think by Steve Krug for more information. Site looks unprofessional. High quality images matter! Low quality images show that you don’t care about investing in your own brand. Why, then, should anyone work with you? Website looks like someone’s nephew designed it. Or it was originally designed in 2000. Or the web designer’s recommendations were ignored. Common Issues with SEO It’s disorganized. Organization serves two purposes. • First, it’s helpful for visitors to find their way around the site. When information is categorized and organized logically, visitors can go where they need to go, to get the information they want. • Second, organization helps search engines understand and categorize your site. Ultimately, if the search engines have difficulty understanding your site, they won’t spend time figuring it out. They’ll just ignore your site - not display it in search results. There are plenty of existing websites that search engines can send users to, that are easily understood, well organized and effectively categorized. It’s not optimized. If your website is not optimized for search engines, you’re missing a huge opportunity to increase visibility. Search engine optimization (SEO) is the practice of improving the visibility of your site in search results. Showing up in search results is the only way customers (and prospective customers) can find your website – unless they have your exact website address. Multiple websites split traffic in multiple directions. If your company operates as one company, with one set of products or services that all fall under one umbrella, you’re shooting yourself in the foot by having two websites with identical or nearly identical information on them. In similar fashion to a site that’s disorganized, there are a number of disadvantages. Firstly, it’s confusing and irritating for users. They can’t tell which website is the ‘official’ website. Secondly, search engines get confused. If the search engine is confused about which site is associated with 867-5309 phone number and 123 E Main Street, AnyTown, USA business address (as both items are listed on the two websites) – it’s possible neither of your sites will show up in search. Search engines can’t understand it. There are some website design platforms (most notably Flash) that make it very difficult for search engines to understand what your website is about. And as mentioned, if search engines can’t tell what your site is about, they just won’t show it in search results. Domain has a penalty. Domain penalties can occur when your website doesn’t follow best practices. Trying to “game the system” or employing less than ethical strategies to trick search engines into displaying your website are not looked upon kindly and can get you into serious trouble. It can take a great deal of time and money to correct a domain penalty, and all the while your website isn’t showing up in search results. Visit townsquareinteractive.com to get started online or call 855-493-2435