One of the most frustrating things in the world is when you invest in a website, and then it doesn’t bring any money back to you. Your website should be a lead generating machine, yet most businesses struggle to squeeze anything from theirs. Make sure your website isn’t making one of the 8 mistakes.
1. It doesn’t get enough traffic
Unfortunately the phrase ‘build it and they will come’ doesn’t really apply to websites. You can choose the best web design company and have the Aston Martin of websites, but if nobody sees it then it won’t generate leads for your business.
You can use a free application called Google Analytics to keep track of your website traffic.
2. You don’t have a search presence
83% of people in the UK use the internet at least once per day (according to eConsultancy, 2014). When a potential customer is wondering who to use for a project, they head to Google. If you aren’t on the first page of Google, you’ll be lucky to receive any traffic from it.
It’s estimated that 31% of people when searching for a phrase will click on the #1 result, 14% on the #2 result and just under 10% on the 3rd result – that’s 55% of clicks that occur just on the top 3! (Moz survey, 2014)
Google your industry, followed by your city (e.g. ‘steel suppliers nottingham’) and see where you come up. If you’re at the top, it’s likely that your phrase doesn’t actually receive enough searches to make it worthwhile.
3. Your website isn’t optimised to encourage enquiries
We’re simple creatures when it comes to browsing the Internet. We see a website and we make up our minds about whether the company is reputable within around 2 seconds. We then have a little look around and make up our minds about whether to contact the company.
If your website barely contains any information, you’re losing the battle. If your website isn’t telling the user why they should choose your company over your rival, you’re losing. If you’re not telling the customer what you want them to do next, guess what? You’re losing.
You want a full website that tells the customer about who you are, what you do and that builds credibility by being well designed.
You also want to be telling the customer what action you want them to take next – usually it’s to call you.
Your phone number should be highly visible on all pages and you should actually be telling customers that you want them to call, that you want to help them with their enquiry.
4. You’re not tracking your enquiries
The beauty of the Internet and the reason that digital advertising spend is growing year on year (Ofcom, 2015), is because of the accountability it provides.
With all of our digital marketing customers, we provide a local telephone number, solely to be used on the website. The phone number just goes through to your landline and when you pick up the phone, it whispers in your ear telling you it’s a website enquiry.
We then report on how many phone calls were made to that number each month and how much each of these enquiries cost you.
This is what you should be doing too, whether or not you’re our customer (if you’re not our customer you should become one, we’re really nice people and we kill it for our clients!)
5. Your website isn’t mobile-friendly
This is a huge no-no these days. A website that isn’t mobile friendly is instantly going to cut off a LOT of your potential customers. In fact, as a society, we spend more time browsing on our smartphones than we do on a laptop (58 hours per month on mobile vs. 31 hours on a laptop/desktop, Ofcom, 2015).
Enough of the stats? Just take a look around if you’re waiting at a coffee shop or the train station. People are glued to their phones.
If your customers are having to pinch and squeeze their screen when they load your website, unfortunately you’re going to lose them.
6. You’re not active on social media
According to Ofcom, 72% of adults who go online, have some sort of social media profile. This is growing year on year (in 2013 it was 66%).
Having a think about your customer profile will really pay dividends here. If you’re looking to target anyone that younger than 54 – you need to have some presence on social media.
Simply having a page isn’t enough though, you should be producing content that’s valuable to them and that helps educate them about your services (not in a BUY THIS NOW kind of way).
7. Your address and phone number aren’t accessible directly from search
Around 26% of us have used the Internet (Google) at some point to find the location or contact information of a local business. Having a Google+ page that shows up in search with your address and phone number is hugely beneficial here.
A lot of the time customers will have a look around at a few companies and their websites. They’ll forget about it and then all of a sudden, BAM, something reminds them. So they head to Google, put in the same thing that they searched before and this time they just want to get the phone numbers of a few companies.
If your details aren’t there? Unfortunately they’ll probably just forget about you.
8. You’re still hoping the old-school ways of advertising will work
Unfortunately, there’s a reason that every year the Yellow Pages is smaller and that the local newspapers are getting thinner, and it’s not a revolutionary new diet. It’s because they just don’t work anymore and they’re an inferior way of advertising.
Digital advertising is now worth over £7bn per year in terms of what customers are spending on advertising online. This grows, every single year.
If you’re still spending on the old school methods of advertising, you’re probably losing out to your competitor who’s investing and reinvesting in digital.
We measure the performance of everything we do, whether it’s search engine optimisation, pay-per-click advertising or developing a content marketing campaign for you.
Take a look at our web design Dubai page if you’re a business looking for help with bringing your online presence up to speed.
Give us a call on 0115 971 8908 and see how Imaginaire Digital can help you.
