If you’re reading this, your business has a website, and you think it could be better. But you’re not sure how bad it currently is, and in what ways it could be better. Let’s help you figure that out.
There are several ways we can look at a website to try to determine how good it is. We could figure out how well it has been designed, how quickly it loads and how smoothly it works, how secure it is, how much content it has and how good that content is, and most importantly, we could determine how well it’s achieving its goals of helping visitors.
We’ve created a spreadsheet template that you can download and use for free here:
Download the How good is our website? Scoresheets
Read through the rest of this article to learn why each of these categories are is important to consider.
How good is our site’s design?
You know how important it is to dress appropriately when going to a meeting with a customer, client, partner, etc? Whether we like to admit it or not, how we dress tells other people a lot about how comfortable we are, how professional we are, and even how much we respect them.
The design of a website has the exact same effect on your site’s visitors; they will judge your business based on what it looks like, even if it’s subconscious. So it’s important that our websites have the right balance of fun and serious, use colours well, have a sensible and convenient layout, and so on.
How well does our site perform?
It’s been proven in many studies over the years that people hate slow websites so much that they will close the tab and never even visit a site that takes too long to load. The tricky thing about loading time is that the more pictures and videos we add that we know our customers would like to see, the more chance we have of putting them off before they even get to see them.
And when the website does load for the visitors, it needs to run smoothly; particularly when they’re scrolling down the webpages. If it doesn’t feel smooth and natural to them, they’re going to think something strange is going on and lose some trust in you.
Is our site secure?
Websites get hacked all the time unfortunately because hackers have several incentives to do so. Sometimes they do it for the fame and bragging rights, sometimes they do it to make a point and embarrass the company, and sometimes it’s even more insidious, when the hacker wants to use your site for illegal activity like sending spam emails to unsuspecting people all over the world.
The bigger your business or organisation, the bigger target your website will be to hackers, so it’s important to take website security seriously. Fortunately there are a couple of easy things to implement to make it much less likely to be hacked or compromised in some way.
Does our site have the right content?
Every potential customer or client has many questions they want answers to, and concerns that they want addressed. For instance, if someone is considering buying a new bed, they might want to know what bed brands are the best, what type of mattress is right for them, or simply which bed shops are closest to them. Additionally, they might be concerned about the support they need for their back, or they might be worried about paying more than they can afford.
Your website needs to answer your customers questions and address their concerns through articles, blog posts, and other webpages. The text and images on these pages is the content that you need to create, and it’s not difficult to distinguish between great content and poor content.
Is our site getting customer conversions?
Most importantly of all, your website needs to help customers make a decision and take action. For most websites, this is some kind of buying decision, but very few people buy right away. They usually want to first know what you do, then how you do it, how much you charge for it, how long you’ve been doing it and how good you are. And many other things in between.
So your site visitors are going on journeys through the pages of your site, and ultimately you need them to take some kind of action, such as calling you, booking an appointment, or filling in a quote form. We call those conversions, and there are a few factors that determine how well your website is to get them.
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So, when you’ve read that above, go ahead and download the spreadsheet, to start assessing how good or bad your site currently is.
When you’re done, we recommend reading our other articles to learn how to improve your site, or simply contact us to ask how your site can be improved!
