Warning Signs Your Website Isn't Performing Well

 Your clients’ websites are literally the portal to their products and services. You know that without a website they are missing a critical element of marketing today, with customers and prospects left to find their competitors’ sites instead. If they aren’t online to provide information to their customers, you know better than anyone, they will find someone else to do it instead.

But the problem is, even if your clients do have a website, but it fails to meet expectations, they’re just as likely to lose out on those prospects and existing customers. If you find your clients aren’t generating the online sales and website conversions they desire and are kind of looking at you as the culprit, it can be hard to convince them their issues lie in their website. If you can recognize the warning signs their website isn’t performing well, you can offer solutions to optimize their website for improved performance.

Bad Design

A common pitfall companies run into is thinking it’s fine to get their website up and then do nothing to keep it fresh. In fact, even a few years can lead to issues since consumer technology is constantly changing. But it’s not just the devices their audience is using that change. It’s changing expectations that can cause them to fall short when customers arrive on their web pages. Design, therefore, is very important to help attract and hold onto visitors. Some common design fails include:

• The website doesn’t have responsive design to adapt to the devices visitors are using.
• They are still using a splash page which makes the website seem so ‘90s.  
• The design is just flat-out outdated with passe design features like horrible gradients, overused bevelled edges or animated gifs.  
• The website still uses Flash, instead of JavaScript or HTML5 interactions/animations.
• Visitors are annoyed with auto-play music or video.
• The website doesn’t reflect the growth of your client’s business, brand, products, and services.
• The design is just boring with nothing to attract the eye or show people what to do next.

All of these issues mean it’s time for a makeover, pronto.

Poor or No Content

Content is the lifeblood of any website. It is what attracts not only visitors but search engines. If content gets stale, you aren’t doing yourself any favors. While “evergreen” content is a good thing, you have to continue to add new content that keeps up with industry changes and demands. It goes beyond the website and expands to social media that should be updated at least once a day if not more. All of these things provide information that customers crave. Without it, the website stagnates along with your clients’ online sales. You can improve the content by:

• Ensuring it is impeccable and free of typos and grammar errors.
• Adding newsworthy content that keeps your audience informed and wanting more.
• Using subheadings to make it easy to get a quick view of what you are saying.
• Including images to tell the story.

These changes make a big impact on the quality of your clients’ websites.

User Frustration

The user experience can send visitors running if the website is too slow, lacks easy to use navigation, looks dull, or just falls short of expectations. Some horror stories that cause frustration include:

• Slow loading
• Poor compatibility with all browsers
• Weird visuals such as overlapping boxes or unclickable highlighter text
• Buttons that don’t work, or worse lead to 404 messages
• Poor or non-existent website conversions or lead generation

A good way to avoid these issues is to continue to test and track website performance.

How to Improve CRO

Poor website performance calls for a no-code way to setup conversion rate optimization (CRO) tests for your clients. If you are worried you don’t have the technical know-how to track websites and make effective changes, you can use AutoOptimize to add value to your services. This easy to use and affordable tool is quick to set up and allows you to start conducting CRO experiments for clients right away. You can get started with zero coding experience and set up tests regardless of the CMS you use. Everything is done for you, without interfering with the website performance.

It is completely seamless, allowing you to conduct effective web page performance by making subtle changes using over 50 templates. You can then share that information with your clients to convince them changes are needed and how they are improving website performance. They have nothing to worry about as all your testing is conducted on a sandbox site, so it doesn’t affect your client’s actual website at all. Better yet, you can generate more business for yourself when you can prove changes are needed.

If you would like to see AutoOptimize in action, start your 14-day trial today.