Is your website losing you customers? Why it’s time to regenerate

Is your website losing you customers? Why it’s time to regenerate.

Did you know that 1 in 3 customers will leave a website due to a poor user experience?

The saying “first impressions count” is as true online as it is in person. For many businesses, their website is their first chance to make an impression on potential customers as well as a way to stay connected to existing ones; however, what does your website say about your business?

Are you proud of it and feel that it accurately represents you and your audience, or is it out of date, limited in what it offers and difficult to use? If the latter describes your website, then this is probably how visitors will think of your business. Instead of keeping you relevant and at the forefront of people’s minds, it could be driving them to your competitors.

Visitors spend an average 15 seconds on a website before moving on and that is how long you have to make a good first impression and to keep them. If you aren’t confident that your website can do that, now is a good time, before the economy fully opens up, to regenerate it.

5 top dislikes for your website visitors

When was the last time you looked at your website through the eyes of a customer? It’s important to remember that although your website is about your business and products, it is designed for your customers and their needs; taking time to revisit your website with this perspective can be enlightening and a game-changer.

These common issues with websites are guaranteed to frustrate visitors. They may not be particularly surprising but it’s still surprising how often they still appear.

1. Long website load times. Making someone wait extra milliseconds will leave them feeling frustrated and impatient to try the next entry on their search engine results page. After that, if your website isn’t easy to navigate or it hides essential and relevant information such as contact details or product data, people aren’t going to waste time looking for it.
2. Out of date, poor or irrelevant content. This is encouraging potential customers to move on. If it’s out of date or littered with errors, it calls your credibility into question and will make them question other information on the site. You may consider your web to be a sales tool, but your customers are looking for more. Background information, free resources or learning materials are all welcomed. However, headlines that don’t reflect the content or copy that is solely written for SEO (i.e. full of keywords but no substance) will leave your visitors feeling side-lined and underwhelmed. The content all across your website, not just your latest offering, needs to be connected and coherent, reflecting your brand and value to customers. An About Us page should avoid technical jargon and state clearly what you do and why, otherwise you will quickly turn away visitors. You want to grab their attention, not blind them with science.
3. Busy websites. It’s tempting to cram as much as possible into your website, but this is at the expense of impact and messaging. It takes an objective, critical and focused approach to create a great customer experience on your website but if you were to look at your website today, how many of the frustration mentioned above would you find? In addition, the misuse of pop-ups, multimedia autoplays and out of date links or links used in inappropriate places all impact the user’s experience.
4. Insecure websites. In addition to customer experience, regenerating your website is also the time to improve its functionality and security. We see too many website URLs preceded by !, showing that their web manager has allowed their SSL certificate to go out of date. This is critical if you expect to sell from your website and ensure it’s a trusted site.
5. Outdated tech. This may not be obvious to visitors but are you investing in analytics to capitalise, and improve on, your website performance? Is old tech slowing down web performance or limiting functionality? It’s also important to ensure that your website is suitable for multiple devices; you will lose customers who search your website on their handheld device if the quality of the experience isn’t as good as it is for a desktop or laptop.
6. Not able to browse on phone. As basic as it sounds, many websites designed in the last decade are not equipped with the ability to present themselves on modern mobile phones. This is a huge risk to businesses as more people browse websites on a mobile phone than a desktop or laptop as a trend and have your website developed with responsive design is fundamental.
7. Lack of SEO to be found. Though a great deal of knowledge of search engine optimisation exists with the business community there is a lack of consistent effort in making your site and products information easily reachable on search engines. If your website does not have a well-defined SEO strategy and execution your website will not allow your future customers to discover your products or services, your investment in an SEO service goes in parallel with your investment in your design and build of your website, as this will ultimately create brand awareness and drive you leads to your website.

Why your website needs to service your current and future customers

Leave these customer frustrations on your web and you expose your business to the risk of failing to achieve its full potential and shift market share to your competitors.

Many customers start their research on the internet so regenerating your website is the opportunity to build trust and confidence in your business. It enables you to create an effective call to action to guide your customers and their journey and help them understand why they should buy from you.

Your website is the opportunity to reach a global audience 24/7 and with the ONS reporting that online sales grew by 46% in 2020, can you really afford for your web not to be up to scratch?

How to regenerate a website

There are many decisions to be made during the process of website regeneration. Do you choose a WordPress, bespoke or commercial, templated web approach? Shared hosting or dedicated cloud? Should your web development partner be a “techy” developer, a strategic vision partner or both? Will you need ongoing support after the website is revamped?

Incepteo works with many global clients to regenerate their website and we see the value it brings to their businesses such as Vision Engineering, Collude, Capium, & MSDUK to name a few. We understand that the investment of our client’s time and budget needs to generate results and our role is to help them understand the journey of explorations, discovery and implementation needed to maximise the regeneration potential. For this reason, we have developed a tried and trusted, step by step project development process that introduces a multi-disciplinary contribution and ensures that the customer is involved throughout the process:

You will notice that web build comes halfway through the process because we make sure to answer every question around your web before we even start coding.

Absolutely integral to our approach is the Discovery Workshop, because before we start changing anything you need to know what the website is for and what your customers want to achieve this is we dive deeper into your business goals and customer acquisition and your core values. Upon this foundation, the branding of the business can be highlighted, and we begin to form a web that delivers upon the potential of your business.

Once the purpose of the website is determined, you can begin to underpin it with the right technical decisions to drive its functionality. This is why our clients have the option of end-to-end support so we can ensure regeneration is comprehensive and supports long term scalable success. We also help you launch your website through our bespoke SEO service.

Putting the entrepreneur at the heart of your website

An entrepreneurial spirit runs through, and drives, everything we do at Incepteo, https://www.incepteo.com/success/. Our clients understand the value this brings and because it reflects their ambition and lets us deliver more to our customers than somebody developing your web without the business know-how of how to scale a business.

Your website is a chance to put your best foot forward to reach a global audience and untapped revenue and also differentiate yourself from the crowd. Our approach to website regeneration reflects every aspect including content, backend technology and customer interface.

Your website needs to speak to your customers and take them on the journey that achieves their objective and ultimately be drive sales leads to you. Regenerating your website enables you to do this and keep pace with changes in your business and the industry, giving you a competitive edge. If you haven’t recently cast a critical eye over your web, you may be missing an opportunity to realise its true value to your business.  For a free discovery, get in touch with us to unlock your true business potential.