Investing in a website is part of the cost of doing business in the 21st century. Simply having a website is not enough. A poorly designed website could actually hurt your business. How so, you may ask? How much is your poorly designed website really costing you? Here are several reasons why your poorly designed website is costing you more than you realize.
Poorly Designed Site
A poorly or hastily designed site with missing information will turn prospective clients away quickly. If a potential customer cannot find your contact information easily they will leave your site. No one should have to “hunt” for your contact information, your physical or email address, your phone number, and your business hours. A well-designed site should also be easy to navigate with menus that help potential customers and clients find what they need quickly. If they cannot find it they will go somewhere else.
Sloppy Text: Spelling Errors and More
It is very hard to convince a prospective client that you are knowledgeable and a reliable source if your website is full of errors. Grammar and spelling errors will drive readers away from your business. You would not show up to the first meeting with a client in your pajamas, but that is essentially what you are doing when you present a sloppy, hastily thrown together website to clients. One of the cringe-worthy errors we often see is when sample text from the demo template is left on the website. This makes it look like your business is not detail oriented or professional.
Slow to Load
According to a study from the Missouri University of Science and Technology, your website has less than 0.2 seconds to make a good first impression. Media savvy tech users are impatient, and they expect to have the information they seek delivered extremely quickly. Slow servers, unclean code, and also unoptimized images are some of the things that can make your website too slow for potential clients. You will have to speed up if you want to stay in the race.
How much can a poorly designed website really cost you? Everything. You can lose a potential customer in less than ten seconds if your site does not perform as it should. This is why it is vital to trust your website to professionals who understand what works and doesn’t work. The experienced team at Houndstooth Media Group can help you turn your website into a revenue generator.