Fellow bosses, let’s have some real talk about your website. It may be killing more business than it’s producing. The days of having a mediocre website and other great marketing to make up for it are totally over. In our digital crazed world, having a website that represents your business well and meets all the marks for conversion and functionality is absolutely critical.

You simply can’t afford NOT to take your website seriously.

Here’s what I mean: I was recently on the hunt for a hardscape company that does outdoor kitchens (not for myself, for someone else 🙂 and man, the websites made my decision for me.  A couple were atrociously bad. Fuzzy images, cluttered text and buried contact information. Based on their website, I felt like that company couldn’t possibly be run well, regardless of how much more skilled the owners were at hardscape than digital marketing.

A couple other sites were decent, but as soon as I pulled up the single site that was actually attractive and well written, I forgot about the others. My decision was made based on the impression I got from their websites. And it turns out the company with the best website has a great reputation and does a lot of business – I get the feeling more than its competitors with the poor websites. Case-in-point why our online marketing is a reflection on the standards of our business overall.

If you’re thinking; hmmm, is my website a business killer? I can help you determine that. Here are four reasons your website may be stopping people from contacting you.

1. It’s too much information. Probably the biggest mistake business owners make with their website is plastering way too much information there – particularly on the home page. People don’t care to read about the 10-year history of your business, or the endless description of how you do what you do. All they want from your website is to learn what you can do for them, if you’re up to the task and how they can get it done. If you want to test whether your site is information overload, I explain how in an earlier blog. 

2. It’s ugly. I’m no design pro but with the help of a Squarespace template and some stock images, I managed to make my website look fairly nice. Trust me, if I can do it, you can too. It’s going to cost you a little dough (my investment was about $200 total) and most website platforms have raised their base pricing over the years, but when you’re attracting more customers, you’ll know it was well worth it. If you’ve been at it for a while and you really want to take your business to the next level, it may be time to hire a web designer and get that thing customized.

3. It’s a conversion black hole. The whole point of a website is to convert visitors to buyers. So often, however, we get really amped about convincing someone to use us and neglect clearly explaining to them how they can do that. You may have a strong “pick me!” message there but are losing people when they’re like, ‘uh, ok great, so how do I do that?’ Make sure your contact info, email form or scheduling link aren’t buried and that the path to using your products is spelled out clearly.

4. It’s out of date. Serious pet peeve of mine. Update your information! Websites are great at delivering your marketing message for you, but only if that message is current. If there are references to 2010 or images with out-of-date trends on there, it screams ‘my website is neglected and I may or may not still be doing business.’ Yikes, huge turnoff. 

Oh, and if you’re pretty proud of your website, leave the link below in the comments. I’d love to check it out!