This is such a common question that carries huge importance. You have just created your brand new company website and expected to be inundated with emails, phone calls and messages on social media asking for your service. However, this isn’t the case. You are not alone.
Firstly, your competitors are likely to have been building their website’s magnetism for customers for some time and have progressed to an extent that they are taking most of the clients available. You cannot expect success over night with a new website, it takes time and financial investment. Here are a few reasons why your site could be lacking the high number of visitors you expected:
- Your Website Is Slow
Speed is of huge importance nowadays when we speak about the internet in general. ‘We know what we want and we want it now’ is the general tone from the public. If your site takes time to load, your visitors aren’t going to hang around to wait. This means you have lost a potential customer before they have even gained access to your website. There are several reasons why your website could be slow, but the main ones are likely to be un-optimised images and coding. At Datalex Media we make sure your images are compressed. This will make the file size of the image smaller, so the image will load faster on the browser. Compressing all your images on your website can save you valuable seconds on your loading time. If your site is on WordPress, a popular plugin called Autoptimise can be used to compress HTML, CSS and Javascript. We also ensure that the browser loads the ‘above the fold’ content first. This is the part of the page that fills the screen first. This means that while the lower half and footer may still be downloading, your screen is presented with the top section straight away.
You may also have heard people say, “Do you use a CDN on your website?”. This is a Content Delivery Network which can save bandwidth and boost performance by hosting all your static resources such as images, videos, audio clips and even coding like CSS and Javascript. Also, if you use the Google CDN there’s a good chance someone has already visited a site using one and therefore the files will be cached by your browser and won’t need to be downloaded again.
- Your Website Is Boring
You want your website to grab the user’s attention in order to retain their interest and make sure they continue browsing your site. If the site is full of small text with poor use of imagery, this isn’t likely to grab anyone’s attention. Using imagery or catchy headlines is a great way to attract interest from the word go.
- Bad Design
Maybe you haven’t checked what your website looks like on all devices and the mobile version of your site looks like a disaster. If your site looks great on desktop, this only accounts for around 40% of devices currently used to connect to the internet. This would mean you are losing 60% of your visitors due to poor design on mobiles, tablets, e-readers etc. Poor use of colour can also cause users to leave a site. Maybe the colours used in the design make text difficult to read with limited or no contrast with the background. I personally think you shouldn’t need more than 3 colours in the design of your site.
- Bad Navigation
At Datalex Media we always try to stick to a rule of thumb that each page on a website can be reachable within 3 clicks. If a user has to dig deeper into your site to find what they’re looking for, you might find them using the browser back button to help navigate or exiting the site completely. There should be consistency when positioning your navigational menu. The user should be familiar with how to navigate the site within the first 5 seconds. Make sure to offer back buttons when necessary and ensure the logo will always take the user back to the home page.
- You Haven’t Promoted Your Site
So, you have managed to make your site interesting, it’s fast, it’s easily navigable and the design is superb. Yet people still aren’t coming. You can’t expect people to find your site unless you tell them about it. Advertise, Advertise, Advertise! Create a social media presence with Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn and start posting. Use Google ad words to help users find you from the Google search engine. Tell your family and friends about it. Get business cards and hand them out when you mention your site to potential customers. Share your link underneath posts on blogs and forums and ask politely if customers you have worked with can include link to your site.
- Your Site Isn’t SEO Friendly
An easy way to begin with SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) is to ensure you think about keyword placement. Think about what people would be searching for in search engines to find your service. Use at least 5 key words or phrases and try to include them in titles, headings, main content and alt tags. You should also think about your meta tag title and description. This is the title and description users will see when they see your page in search engines. Make it catchy, obvious what kind of site/business you have and ensure it isn’t too long, so it fits on the placement properly without cutting the end off. If you are using WordPress, the Yoast SEO plugin is a great way to begin with SEO on your site. This plugin helps with keyword placement, creates an XML sitemap you can submit to search engines and helps plan social media sharing.
To Conclude
Be aware that success doesn’t happen overnight and will mean hard work and financial backing. You can choose to spend as much or as little as you like promoting your site, but if you advertise to the right people via social media and use Google adwords, you will begin to see a noticeable rise in interest and visitors to your site. At Datalex we offer all the services mentioned above and guarantee return on investment. Visit our website today at www.datalex.com.ng
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