By John Eberhard
I am going to show you how to critique your own website based on how well it gets people to respond.
- Is the site mobile friendly? This is one of the first and most important things to check. Over half of all web visitors today are visiting your site on a mobile phone, and if the site isn’t mobile friendly, then it will be displayed tiny on a mobile and the visitor won’t be able to read the text. That would mean that half the visitors to your site can’t use it.
- Does the site have a prominent phone number? The best place to put this is in the upper right on every page of the site.
- Does the site have forms for visitors to respond? If not you are missing out on possible responses. Some people would rather fill out a form than pick up the phone, particularly if they are browsing late at night.
- Does the site have a good call to action? You have to tell people what to do. But some calls to action are better than others. “Contact us” is weak. Better to say “Get a free inspection,” or “Get a free consultation.”
- Does your home page scroll down forever, with 6 or more items on it? Consider simplifying the home page. It’s kind of considered chic today to have a ton of things on the home page and the visitor has to scroll forever. Try focusing the content on the home page on getting someone to respond to your offer.
- Is the site mainly all text with few pictures? Pictures can add reality on what you are talking about and can break up big long blocks of text (which are hard for the reader to confront). And today you need to make those pictures BIG for more impact. No tiny pictures.
- Is the text all about you? Try focusing the text on your reader – his problems, his needs. There is an old maxim in marketing that you focus on benefits rather than features. In other words, make it about the prospect, what he’ll get out of buying your product or service, not just on the product’s features, and not just all about you.
- Does the main headline on your home page speak to the visitor, his problems or needs, does it tell what you do, and does it contain any keywords? Headlines of “Welcome” or “We’re the Best” are weak.
- Does the site load slowly? Google made page loading speed a major ranking factor 3 years ago. The content that displays before you do any scrolling (called the content “above the fold”) should load in 2.5 seconds or less. Google calls this the Largest Contentful Paint (I didn’t make this up). You can check your page loading speed here: https://gtmetrix.com/
- Does the site have an SSL certificate? You can tell by the web address you see in the upper left of the browser. If the address starts with http:, you don’t have an SSL. If it starts with https:, you do. If not, Google and other search engines will penalize you in their rankings. Contact your hosting company and get an SSL certificate. Some hosting companies will offer it for free and some will charge up to $100 per year for it.
- How much traffic are you getting to your site per month? You can tell this if you have Google Analytics set up on your site. If the numbers are low, say below 300-500 visits per month, you should start on actions to drive more people to the site.
If you need help critiquing your site or help fixing up things you found, give us a call.
