Welcome to part 3 of our blog series on what you can do to avoid being in the unpleasant situation of your new website just not working the way you expect.
In our first blog in this series, we talked about how important it is to talk with your web developer about their processes for ensuring the website they make is the website you want.
In our second blog about new website disappointment we talked about ensuring your new website is fully, not partly, equipped for mobile responsivity and has the tools for your to track visitors and understand browser data.
Now here we are with our third, and final blog (for now) on this subject, covering the importance of page loading speed and why your website may not be generating sales and/or leads.
The pages take forever to load
If your website is too slow in loading its pages, you have a problem. Visitors will not stick around for pages to slowly load and search engines will rank you detrimentally.
There are many reasons why your website may be slow. Potentially your images are not optimised, the hosting is low quality or there could be too many add-ons or plugins. Or the actual build of your website could be messy, with unnecessary code.
How to avoid
A new website that is going to rank well and be revisited by browsers should be built for speed. Talk to your web developer about how they will ensure quick loading and browser satisfaction. There should be no unnecessary plugins or code slowing your site down. Images should also be fully optimised.
Ask your web developer about high-quality hosting too to ensure bandwidth isn’t going to let your site down, and that you get a certain level of uptime guaranteed.
A good web developer will know how to build your website for the speed it needs to serve its visitors with a quality browsing experience, which doesn’t include waiting for pages to load.
You’re not getting any sales or leads from your new website
Possibly the worst outcome to end up with from your new website, is very little outcome. Even if your website is getting traffic, if those visitors aren’t converting to leads or sales, then your website isn’t doing its job.
How to avoid
Before the build of your site begins, your web developer should be talking to you about the purpose of your site. What you want it to achieve. Maybe you want more enquiries, donations, sales, etc. Whatever your goal is, the website can then be built with the user journey in mind to achieve it.
Layout, content, font, colour, navigation, will all be carefully thought through to achieve your goal.
Ask your web developer to have a ‘discovery session’ with you, so you can talk to them about your goal and ensure your new site is designed accordingly.
Of course, the quick and easy way to avoid new website disappointment is to get a great web developer from the off, one who is commercially switched on to what you need. A web developer who can ensure the website you need to run, empower and enable your business - is the website you get.
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