The Five Most Common Website Problems |

The Five Most Common Website Problems

website DO ANY OF THESE APPLY TO YOUR WEBSITE?
Here are five of the most common problems I encounter when analyzing websites and/or email campaigns:

No Offer

A website should have a clear offer. There should be something that a visitor can potentially DO: such as buy a product or service; subscribe to a newsletter; download a report; make a phone call for more information; request a consultation; add a comment; or in some way ACT. Particularly when presenting a product or service for purchase, the offer should be very clear, and as simple as possible. But even when you are giving something away for free, just as much importance should be given to the presentation of such an offer, since the freebie is an important way of generating an email list, which is very valuable.

No Call-To-Action

Even if there is an offer, if there’s no Call-To-Action, which is simply asking your visitor to do something, then the amount of responses will be greatly diminished.

The offer is presenting something that a visitor could potentially take advantage of.

The Call-To-Action, is directing the visitor to move from the potential of acting, to ACTUALLY DOING SOMETHING.

“Buy Now” is a common Call-to-Action.

Other Calls-to-Action could be asking a visitor to click a link to subscribe to an email course, to enter a survey, to make a phone call, to win a free prize, to enter a contest, etc.

Too Many Choices

Is your website simple? Or is it confusing? Are there too many things that one could do? Are there too many links to click on? Too many ads? Too much of everything which results in a first impression of visual chaos? Visitors will simply go away. Your web pages should be SIMPLE.

Bad Copywriting

Is your website copy clear and EASILY understandable? Is it presented using simple words with plenty of short sentences? Are there bullet points to break up the text? Is there plenty of white space to offer visual relief to the reader? Do you have engaging headlines in your page titles? Did you spell check your words? Is your punctuation and grammar in harmony with your readers? Is your copy BORING? There is much to know about copywriting, and if you want to boost your sales, hiring a professional copywriter is a powerful way to make the presentation of your products and services more persuasive. (Click here for Effective Copywriting Guidelines).

Not Enough Pages of Content to Attract Natural Traffic

Unless you are buying traffic, having only a few pages of content on your website will not attract much natural traffic. If you really want to attract free traffic through search engines, you need lots of content that is optimized for search engines, by using SEO.

Tags: call-to-action, Copywriting, email, offer

Website Performance Marketing | GA | November 23, 2009 7:55 am

6 Comments

By Insistant, December 4, 2009 @ 10:05 am

how many pages is “not enough?”
By GA, December 5, 2009 @ 7:30 pm

“More is better” would be a simple answer. If you’ve only got 6 or 8 pages of original content, you aren’t going to attract much natural search traffic. For a blog, a good rule of thumb (although arbitrary) is to get past 100 blog posts and pages to establish a nominal media footprint on the web. However, the more unique and original content you can generate beyond that, the better.
By EJ, December 24, 2009 @ 10:28 pm

Don’t forget good website design. An outdated design can make your business appear less relevant to visitors who are comparing your website to competitors.
By GA, December 28, 2009 @ 12:15 pm

Hi EJ. Excellent point about “good website design.” Although it is certainly important, I would not include it among the “Most Common Website Problems” because there are some very simple (arguably “ugly”) websites that are quite profitable. For example, long form sales pages are very common and successful ways to market products, but they may appear to some visitors to be ugly. Having said that, if by “good design” you mean good navigational and usability design (as opposed to pure aesthetics), I would concur wholeheartedly!