After last week’s merciless cliffhanger here’s part two in our list of 30 reasons why your website is failing your business.

We meet a lot of people who are wondering whether or not they should invest their hard earned cash in a website redesign. They’ve already spent (sometimes a significant amount of) money and yet, for some reason, their web site doesn’t seem to be delivering results for their business. When we look at their site the reasons are usually pretty obvious but sometimes they’re more obscure.

Occasionally we have to tell people that their site is in fact doing more harm than good and that’s never a happy moment.

Here’s a list that, although by no means exhaustive, covers lots of the more common problems. Some of these things are more significant than others but they all have an impact. Let me know what you think….

Part two…

11. There’s no useful information on your site

It’s an old chestnut but content really is king. Remove your ego and pop it back in it’s box because your website is not for you; it’s for your visitors. Now provide the information that customers or potential customers actually want, put it in order of importance and then finally design and build your website around it.

12. Poor colour combinations

There are issues here beyond the fact that your site might be ugly and hurt your visitors eyes (although you should probably try and avoid that). If you get the balance of colours wrong you will make your site less visible to people with visual or cognitive problems. Your website should be as accessible as possible to as many people as possible.

13. Disabled back button

If you’re web developer has disabled the browser back button you need to give them a slap. It does not serve to keep people on your site in the hope that they might buy; it just irritates them. And they’ll leave anyway.

14. Too much text

But don’t overdo it. People looking at text on screen will typically only read about 25% what they would on paper. Don’t waste your time or theirs.

15. No or (worse) poor quality images

The web is a visual medium so make the most of it. If the picture on your TV is poor you change channels and visitors to your website will do the same.

16. It’s old

If you haven’t done any work to design or (god forbid), content for the last year your site is out of date. Even if the coding is up to date. Ignore your website at your peril it’s costing you business right now. Update at least some content monthly (minimum), weekly (better) or even daily (ideal). You don’t have to do much but the search engines love a constantly updated website and as an added bonus your visitors will appreciate it too. Regularly making small changes to the design of your site will keep it fresh and save you money. There’s no need to wait for your website to get old and outmoded so why should you. Little and often is key so budget time and money for it and you’ll never have to do a costly redesign.

17. Did you make it yourself?

We can tell, your customers can tell and the people who would have been your customers could tell. You wouldn’t print your glossy catalogue that you send out to 100,000 people yourself using a photocopier, you wouldn’t paint your logo and phone number on the back of your van with a tin of Dulux… well here’s the newsflash: your website is the catalogue that you can put in front of every single person on the planet with a computer. Of all the things that you could try and do yourself building the website for your business has the biggest consequences. I’m sorry if this sounds harsh but don’t devalue your business by cutting corners. Designing and building high quality web sites that can grow and evolve with your business is harder than it looks. But don’t worry – we can help.

18. Poor navigation

Visitors need to be able to find their way around your website and they do so using the navigation – the bits that say ‘Home’, ‘About’, ‘Blog’. Consistent, easy to use navigation is essential for a good user experience and the navigation should be completely unobtrusive. Here’s an apology on behalf of an entire industry – web designers and developers like to show off their skills and this quite often results in navigation that’s too clever for it’s own good. If you’ve got funky but inconsistent, unfathomable navigation your visitors won’t see it as an enticing puzzle. They’ll see it as an irritation and move on. And you’ll never know.

19. Orphaned pages

Related to #18. This is what happens when someone clicks on a link on your site and then finds they can’t get back and the navigation’s disappeared. Again users will get frustrated and just leave. But they’re not the only ones. We’ve done some work recently for a client whose old website had 42 pages jam packed with useful information. Unfortunately because some (quite a lot), of these pages were orphans Google thought the site only had 8 pages. That’s 34 pages that never ever came up in searches no matter how perfect they would have been for the visitor. 34 opportunities to catch potential customers gone. Forever. You get the picture.

20. Click to enter

Don’t do this. Just don’t. The only exception to this rule is if you’re an artist or a photographer with ‘virtual’ gallery of some sort.

21. Not accessible…

…oh no it’s as frustrating as the cliffhanger at the end of 40 year old episodes of Flash Gordon at the Saturday Morning Cinema Club.

Part three will be right along next week. It’s the last one and if you don’t want to miss it you can subscribe to the blog. If it’s easier just let us know and we’ll send it to you in an email.

We meet a lot of people who are wondering whether or not they should invest their hard earned cash in a website redesign. They’ve already spent (sometimes a significant amount of) money and yet, for some reason, their web site doesn’t seem to be delivering results for their business. When we look at their site the reasons are usually pretty obvious but sometimes they’re more obscure.

Occasionally we have to tell people that their site is in fact doing more harm than good and that’s never a happy moment.

Here’s a list that, although by no means exhaustive, covers lots of the more common problems. Some of these things are more significant than others but they all have an impact. Let me know what you think….

1. Lack of focus

What exactly is your website for? If you don’t know how will your customers? Think about what you want your website to do – is it simply a showcase for your products or services, does it need to encourage people to call you or sign up for an email newsletter, are you selling online? ‘I just think we need a website’ is not a clear business objective. ‘We need a web presence so that users can find and contact us’, is. A good web marketing company can help you define these objectives but you know your business better than anyone. You wouldn’t advertise on the side of a bus unless you had a good reason for doing so.

2. It’s on it’s own with no support

I’m really sorry to have to tell you this but a website is just part of the marketing mix. If you invest in a website and expect it to suddenly deliver customers and revenue you’re likely to be disappointed. The more tightly you can integrate all of your marketing efforts (on and offline) the better.

3. Splash pages

If a web developer is offering you a ‘free custom splash page’, move along and move along now. They are offering to put a free and for gratis barrier between your customers and the information they’re looking for site. It’s beyond stupid. Tell them you want something of value instead. We occasionally have special offers – sometimes we’ll even include something for free. But it won’t be a splash page.

4. Hidden contact details

If visitors to your site cannot immediately see a way to contact you they’ll lose all confidence in you. You must make it easy for people to get in touch in a way that suits them.

5. Automatic audio/video

If I arrive at your website and it plays a video or music at me as soon as I arrive I will leave. And I might be a potential customer. I might even be interested in your video. You’ll never know. Let your visitors be in control of their browsing experience; it’s not your place to tell them what to do. You can steer them in the direction you want but it’s never a good idea to force a user to do something.

6. Slow loading sites

If it takes forever for your site to load you’ll lose customers and Google will penalise you. If your site takes more than about 8 seconds to load you might want to review how it’s been coded and how and where it’s hosted.

7. Poor page layout

There’s no excuse for this and any decent web designer should be able to get this right. Do the granny test – give your granny a list of 5 or 6 simple tasks that you’d like her to accomplish on your site; find the phone number, add something to a basket, find a core product. If she fails have a rethink… or ask us for some advice.

8. First impression of your business

‘Never judge a book by its cover’. Never has a saying been more wrong. Studies suggest that users make up their mind about a website in less than the blink of an eye. Your website is like a shopfront or the reception at your office. The difference is that it’s not just visible to people on the high street or that visit your office: it’s visible to everyone on the planet with a computer. A website is the cheapest marketing investment you can make in terms of the number of people that you can reach but it’s also the most visible so you’d better do it properly.

9. Animations, scrolling marquees, animated gifs

If your designer has included any of these things please put them back in their time machine and send them back to 1995. There was a time when these things were novel and eyecatching but the web has grown up and so have it’s users. If you ask us to include any of these on a site expect us to be um… honest.

10. Not tested in any browser other than your own

Websites render differently in different browsers. It’s amazing how often we see a site that looks beautiful in Firefox but awful in Internet Explorer. This is often the hardest bit for DIY web designers and developers to get right. You should test and code so that a site works well in all modern web browsers. Older browser often have less functionality but your site should also cope well with these and degrade gracefully.

11. There’s no useful information on your site…

…and that’s what we call a cliffhanger.

Part two will be right along next week. If you don’t want to miss it you can subscribe to the blog or if it’s easier just let us know and we’ll send it to you in an email.

Web analytics tools can deliver a vast amount of information to you about your website and your business. Arguably one of the most useful metrics is the bounce rate. Bounce rate tells you about visitors who have literally ‘bounced’ away without visiting any other parts of your site.

A great way to measure the quality of traffic to your website, the bounce rate is easy to understand and communicate to the other parts of your business and can help identify the areas in which your site is failing your visitors.

In the following video Google’s Avinash Kaushik explains why he thinks the bounce rate metric is so useful:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=ppgfjo6IIf4

If your marketing efforts are effective the amount of quality traffic to your website will increase, therefore fewer users will bounce away and the percentage will go down.

So the 20 million dollar question -- what constitutes a good bounce rate? Well, the lower the better. Remember you will never be able to reduce your bounce rate to zero but a good figure for a business website is around 30%. If you can achieve this, or even reduce it, you’ll find that your all important conversion rates will go up.

A note to bloggers: don’t panic! Blogs are different. Visitors are often attracted to your site by a single relevant post, they’ll enter your site at the post and may well navigate away again after they’ve read it or by clicking on a useful link that you’ve provided. This doesn’t mean you haven’t attracted quality traffic; it’s just the nature of blogging. There’s still a rule of thumb metric for you though. If you can achieve a bounce rate of 50% or less you’re doing well.

Forthcoming related posts will include more ideas for getting the most from your analytics tools. If you want to keep up why don’t you subscribe to our feed?

Related posts:

• Beginning analytics

Why is the iPhone so great while all others lag behind?

Is that a controversial question? Yes, probably, but you see I’ve used a lot of smart phones. I’ve also worked in the digital media business for a long time. You could say that I’ve been around the block. You can take it from me (and the million or so other users in the UK), that the iPhone is great.

This is not about the device itself though. What’s great about the iPhone is that it just works. It’s intuitive and slick to use. It allows you to do some massively complex things and yet it’s easier to use than any other mobile phone there is. To give you an idea; I’m writing this blog post with my iPhone. Today I’ve also tweeted with it, done my online banking, used it as a satnav device, read both the Guardian and the Telegraph and I’ve watched the BBC Breakfast News. Oh, I’ve made some phone calls on it too. All of these tasks are possible because the iPhone makes them easy.

This is called usability. This simple word means that if you design with the user in mind, remove all possible technical barriers from their experience and create something that works effortlessly it will succeed.  The iPhone’s user interface – the way that you interact with the device (through screens or buttons), has been built strictly with the user in mind. The aesthetic design is secondary.

Usability is a core principal in web design and yet it so often gets forgotten as designers (and their clients), get hung up on what the site looks like. Don’t get me wrong – everyone wants a beautiful and elegant site for their business and rightly so but it comes last in the process. The key here is to think about what you want people to do when they arrive at your website. Do you want them to watch a video? Great put the video on the home page; up front, central, easy to see and use. Do you want them to call you? Give them your phone number; don’t make them dig for it. Do you want them to register for your newsletter? Marvelous. Give them a free newsletter without registration and in the same place let them register with a really simply form. Want them to buy something from you? …can you see where I’m going with this?

If your website isn’t really easy to use people won’t keep trying they’ll just go elsewhere. You lose.

If an action on your website requires thought, effort or imagination; throw it away and start again. Be like Steve Jobs; I’m sure the Apple engineers got sick of hearing ‘throw it away and start again’, but that’s what Mr Jobs kept saying and with this approach they got the iPhone. Out of the iPhone has come the iPad and Apple sold 300,000 of those on day one.

Ursus Media produce usable, accessible and beautiful websites and they’re all handcrafted here in sunny Swindon. Feel free to get in touch and if you’re in need of a new website take a look at our latest offer.

It’s rare that I do an unashamed plug like this in the blog. This is generally where you can come for good quality information about all things webby for your business and all you normally get dotted around my posts are subtle hints that you should be using us for your digital media projects.

Every so often though I’m going to reserve the right to tell you all about something that I think is too good to miss. This offer is for those of you who are just starting out in business or who just need a very simple website. Remember anything that we create for you will be designed and coded to the highest standard and built so that it can grow with your business.

The offer’s really simple: £495 for a 5 page website that gives you everything listed below:

• Unique professional design
• Four pages with your own content (text and images)
• One contact us page with a built in form
• A custom error page just in case
• One .co.uk domain name
• Two email addresses of your choice
• Hosting for your new site for a year
• Coding to the highest, best practice standards
• Guaranteed W3C standards compliant
• Thoroughly tested to work in all standard browsers
• Optimised for the search engines – Google here you come
• A simple CMS so that you can update your own site
• Basic site statistics
• Built to be scaleable to grow with your business in the future
• We’ll project manage things for you throughout
• If you’re in a hurry just let us know – we can be very fast
• You can talk to the project team at any time
• Peace of mind of knowing exactly what it costs: just £495!

The catch? Well there is no catch. You do have to order your swanky new site before 1 May 2010 and some terms apply but that’s it. Read more about the offer.

Related items:

• 10 Reasons your business needs a website
• 7 Questions to ask your web developer

Even in this, the internet age, is it a given that every business needs a website?
The simple answer is yes. Sorry; were you expecting something else?

I suppose that you want me to quantify my answer with good clear reasons. After all someone from a company that designs and develops websites is bound to say that.

1. The internet is a global shop window
   Unless you’re very lucky you’re facing competition from all directions. A good website can extend your reach to anyone with a computer, anywhere in the world, immediately. They can see who you are, what you do and how you do it instantly. They can then make contact and interact with you all the while marvelling at how you’re absolutely the right people for the job.
2. Communicate with your customers and clients
   I guarantee that most of your customers are already online. Perhaps they do business online, their banking perhaps; how many people do you know that have book a holiday online or ordered Christmas presents from Amazon? The web is an easy way to communicate effortlessly with your customers. Encourage them to get in touch with you. Get them to talk to you.
3. Open yourself up to new opportunities
   You can open up your business to opportunities that you didn’t know existed until you got online and your shiny new customers from around the world got in touch. £3.8bn is spent online in Britain alone every month and some of that could be yours.
4. Learn from the people on your site
   At the risk of making myself sound incredibly dull, I love the data that websites can provide. You can get an understanding of what people want and need, not just from what they say but from what they do. The data that you can gather from users of your website is empirical. You can adapt your website quickly and cost effectively based on real evidence as opposed to ‘gut feelings’. I know of a very famous online DVD rental company that increased sales by 10% overnight by changing two simple things on its website. The decision to do that was based on good hard data.
5. Catch up with your competition
   Not a good enough reason on its own but I bet the competition are online. If they use their website effectively they’ll be picking up business from your potential clients. Don’t let them get away with it. Remember too that the web levels the playing field – you get the same access to the same clients as anyone else online.
6. Work around the clock every day of the year
   Your website will work hard for you (at least it will if we build it), long after every other member of staff has gone home. If you sell online you can look forward to coming into work in the mornings and flicking though a pile of orders from around the world as you enjoy a nice hot cup of coffee.
7. Save lots of money
   I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. The web is the most cost effective way of marketing and selling that there is. Do it properly and your website will make far more for you than it will cost. Don’t cut corners though or it’ll just be a white elephant with the name of your business painted on the side. The internet is complex and clever so hire a professional whose job it is to deliver value for money.
8. Free advertising
   Your website is the perfect place to advertise. If you have a good flow of traffic you can tell people about new products and services, sales and special offers. You can even let them send information to their friends directly from your website. Remember your reach is global and constant so make the most of it.
9. Portray the perfect image for your business all the time
   Keep your website up to date (little and often is the key here) and you can update your image and develop your brand continuously. The web is by far the most cost effective way to show people who you are and what you stand for.
10. If you think you’re so great – prove it
    Show people how great you are. Show them why your cheese is better than Sainsbury’s, why you can deliver better service than the other dry cleaners up the road, why your widget costs twice as much as your competitors. Sometimes you need to show what goes on behind the scenes in order to make people appreciate just what a great company you are. Make people comfortable with who you are and tell them exactly why they should buy your product or service and they probably will.

So there you are: 10 good reasons why you need a website. And 10 equally good reasons to give us a call and get our help to grow your business online.

Related items:

• 7 Questions to ask your web developer
• Special offer

Analysis of the traffic on your website goes way beyond the simple counting of ‘hits’. Analytics gives you a real understanding of how people are using your website, what they’re doing once they arrive and where they came from. You can see conversion rates, work out what works and what doesn’t for your site and even work out the value of each visit.

A good analytics package will help you to give your customers what they want, improve your website, get more for your marketing spend and increase revenue because of the business insights it can deliver.

There are lots of great analytics packages available to you and by happy coincidence one of the best, Google Analytics, is free. Don’t be mislead by the word free, there are some very big businesses using Google Analytics every day. I have experience of using it on a site with an average of 750,000 visitors per month and I use it here on the Ursus Media website because it’s such a powerful tool. You should bear in mind that although a Google Analytics account is free your developers will charge you for the time required to set up the account and implement the code on your website.

The following video from Google gives a quick overview of interpreting and using the data from Google Analytics. Most packages deliver similar metrics so although this is Google specific it’s easy to relate to other tools.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hdsb_uH2yPU

Google Analytics is a superb tool and it never fails to surprise me that it’s free (although there are some exceptions -- see Google’s T&Cs). There are of course other tools available to you but but they all give you similar information and the insights for your business should not be underestimated. This is only the beginning.

Useful resources

• Ursus Media courses
• Wikipedia on web analytics
• Technorati on web analytics
• Google Analytics