Don’t scare away your website visitors!

Your website is the window to your business so don’t scare off potential website visitors with ghastly design, spookingly bad site speeds and a haunting user experience!

This Halloween it's time to forget about the tricks and focus on those treats, blow away the cobwebs and encourage your website visitors to come back for more! 

 

Spookingly slow site speeds

For potential and existing customers visiting your website, nothing is more spine-chilling than a slow loading site. In the age of having everything at our fingertips consumers want information now and if your site is slowing them down they are likely to abandon it and have a poor perception of your brand. Page speed can be a deal breaker for the success (or failure) of your website, dramatically affecting everything from search traffic to sign-ups and sales.  

Research has shown that visitors have high expectations when it comes to page loading speeds with 47% of consumers expecting a web page to load in two seconds or less and 49% abandoning a site that takes more than three seconds to load. In addition 79% of online shoppers reported that they wouldn’t return to a site to buy again if they had experienced errors in site performance! Therefore, it’s imperative that you evaluate your website’s performance which can be done utilising Google’s Page speed Insights to analyse your site’s performance and understand the areas of improvement required to achieve increased performance. 

A Horrifying User Experience

The first experience that users have on your site will affect how and if they engage with you. If your website contains gruesome design, deadly slow performance and nightmare navigation it will all add up to a horrifying user experience and visitors won’t stay long!  

To craft some magic into your website and create a spookingly great user experience make your navigation and drop-down menu intuitive so that users can automatically find what they are looking for. In addition incorporate great design principles, make your site aesthetically pleasing with crafting and cultivating a positive user experience, make your navigation and drop-down menu intuitive so users can find what they’re looking for. Then follow up with  aesthetically-pleasing design and an easy to navigate interface, that way your users are more likely to engage and come back for more!  

A Nightmare Layout

Mobile internet usage is at its greatest and continuing to gain significant traction. This means that if your website is not optimised for different types of screens including smartphones, tablets, pc’s you are going to lose out on engagement from your target audience. In addition having a responsive site is essential for your SEO strategy as google works on a mobile first indexing policy which means the search engine predominantly uses the mobile version of website content for indexing and ranking. Therefore, investing in a mobile first approach to your web design is essential when it comes to optimising for search engines and driving traffic to your site. Furthermore, responsive design affects your brand image and with a huge 89% of people likely to recommend a brand after a positive experience on mobile and 46% of people saying that they would not buy from a brand if they hadn’t received a good mobile experience. Therefore, the essential message here is that your website needs to be optimised for mobile and responsive across devices and different browsers.             

 Gruesome Typography

Don’t think that fonts won’t matter on your website, they will! It’s essential that you don’t use gruesome typography as this can really affect the experience for your users from a design and reading experience. Give some great thought to text combinations, font size, colours and layout. Make sure they flow with your brand, make it easy to read for your visitors and give a fantastic user experience. Therefore, by doing this you’ll create a positive experience and your users will want to come back for more.    

 Haunting Calls to Action

When potential customers land on your website, it should be free of mystery ghosts and ghouls, in essence visitors should know what to expect! They should know instantly how to navigate your website, where the call-to-action buttons are, product information, what your services are, how they can follow you on social media and of course how they can contact you. Having clear call-to-action button helps users know how to engage with you, increase your chances of success and significantly boost your analytics. Therefore, it's essential that you guide potential customers to a specific action with a clear, prominent, and well-distinguished icon or button and include it on all your pages and content.

Blow away the cobwebs to safety

Online safety and privacy is essential for your website, it needs to be a safe space and free from malicious malaware.  It’s essential that you fit your website with a Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) certificate. An SSL certificate is a digital certificate that authenticates a website's identity and enables an encrypted connection, in essence a security protocol that creates an encrypted link between a web server and a web browser. Then strengthen the security by using a quality web hosting company and utilise secure plugins, configuring file permissions and backing up your site regularly to keep site terrors at bay!      

Evil Errors – Fix those creep crawlies

Make sure that you fix those web design mistakes that will allow you to prime you for top-of-the-line placement in search engines, improve user experience, boost conversions, enhance site usability, lower your site’s bounce rate, and establish your online presence!

If you’d like us to work our tricks and treat yourself to a spookingly great website – get in touch!