The True Cost of a Bad Website
What is the true cost of a bad website? Do you know the cost to your business? Are you aware that a bad website cost more than you think you’re saving on your budget?
If you think good design is expensive, you should look at the cost of a bad design. – Ralf Speth
There are websites and there are “websites”. Like dressing for an occasion, having a good website is an obligation for every business. It really doesn’t matter if you are a new entrant or a fortune 500 enterprise – a new entrant can quickly gain professional reputation and mileage through a properly planned and professionally designed website to over take a big player in a spate of short time.
As such, it’s vital for startups and business owners; who are looking to build affordable website and save on budget not to lose sight of the real essence of having an online presence – to achieve set business goals. It’s necessary to protect your brand and business from the embarrassment, a badly done website could cause you. As the old saying goes… Anything worth doing at all is what doing well!
Websites have become basic business tool just as you would a phone or a PC – it’s a must have. Building a website can cost a fortune or a small budget depending on your needs and requirements to suit your taste.
However, the taste of websites like every other aspect of modern life has continue to evolve into classic, premium and even more daring luxurious interactive platform to help businesses effectively deliver unique brand experience and memorable impressions to engage the market and its customers. This changes means it’s no longer enough to just have a website; there are standards and benchmark that is expected, respected and demanded for every business websites.
It’s important to choose carefully where you will like your business to be placed in the realm of reverence and perception before making the final decision to go online. A bad website will do a great damage to your business profile and brand outlook than the little money you would save patronizing cheap and low budget website through inexperienced designers. It will turn your visitors into adversary instead of customers.
Here is how a bad website kills your business.
BAD DESIGN BREEDS BAD IMPRESSIONS – Visual Appeal Matters!
First impression matters in business; your website is like the first point of contact for prospective customers who are searching online and offline for your business, services and products – it is vital to make a good first impression. A website with bad graphics and unattractive aesthetic loses at least 38% of site visitors on arrival and further irritates the perception of your business. Most will simply turn away from your business out rightly from the first seconds.
The irony is, you might boast of a beautiful office with pleasant reception area, professionally dressed and courteous staff and a great competence in your area of business but with a bad website your visitors will not wait long enough to interact and see all the behind the scene setup you have.
BAD CONTENT MEANS POOR CONNECTION – Content is King!
Bad, unplanned or poorly organized content is not good for your website – in online business – content is king! You will establish better credible connection, effective communication and compelling thrust with your site visitors when your content is great.
If you invest just enough time and resources into planning your site content, you will achieve better performance and result on your business goals. Research your competitors – who do similar thing as you to see how the content looks and dedicated enough time into producing a well planned out content that will effectively communicate your brand messages, promote a professional image and represent your business well enough to compel the visitors to do business with you.
POOR INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE AND DESIGN LAYOUT – Plan for Success!
There are different stages of web design but a critical starting point is information and design layout. A website with bad or poorly planned layout will lose the soothing effect and visual appeal a website needs to attract your visitor’s eyes and causes trauma to their visual acuity. This will immediately result in a red alert – repel them – and make the visitor disengage, leave or close your website before they can take notice of your company name or what you do.
However a good information architecture and design layout will attract your visitor’s attention while compelling them to explore and make further discovery or do business with you. In the end, it leaves them with a memorable experience they can never forget – including imprints of your business name and what you do.
The next time someone ask them about services relating to what you do, your business automatically pops up in their mind and they would be glad to refer you.
SLOW PAGE LOAD SPEED – Speed Kills!
As they say in road safety, speed kills; but online, its the opposite. Slow download speed kills your website and fast page download is great for the site, so you need to speed up things. Ensure contents like pictures, videos and plugins are optimized for fast download and display.
You should pay attention to your website loading speed especially in this part of the world where data plan is at a huge cost to the average website visitor, who is always in a hurry to get going in order to save data. As a rule, your website should load within 2 – 15 seconds from when the visitor hits the enter button or clicks on your URL. The further it delays the more impatient the visitors gets and leave for a fast loading site of a competition and may never return to your website or business.
NOT MOBILE RESPONSIVE – Diversity is More Rewarding!
Ever heard the phrase the world is in your palm? Well that’s true for the modern age. The world has gone mobile and the number of visitors accessing websites through the mobile devices or tablets has continued to grow. If your website design is primarily focused on desktop and laptop computers only, you will face the problem of losing many mobile device users who will be unable to view your beautiful website as is well on their devices with smaller screens and touch controls.
It is critical for your website to meets mobile user standards and requirements; it must be responsive and adaptive. This is easy to achieve once your website is programmed to automatically detect user devices and load adaptable features and design layout to fit the device and screen. This will greatly improve user experience and traffic on your website.
NO CALL TO ACTION – Make it Intuitive!
Building a site that does not subtly and mildly compel your visitors to take action or guide them through the next step on visiting your site is counterproductive and unintelligent. Website must be built to be intuitive in a way that it is easier for your visitors to find their way around and knows exactly what action you would like them to perform without offending their sensibility and make the decision to take the next step easy and reflexive.
This method is called call-to-action, it help you converts site visitors into a potential customer by way of generating leads, service demands and contact request. 90% of website visitors prefer to contact businesses indirectly via simple alternative channels, this can be through: completing a form, requesting a quote or call back, whatsapp, subscribing to a newsletter, live chats, trying out a product demo, viewing product sample or signing up for a free trial etc.
Your website should never leave a site visitor with a negative impression; it is unacceptable and unforgivable – they will disengage and go on to one of your competitors instead. A site that leave a bad experience or has a bad functionality will eventually drive visitors away in frustration. It’s certain such visitor may never return to your website or business.
POOR BUDGET AND CHEAP DESIGNERS – Better Soup Na Money Kill Am!
The primary goal of every business website is to helps potential and existing customers form an instant impression about your business; you don’t want the impression to start off on a bad note or wrong perception such as: your business being seen as incompetent enough to maintain a page that loads and functions properly, or that you don’t care enough to provide proper information about your services.
It’s a common place to have a poor outcome at the cheaper end of going with a low and poor budget or unprofessional web designer. Work with professional web design agency or designers. I see this over and over: where businesses start investing in websites with high-level professional web designer or agency that possesses the requisite strategy, skills and expertise to help them achieve the goals of the website for their business. Giving you value for money, the results you want and help your investment pays for itself.
To own a good website may mean working with a professional website designer or a web design agency that will help and guide you through the process of achieving your goals at an affordable cost without compromising on quality, standards and user experience that delivers the real value you desire.
POOR SEARCH VISIBILITY – Seeing is Believing!
Search engines uses preferences based on parameters like: do you have valuable and interesting content that visitors like? Do you have a design that catches users attention long enough to stick around and continue using your site. Is your site useful and engaging to visitors? All these impact your search engine rankings and how easily potential customers will find your business when they search for what you do online.
Common fallout of a bad website includes broken links, heavy images that loads forever, bad forms that collects information and delay or never respond, buttons without action are all part of what falls under a bad user experience and will make people go away and desert your website as quick as they come.
Not getting this right will result in low search engine rankings which is another risk factor for lost business opportunities. In the end, you will lose value, money, customers and business as well as fall into disrepute while missing out on the abundant opportunities, rewards and benefits of having a website and make little or no return on your investment – no matter how big the amount you think you save on your budget.
Conclusion
While the cost of a good and professionally designed website might seem like a huge budget, a website is an asset and investment to your business not an expenditure. You will come to appreciate the inevitability and value when you weigh the lost business opportunity and cost of a bad website to your business in both tangible and intangible (irreparable business image and loss of goodwill) terms. Then you will realize that it is a wise decision to start out with a good and professionally designed website.
Would you like to improve your website user experience and learn how good web design translates into high site performance, increased ROI and success for your business? Contact us at hello@websmithng.com for free consultation.