As everything is becoming more and more digitalised, your website is the face of your business. But what makes a website truly effective and what’s the significance of having a user-friendly website?
Have you ever been browsing online, wanting to purchase something and becoming more and more frustrated at the over complicated process on how to purchase… or even just to find the pesky ‘buy now’ button?! Trying to purchase online can feel more like jumping through 10 hoops whilst trying to breathe fire than a nice moment of peace by your favourite tree in the woods (everyone has one, right?). The impact this is having on a business is more significant than you would think. Let’s think about this for a minute. If you do manage to find the buy button, enter all the correct information they want – which is always too much – AND checkout to find a nice ‘thank you’ email waiting for you in your inbox, if that process to you as the customer was stressful, frustrating and long winded, are you honestly going to go back there again when you are wanting another item? No, you’re not. You are going to go onto good old Google and search for other companies that do the same thing. Therefore, the first business you bought at no longer has returning customers. This is even if you battle on through the process, most people won’t. If it is not simple, straightforward and easy,that ‘x’ button becomes a long lasting friend.
So why does this apply to you? Well, even though you might not necessarily sell products, you are still selling a service so this scenario is exactly what customers will go through, they only positive you have is that their next appointment you can book them in when they are with you on their first appointment. HOWEVER, we have to get them through the doors first.
If your website is old, cranky and a complete maze, how are your first time customers ever going to be able to book in with you? Maybe you are one of the lucky ones whose website is all razzle… but does it dazzle on mobile too? Nowadays, 49.58% of people will use their phone to browse the internet rather than a desktop or mobile, compared to 10 years ago and it was only 14.07% using their mobile; that’s a 35.5% increase in just 10 years. So even though you look at your website on your laptop/ desktop and it is amazing, spectacular and easy to navigate, a lot of business owners don’t then transfer that to mobile too.
And if your site on a mobile is not up to par? You guessed it, our old friend ‘x’ comes back to visit. But it’s not too late, we are going to explore some ways you can make sure your website on mobile is up to par…
So, how exactly do you make sure your website is all razzle and dazzle on desktop AND mobile?
- Use a website software that is mobile responsive and can adapt your pages to both desktop and mobile. This may be having the functionality of being able to hide certain text or images or making sure that any images on your pages adapt to the screen size they are being used on.
- Compress those images! Ok, so this one is technically an overarching good practice, but it is especially important on mobile as customer’s who look up a business on their phone might not be at phone with their super duper wifi and will out and about, having images that a HUGE will make your website so slow at loading and many will just click out of it due to impatience of waiting for it to load.
- Make sure you pay attention to page shift! What’s page shift? In short, it’s a new Google Core Metrics measurement. Basically, it means “does the content move down the page after things load?” and it makes a HUGE difference in the mobile site experience of your visitors. Have you ever clicked on one of those spam articles about some celebrity nonsense on Facebook? And then when the page loads, you’re just trying to nosy, but it keeps moving things down the page as it loads? THAT is page shift. And it’s super annoying. So we want to make sure that’s not an issue on your website!
Not only is your website the face of your website and therefore, needs to do its job correctly, a website can also help build credibility and trust. Are you more likely to go to the hairdresser with no reviews, no website and no presence online where you have to call at certain times on certain days to be able to find what services they have and to also book in (better set that alarm!), or are you going to go to the hairdresser two doors down who has a website with images of hair transformations, glowing reviews, an online booking system AND with links to social media where their customers are tagging and commenting on their posts about the amazing experience they got? I know which one I’m booking at…
