Sometimes it’s really easy to get gung-ho working on a sweet looking design for your business website.
I was talking recently with a photographer that did our wedding and naturally I asked how their website was going.
She’s mostly happy with their current designer but she referred to him as “more of a programmer than someone with design flair”. Looking at her site I could immediately see what she meant.
When you type their website address and land on their site, something immediately struck me as a barrier to entry. It presents a page with two options Corporate or Weddings.
My first thoughts were, that seems like something people would get confused about and leave so I asked the question “Do you know how many people don’t get past this page?” and the response was “Uhhh I have no idea.”
I was a little bit shocked. I normally set my customers up with analytics as part of their whole package of website design.
“So do you run any sort of analytics on your website? Do you know how many visitors you have?”
“No, we don’t have anything like that, I didn’t even know it was possible.”
Using Analytics To Make Informed Design Changes
Collecting visitor data about your website allows you to make informed decisions about your website design instead of guess work.
In this scenario, before making any further design tweaks, I would run analytics for a couple of weeks to get an idea about which parts of their site people leave from.
I’d bet money on that front page being a big barrier to entry.
Outdated Techniques
While the site doesn’t look outdated, the SEO techniques used are. Lots of keywords are stuffed into the bottom of the landing page – an old tactic that was used to game the search engines.
At the moment the site isn’t doing very well in the search engines and it’s not because of the content.
Analytics can help you determine where most of your traffic comes from. For a site that is nearly 9 years old I would expect that most of the traffic would be organic search results, but again, I would bet money this isn’t the case here.
Paying For Service
I’m not sure really how much my photographer is paying their website designer, but he’s not giving her any way to judge just how much return for their money they are receiving.
As With any service, you should be asking yourself two questions:
What am I getting for my money?
How do I know it’s giving me a good return for my money?
I offer private website appraisals email me your frustrations and we can look at what’s good and bad with your current website.
