It's hard to know for sure if your website is the best it can or if your website sucks. It looks good to you but what is your visitor's experience?
There are more than 1.5 Billion websites on the internet competing for a person's attention so if you better have the best homepage possible if you want people to spend some time checking out your business online.
Check out these telltale signs that your website homepage sucks!
If your website homepage is slow loading or responding there's no doubt your page sucks. It sucks money from your company profits!
Even a delay of a few seconds can cause visitors to leave and never come back. There may be a number of reasons that can lead to this issue. A 1 second delay can lead to up to 11% fewer page views and a 7% loss to sales.
You need to figure out what they are for your homepage and correct them before more internet surfers ride the wave away from your site.
Your loading speed delays may be an issue with your web host or the fact that you are using too many plug-ins or images that are too large.
You want to grab people's attention and keep it. Your homepage needs to give them the most up-to-date information with something visual to catch their eye.
Nobody is coming to your homepage to read a book about your life, unless your business is selling your autobiography or you're a celebrity. Then they only want the juiciest of details anyway.
You need to give them the facts and sell your services or products in the most entertaining way possible. You want to give them a reason to visit often and to talk about your site with others. The goal is to have visitors share your website with their followers and friends.
Just one tweet from a Kardashian or a shout out about your restaurant from Guy Feiri could make you famous.
You want to make sure people like what they find whether they sought your webpage out or stumbled across it, you need to wow them without overwhelming them.
If you don't have a lot of visual content or photos to catch your visitors attention then you'll want to start thinking about adding some. You'll also hopefully update them on a regular basis.
If visitors come back to your site and see all the same visual content, they may not read a single word on the page. You can't just change the written content. Posts with visual content get more audience engagement, are shared more often and are considered more effective by the majority of marketing experts in every industry.
One of the most important things you can do to gain more visitors and to rank higher in search engine results is to consistently and regularly post original content relevant to your niche.
A blog is a great way to do this but just because you have a blog doesn't mean you can leave you same old homepage up forever.
Don't use stock images and rehashed content. Change any stock photos out for original ones. You can often hire a local photographer or buy photographs from their personal stock for cheap without the fear of them being used elsewhere on the internet.
If you are asking yourself whether your website homepage sucks then it's probably time for a makeover.
Check out our section on website design for ideas to get the creative juices flowing.
