Episode summary
Is your website a walking red flag?
Some clear and obvious issues may be lurking on your website that require immediate attention.
In this episode of Websites Decoded, Phil outlines the clear signs that your site needs improvement and provides actionable tips to fix them.
From a lack of pipeline generation to cluttered design and confusing navigation, Phil covers the website mistakes that fail to attract, engage, and convert visitors.
Tune in to decode the common issues we see with B2B websites.
Episode transcript
1. Lack of opportunities generated from your website
I think the number one sign that your website needs improvement and the main red flag that we look for is pipeline creation.
If your website isn't a reliable source of what your business considers to be revenue opportunity, buyers finding you digitally coming to your website and using it to raise their hand, declare their intent, and demonstrate their desire to purchase something thing, then you've got a problem.
And it's not unusual for businesses that haven't prioritised their website and digital marketing in a revenue-measured sense to have zero pipeline generation that they attribute to their website, not as the total source of it.
Salespeople conversations, word of mouth, and referrals, all still play their role. But when businesses have websites that buyers use to approach and contact them, they typically grow significantly faster. This is because the website is working for them night and day, week and weekend, all the time. It's their best and most important salesperson.
And so for me, it's always priority number one to get a website to the point where it's generating those opportunities.
And for me if it's not doing that today, then that's a clear sign, a clear red flag that you've got to look at your website and why it's not producing those opportunities for you.
2. Poor performance and user experience
Other red flags could be considered things like website performance, page load speed, user experience, cumulative shift and so on. Things that are measures of the quality of the experience.
And of course those things are important and may be a sign that your website needs work. Although it's fair to say that if your website is generating pipeline, then page load speed on its own might not be justification for investment in that moment, but it could very well be a factor that's producing the lack of pipeline that the website generates.
So, I think within your website's whole sort of gamut of needs that it needs to satisfy, you got to look at the user experience.
- Is it good enough to generate pipeline?
- The performance, is it good enough to generate pipeline?
- Design and messaging, is it good enough to generate pipeline?
And all those things together may add up to a situation where yes, it's clear and present that you need to invest in this website to move one or two or all of those things in a direction that will get you where you need to be in terms of opportunity creation.
3. Poor design and branding
On the subject of design, I think there are situations where design, which is a subjective topic, nevertheless can be considered objectively good or bad.
There are designs that are fit for purpose when it comes to B2B demand generation on the web. And sometimes you can look at a website and you can objectively say it is not good enough to produce reliable pipeline.
Brand and positioning can change. And so there are situations where a website that's live simply no longer reflects the brand or the positioning that the company wants to hold.
And in that case that's also a red flag that will probably stimulate some attention and investment in the website. And yet it comes back again to maybe not total pipeline generation, but what pipeline?
If your website says the wrong thing, describes products or services or solutions that are not the ones you want to lead with or offer, then even if it does generate high-intent conversions and buyers raising their hand, they may not be the right buyers.
They may not be the ideal customers that can become successful and long term with you. So it may create the impetus and the need to invest in the website to move that brand and move that positioning in line with the company strategy.
4. Poor content layout
Any website's got to be found by buyers, and discoverability is a product of a number of things that are sort of interlaced with the rest of the website. With the design, the brand, with the messaging and the UX, with the performance and so on.
But we do sometimes look at websites and see just how suboptimal the presentation and the construction of the content strategy is.
So if you're publishing articles to your website as a blog, they're there to serve a purpose, and that's to help you get found.
And there are certain things that you can do within the context of that blog that will improve how easily you're found and how engaging the content is when buyers arrive.
And so while the home page and the front end of a website might look great, I do often look at layouts of blog posts, landing pages, pillar pages and so on, to see if there's opportunity to improve them. In a way that will drive the overall result.
More visitors, more engagement with buyers, and more high-intent conversions at the bottom of the funnel.
5. A drop in traffic or keyword rankings
Even if the website itself looks the part, you've got to keep an eye on all the metrics that are important, and impressions and traffic and visits and things like that do matter, and they will vary over time.
Significant drops may indicate a deviation between what your website offers and what search engines want to show it to buyers, and that may warrant investment, but those types of shifts are few and far between.
Generally speaking, if you're seeing a drop in traffic or a loss of positional keywords, it's a product of content and the competition for that content that you can usually attribute it to, and not a clear and present need to invest heavily in your website for the most part.
But it is really important to stay on top of changes to algorithms, changes to buyer behaviour and expectations, and how your content is performing in the search market for informational and commercial keywords.