We’ve seen this happen too often: A client spends money on building a website, advertises their website to customers, and waits… with no results.

If customers have not visited your site for months (or years), you may think that a website is not critical to your marketing mission. But that’s far from the truth. 

Creating a killer website starts from the very beginning of your web development strategy and requires continuous maintenance. If you don’t do this, your website will ultimately be a failed weapon. 

So how do we design a strong website that lures your customers in and keeps their attention? This blog explores the common reasons for website failures and how you can avoid them. 

What is a website failure? 

How do you know when your website has failed? To put it simply, a website that doesn’t perform as it was intended is considered a failed site. Here’s the difference between a good and bad website.

If your website performance is more to the right side of the table, you might be dealing with a poor website. Fortunately, our assassins know a way to rectify this. 

Here are some reasons your website is failing and how you can turn it around. 

Website Failure Causes (And Our Tips) 
Reason 1: Lack of Clear Purpose

Like every mission, your website needs a clear goal: What problem do you aim to solve? What aspiration do you want to satisfy? This is what your visitor wants to see. 

A common mistake we see is when businesses create websites with conflicting purposes. Many want to do too many things at once with their websites (i.e. generate bookings, tell a long brand story, showcase their partner products, showcase their social media posts, promote their surrounding events and businesses, etc.). 

Overcrowding your website only confuses your customers. The true assassin’s way is understanding that it's better to be a master of one than a jack of all trades when facing your customers.

Reason 2: Poor User Experience

User experience (UX) is defined as your customers' sentiments when navigating your website. Do they find it useful and informative? Is your website fast to load? Can they find exactly what they are looking for?  

Here’s how you know if your website’s user experience is failing your business: 

• Your website is difficult to navigate

• Your website has a poor and uninteresting design

• You have little to no imagery (videos and pictures)

• Your visitors cannot self-serve (i.e. customers cannot make an appointment or booking)

• You use an outdated, unintuitive platform to build your website (i.e. WordPress)

• You’re unable to integrate your website into any other systems (i.e. email provider, customer information system)

• Your website has a confusing or unremarkable call-to-action button

• Your website loads slowly and has broken links

Why is user experience so important? 42% of users will leave a website if they encounter functionality issues - so ensuring your website performs well is time-critical. Here’s an example of a poor website experience, with lacklustre imagery and an overcrowded information page.  

Meanwhile, here’s an example of our client with a good website design and user experience. 1800BUGGIES has clearly segmented and targeted visitors who will be viewing its website, and has a clear call-to-action through an unmissable ‘Contact Us’ button.  

Reason 3:  Inadequate Content Strategy

There’s nothing worse than going into a neglected website with an old blog post from 3 years ago. With over 1.09 billion websites available in the world today, your only chance of standing out and capturing your target is through your content. 

One mistake we see with content is the lack of it. Many businesses also fall into the trap of not updating their content, offering no value-added information to the customer, and talking too much about themselves (we-speak). 

Most importantly, your content and SEO should complement each other, which we will discuss more in the next section.

Reason 4: Neglecting SEO 

We’ve spoken at great length about how SEO content should be built from the outset of all website pages. If your website lacks the target keyword in its content, has poor or no metadata, contains large-sized images, and has minimal backlinks - then it has failed in Search Engine Optimisation. 

If you can optimise your website's SEO, you'll likely increase your website traffic and attract more customers. SEO-optimised content will also increase visitor engagement and ensure they stay on your website for longer.

Reason 5: Overlooking Accessibility

Do you know that over 64% of the world’s website traffic is mobile? More and more users are visiting sites through their mobile devices, so how does your website look on your phone? 

Website accessibility refers to how well your site can be navigated on multiple devices, and many businesses fail in this area. An out-of-place image, an unclickable button, or too many distracting ads and pop-ups can be deadly accessibility mistakes - leading to customers leaving your site and possibly never returning.

 
Reason 6: Lack of Regular Maintenance and Updates

Updating and maintaining your website is crucial, and often overlooked by businesses. Website maintenance is especially critical if your goal is to stay on the top page of Google, as its algorithm rules are constantly changing. 

Old technologies like WordPress require constant maintenance and manual updates. Because it is an open-sourced platform, developers can choose not to update their themes and widgets (i.e. the tools you use to optimise your website security and SEO). This can kill your website's performance and leave it severely vulnerable to hackers.

Key takeaway 

Avoiding website failures may seem like a tedious mission, but with the right knowledge and a website platform that works, you can turn your website fails into success. If you’re stuck on building a good website design and it's not achieving your goals, call a digital assassin for assistance. 

Digital Assassin’s affordable web development plans help Australian businesses build their SEO from the start and manage their website with ongoing tactical content and SEO best practices. To learn more about how to build a great website, read our eBook, So You Need a Killer Website. Alternatively, speak to an assassin today.