Of course, a reliable website sounds great, but how does it really benefit your business? And how do you know if your website is reliable?
In this article, we’ll discuss the top reasons why a reliable website will help you maximize your sales so your business can thrive online!
Makes a Great First Impression
For many businesses, a website is the first impression that they have with their potential customers. If it’s not the first impression, then it’s likely the second!
For example, imagine that a potential customer finds you in a Google search and visits your website for the first time… then your website takes 10 seconds to load.
Guess what? That customer is GONE! (Click here to read why).
Any issues that someone encounters when they visit your website for the first time will make them less likely to do business with you.
For these reasons, having a reliable website makes a good first impression and increases trust with potential customers.
Provides a Positive Customer Experience
Having a positive customer experience is essential for businesses, especially if you offer a service.
It encourages repeat purchases and customer retention, which can have a huge effect on long-term profitability.
A reliable website helps provide a positive customer experience when customers do not encounter issues with your website, such as downtime, design issues, and more.
This is important for all businesses, but especially if customers repeatedly visit your website to interact with your business (such as viewing information, making payments, etc.).
If your website is not reliable, it causes a level of pain for your customer and they will not look forward to interacting with your website (hence, they will not look forward to doing business with you).
Prevents Sale Abandonment (if you sell online)
If you sell anything online, having a reliable website is absolutely crucial for your success!
One huge factor for e-commerce is conversion rates. This is how many visitors actually make a purchase and turn into a customer.
An unreliable website will drastically reduce your conversion rates!
For example, if your website goes down while someone is trying to complete the checkout process, they won’t be able to make their purchase and they may go buy the product elsewhere.
Another example is a slow website.
If your website takes a long time to load in between pages, there is a good chance that they will leave your site without purchasing anything.
There are several pages that the user will need to navigate through when going to purchase your product online.
See the graphic below for an example of a typical e-commerce conversion process:
In this simple example, the user will need to wait for 5 pages to load.
If each page takes 10 seconds to load, that’s almost a whole minute that your customer will be waiting and staring at a blank page. Not optimal for conversion!
Encourages Customers to Contact You
Getting connected with your potential or current customers is very important.
It’s highly recommended that you are accessible to your customers via contact form.
Many people look for the “Contact Us” page of a business website so they can quickly get connected with the business, but if your website is not working properly they might not be able to reach you!
Of course, your website will need to be consistently online so users can access the contact page, but you should also make sure that your contact forms are working properly.
Some websites face email deliverability issues. This means that some (or all) emails are not being sent from the website to the business’s email address.
Oftentimes, you won’t even know that this is happening!
Keeping your contact forms reliable will help increase connections with customers, and ultimately maximize your sales!
3 Signs of an Unreliable Website and How to Address Them
1. Website Loading Time
Studies show that if a website takes more than 3 seconds to load, 40% of people have already left. Around the 10-second mark, surely almost all of them have left.
People simply don’t have the patience to wait for a slow website, so they’ll leave your website for a competitor. Slow websites are frustrating for your users, so don’t make them go through this pain!
Start by running a speed test to see how your website scores. A fast website also helps with Google rankings, so you’ll want to make this
2. Website Downtime
If your website occasionally goes down, this is a big problem for your users.
During the times that your website is offline, you are completely throwing away customers since they are unable to access your site.
So, how often is your website going down? For 10% of the users? That means it could be reducing your sales by 10%, theoretically.
Website downtime can have a huge effect on your sales, depending on your business. Regardless, this will frustrating your users!
You should have a real-time monitoring system that detects when your website goes down so you can get a better idea of how often it is offline, then take measures to resolve the downtime.
Our Standard and Premium website management plans including for downtime scanning every 5 minutes!
3. Website Errors and Design Issues
Website errors can cause all sorts of issues, but usually the biggest problem is that it may make your website partially or fully unusable. This may directly effect your new and existing customers since they will be unable to properly use your website.
Design issues are also very common, unfortunately! These issues have more of an indirect effect on your sales.
While website errors may cause your website to become unusable, minor design issues are usually just aesthetic and don’t inhibit the user from using your website.
Design issues, even if minor, result in a poor user experience. Your website should make the user excited to deal with your brand, but a website with design issues can be visually unappealing and reduce the credibility of your business.
You should have a plan to check for website errors and design issues and address them as soon as possible!
