How do customers feel when they use your website — do they find what they need, or do they get frustrated and leave without purchasing or finding the information they want? Our scorecard helps you evaluate common website frustrations so you can avoid them.
It’s hard to get feedback from customers about what they love and hate about your website. There’s no scorecard or report card to let you know if you’re succeeding or failing at making clients happy. There’s no Comment Box with cards and tiny pencils where customers can leave their feedback. Sure, you could add a Pop Up to ask questions like “Did you find our website friendly or frustrating,” but since there’s almost nothing more frustrating than a Pop Up, that doesn’t seem like a strong strategy.
As web designers at Infomedia, it’s our job to know what customers love about a website, and what customers hate about a website — and we see the same problems over and over. You don’t need a Pop Up, or even a tiny pencil, to find out if your website is turning people off: Just use our checklist as a scorecard to find out whether your site is winning or losing with the people who use it:
Is Your Site Loading Too Slowly?
Online attention spans are split-second short, and if your site is taking a long time to load, lots of customers will navigate away from it before they even have a chance to check you out. And if they have to stick around because they need information from your site, they’ll begin their experience frustrated and annoyed, which doesn’t bode well for the rest of their visit, or for their overall impression of your company. Use a site like Pingdom to test loading speed for free. If it’s too long, resize your images so they’re not taking too long to load, be sure your video content is hosted elsewhere, and limit your site’s sliders (if you have them) to five or fewer.
Is Your Website Hard to Navigate?
You might know that Account Billing information is accessed by finding the third drop-down menu from the left and then clicking on an internal link, but customers who are trying to quickly pay their bills probably don’t. Customers are happy when information they want to access fast — like billing information, hours of operation, the physical address of your business and contact information — is obvious and easy to get to.
Does Your Website Work Well on Phones and iPads?
Almost all of us have a smartphone or tablet practically glued to our hands these days, so it’s no wonder web traffic from mobile devices is growing bigger all the time. It’s critical that customers find your website easy-to-use, easy-to-navigate, and well-designed, even when they’re looking at it on a phone instead of on a computer screen. The first step is making sure your website is Responsive — that means it will resize itself to look great on different sizes of screens. If your site is Responsive already, be sure to view it on various screens to be sure the most important elements are clear and can be found quickly. You can see what your site looks like on a variety of devices with a free tool like Responsive Design Checker.
Is the Information on Your Website Outdated or Incorrect?
It’s easy to be excited about the latest and greatest offering from your company and to want to highlight it on your website, but we often don’t remember to update our websites when the sale is over, or the “new” advancement is actually a couple of years old. Be sure your website has only current information, and that everything it says about your company and offerings is actually correct, because as soon as a customer notices one thing wrong about your site, they’ll start doubting the accuracy of all your information. If your site has a blog, be sure it’s fairly current as well — you don’t necessarily need to post daily, but try to be sure you have at least one blog post every month so your site doesn’t look like it isn’t updated or maintained.
Do You Have Contact Information Besides a Comment Form?
Many people still prefer a personal approach to customer service, and you don’t get much more impersonal than a general contact form. Consider adding a phone number or email to your website so customers who want a direct line to your company can get one. And if you’re a brick-and-mortar store or a restaurant, be sure your address is clear and easy for customers to find so they can make the trip to your shop.
Are Your Pop Ups Worth It?
Pop Ups — those little boxes that interrupt your web browsing to ask you to sign up for a mailing list (or something similar) — can be useful for the owner of the website, but they’re almost always irritating to the user. Pop Ups aren’t always bad, but be sure they’re really necessary and are a key piece of your marketing strategy before deciding to use them.
Do Customers Hate Your Website? What Your Score Means to You
Maybe you’re doing everything right, and you can be pretty sure that customers love coming to your site. But what if your site needs some work? If that’s the case, we’re happy to help. Fill out our contact form below, OR give Infomedia a call at our actual phone number (see what we did there), and we’ll help you fix whatever’s ailing your website.
