6 Reasons Why Your Website Sucks

You’ve been working really hard on your website; You’ve made sure that every pixel is perfect; every image magnificent; and every word amazing. Unfortunately, it’s too easy to make a beautiful website that, well, sucks. Here are some reasons why your shiny new website may suck:

1. Bad design – unfortunately, this is all too common. We may not say it out loud, but web surfers actually do prefer well designed sites that are easy on the eye. Use a good color scheme and a proper contrast between the background color and the text color. A simple site re-design may increase your site’s usability (and likeability) greatly.
2. Your website isn’t findable – if people cannot find your site on search engines or elsewhere then they cannot possible view your site and appreciate all the hard work you put into it. Some of the biggest companies in the world have websites that aren’t well optimized and they still get found. Unfortunately for the rest of us, that isn’t an option. This is especially a problem for gorgeous sites that are all flash and only have one page for Google or Bing to index. Please take time to do SEO.
3. Your website only talks about you and your achievments – it is nice to tell visitors all about you. But, honestly, most people do not care all that much about you. They care about how you can solve their problems. Don’t just talk about who you are and how cool what you do is – take time to also include information on how you can help me, examples of how you have helped people in the past, etc. It is important in winning visitors over.
4. People do not know what to do – people surfing the Internet have a very short attention span. If you make your website so “cool” and so “unique” that people do not know where or what to click on to get more information, you will not engage your site’s visitors, you will lead them away. No matter how unique you want the site, take a moment to think how to make it easy and intuitive to use.
5. Your website automatically plays sound or video – Maybe you have an auto-playing video or some funky background music, but it plays instantly. Your prospects probably don’t suddenly want a blasting presentation to come out of their computer speakers while they’re sitting in quiet offices or a library. They’ll quickly close the browser tab rather than becoming engaged, filling out lead forms, and eventually buying your product or service. It also wastes bandwidth for people using services like Safaricom’s bambanet.
6. Outdated information – If I’ll enter a website and I see in at the bottom that it says “Copyright 2004”, I will be quick to leave. No one wants outdated information. Not only that, it gives users doubts about you: are you careless enough to tell me that the date is 2004 when we’re in 2010? I won’t do business with you!