Insights / Website
When getting a new website, some of us might be tempted to rush things through. However, rushing to create a website is a BIG NO. It will only lead to more troubles in the future as frustrating issues begin to pop up. This frustration would ultimately bleed down into your customers, as they engage with a poorly designed user experience. Your business could risk losing sales, web traffic and the ability to generate quality sales, which will end up costing even more in the long run. Yikes.
Let’s explore the 10 common problems businesses would usually face when they get a new website, alongside the solutions.
1. The Final Design Looks Horrible!
This usually happens when businesses put price over quality by prioritising those who can offer them a website at the cheapest amount available. As a result, this ‘low-budget’ option will inevitably produce something such as this:
Not only does this create a terrible first impression of the brand, but it also communicates to customers that the business is unprofessional.
The Solution
Ask for a design portfolio
This is often easier when you’re looking for a web design agency, as they’d have plenty of past projects to showcase their expertise and experience in building websites.
Here’s an example:
2. It’s Not Showing Up On Search Engines!
After launching a new website, most businesses expect to have it found in search engines immediately. While this would be the ideal scenario, the reality is sadly different as search engines require time for “web crawlers” or “spiders” to discover your website.
Besides that, these are some of the other factors that determine how quickly your website is found:
- Number of Pages
- Content Quality
- Site Structure
- Quantity & Quality of Backlinks
It may vary from several hours to weeks according to the characteristics of the website. But what happens if it’s still not found after a few weeks? Then there’s likely a technical issue that’s preventing your website from being found.
The Solution
a. Contact your web design agency
In this case, they should be on speed dial as they could investigate technical issues within the site and help resolve those errors quickly.
b. Get help from Google’s support resource
You can also try finding a solution from Google’s resource page by looking for answers from the community. Oftentimes, the answers to your problems can be found there.
3. Why Is It So Difficult To Use The Site On Mobile Phones?
Websites that don’t consider the aspect of mobile-friendliness often limit smooth user experience on mobile devices. Mobile-friendly websites take the smaller screen size into account and make it easy for customers to view, use and browse the entire site. If that isn’t done, you’d likely get an interface that is clunky and hard to use, resulting in a frustrating experience for users that leads to them giving up and exiting.
The Solution
Built a “responsive” website
Note that the term “responsive” is used instead of “mobile-friendly”, as the latter refers to having a scaled-down version of your website to make it friendly for mobile devices. Creating a mobile-friendly site would also mean having to spend more on creating another site just to cater to this other segment of users.
Instead, a responsive design would allow the site to responsively adapt itself automatically to different devices (desktops, tablets & mobile) by adjusting its images, content, and layout size according to the screen size of a given device.
4. It's Taking Too Long to Load!
There are many reasons why a website might take eternities to load. Some common ones include:
- Large media file sizes
- Too many themes, plugins and add-ons
- Unnecessary code and functionalities
- Slow and poor quality hosting
Other times, it could be a range of complex technical issues such as:
- No caching installed
- Network issues
- Bloated database overheads
- No content delivery networks
The Solution
Contact your web design agency.
They can quickly identify any issues that are causing the site to slow down while also providing recommendations on how you can prevent such headaches from happening again.
5. Could I edit the Website?
For some businesses, it’s understandable that they don’t have the time or expertise to edit their own website, so that’s where outsourcing to third parties comes in. However, some may prefer to do this on their own to maintain flexibility in updating the website’s content whenever they want.
The Solution
Integrate a content management system (CMS) into the website.
It’s a software application that allows users to create, edit, store and publish any digital content. This allows you to easily make any changes to the site’s content at a moment’s notice without much hassle or technical expertise. In fact, most web design agencies offer this as an option early on during the discussion phase of the project before they start building the actual website.
6. How Do I Track The Number of Users Visiting My Website?
Hey, it’s great that you’re aware of the need to track the number of visitors coming to your website!
The Solution
Integrate a Google Analytics account with your website.
To get started, you can refer to this guide by Google. Otherwise, there’s a good chance that your web design agency has already done so. In that instance, just contact them regarding this and they will guide you.
7. Why Are The Numbers For My Visitor Traffic So Low?
With a new website, it’s normal for this to happen because search engines are still crawling the contents of the entire site to determine how valuable and relevant it is to users based on the keywords they’re searching for. From there, it will assign a rank and page number to your site, which influences the amount of traffic it can potentially get.
The Solution
Create a digital marketing strategy to promote your website.
One solution is to ask your web design agency for advertising and digital marketing services. Oftentimes, some will provide this as an add-on service.
Thus, most businesses tend to go for an all-in-one creative agency that offers a wide range of services such as advertising, branding, digital marketing, web design & development, media production, packaging design, etc.
8. Why Aren't There Any Leads or Sales Generated?
There are several reasons why a website might not be generating any leads or sales. Some of which can range from simple issues such as:
- Lack of call-to-action buttons (CTA)
- Missing contact information
- Non-existent lead generation methods (i.e. inquiry forms)
However, the problem could be much bigger as they relate to the overall website in various aspects, such as:
- Unoptimized landing pages
- Poorly designed user experience (UX)
- Non-existent social proof
- Wrong user traffic acquired
The Solution
Optimize your website according to the objectives of your business.
Before a website is built, one needs to understand why they are creating one in the first place. For example:
- Sales generation
- Attracting partnerships, donations, investors etc.
- Informing & educating users
- Communicating with users
- Brand building
Once the business has a clear main goal for its website, it can start optimizing it to help them accomplish its objectives.
9. Why Is It Saying 'This Site Is Not Secured'?
Oftentimes, this happens when a website is rushed through or hastily created without taking important security factors into consideration, which leads to an outcome such as this:
The Solution
Switch to HTTPS by obtaining an SSL certificate.
For some, this process might be difficult due to the complexity of needing to understand technical jargon as well as having the know-how to successfully obtain the certificate. Thus, they often outsource this task to agencies to save time, cost and human resources.
In any case, an experienced web design agency would have already done this early on before launching the website, as they should always ensure that every necessary step is taken correctly to protect their client’s website from cybersecurity threats that are out to sabotage the business.
10. I Don't Know What This Error Is! How Can I Fix It?
Sometimes, a website will give an unknown error (i.e. broken links) or have certain important features and functions stop working all of a sudden. This might cause businesses to assume that their site is down, broken or even hacked by cybercriminals.
The Solution
Get a website maintenance package.
Not only does this help address the unknown errors and issues that pop up, but it also provides other benefits that are important for keeping the website in peak condition, such as:
- Performance monitoring (i.e. to test for any errors within pages, features & functionalities)
- Content management (i.e. to ensure the content is SEO-friendly)
- Regular software & plugin updates
- Routine website backups
In summary, these are the 10 most common problems that are likely to occur when businesses are getting themselves a new website. This essentially means that it’s pivotal to select the right web design agency to carry out the job. The company should not be prioritizing price over quality when such an asset is so crucial to the overall growth and success of the business.
