Did you know you can get more leads from the exact same website by simply moving it to a different server?
Did you know that you can get more business from a website by changing NOTHING other than by redesigning some of the source code…something none of your visitors will EVER even see?
It’s not all about design.
If you want your website to generate leads and build your business, there are several crucial elements you need to address. If you want to grab a list of the 7 most important factors overall, you can get that here.
In this quick post, I want to share a few of the more obscure issues that very few business owners ever address. We literally never even look at this stuff, and it makes a HUGE difference. In fact, these issues are so important that if they’re not addressed properly, everything else you do will have much less impact.
This stuff isn’t difficult. It’s just a matter of most small business owners not knowing what to look for. Just like anything else in business, the stuff that really makes the most difference isn’t sexy. In fact, for most people it’s downright boring. But if you don’t do it, everything else suffers.
Check these three simple principles and see how your website measures up…
Dedicated IP address
Your domain name is called a URL, which stands for Uniform Resource Locator. You may not know this, but your website isn’t actually located at your domain name. It’s located at an IP address. You may have heard of IP addresses but aren’t sure what they are. This post is NOT a technical tutorial. Don’t worry. I’m not gonna bore you to tears with technical details 🙂
Suffice to say, your site is on a web server, and that server has an IP address. Most small business websites share an IP address with thousands of other websites.
Who cares?
You should absolutely care that you share an IP address with thousands of other websites.
Why?
Because if ANY of those other website owners have poorly coded sites, malware, are involved with spamming or any other activity that is frowned upon by Google, ISPs and others, then the IP address generating that activity can get dinged.
Hear me on this…you can get blacklisted, have your search rankings dramatically affected and more. All for activity that you have NOTHING to do with. All for activity you’re not even aware of. All for activity you have absolutely no way to correct.
Talk to your developer and make sure you’re on a dedicated IP.
Modern Design
Did you know Google grades your website on hundreds of thousands of metrics? No one knows them all, as they’re not all public knowledge. But one of the newer factors we’ve come across lately is design.
Your search visibility can be negatively affected by nothing other than the fact that your design hasn’t been updated in several years.
Why the heck does Google care about this? Because their only concern is providing a positive and relevant experience for their users. They want to direct their customers to websites that have the right information, of course. But they also want the website to work well and provide a positive experience for their customers.
In other words, with literally trillions of webpages to sift through, they have to prioritize. They’d rather send their visitors to websites that look great, work well and ALSO have the information they’re looking for. Make sense?
The good news is that modernizing your design is far easier and less expensive than it’s ever been before.
But don’t get me wrong. This is NOT just about Google. Let’s be honest about this, if you were the consumer, would YOU take your website seriously? We’re tech savvy and picky these days. If you’re considering doing business with someone, but their website is tacky and looks like it was built by an intern in 1996, would you take them seriously?
I’ve come across so many companies that are doing GREAT work for their clients. They operate successful, profitable businesses. They know how crucial it is to put their best foot forward, to present themselves professionally. They put these ideals to work in nearly all aspects of their business.
And then they roll into the marketplace with a $500 website that looks like it was built by a high school student. And in MANY cases, it actually WAS built by a high school student.
It’s all about priorities, my dear 🙂
Page Speed
Another element that dramatically affects user experience is page speed. This is yet another metric that Google and other search engines look at seriously. But your prospects look at it even more closely.
Let’s be real…if you’re on a website, and the pages are taking 20 seconds to load, how long are you going to stick around? In most cases, people wait about 2 seconds. Anything past that and your visitors are going to notice.
Even if you change nothing else on your website, these three factors all work together to create a solid foundation. Yes of course, content matters. Design matters. There are however, some elements that most people never even look at, that make a big difference.
Checking into these will only take you a few minutes. Correcting them is not difficult either, and it can make a huge difference in the results you get.
Questions or need help? Hit me up. I love, love, love hearing from you all!