It doesn’t matter what kind of business you have, what products or services you sell, how big your company is or how long you’ve been operating. The point of having a business is to make money. And chances are, one of your most important sales channels (and possibly your only sales channel) is through your business website.
But what do you do if your business website is not making money? Clearly, this doesn’t bode well for the future success of your business, so you need to take stock of your current situation and improve it.
Here are some of the ways in which your business website may be coming up short:
Something’s Broken on Your Business Website
Sometimes it’s just a simple technical glitch or oversight that’s causing the problem with your sales numbers. A single broken link or misconfigured setting could make it impossible for people interested in buying your product or service to be unable to do so.
Perhaps the best way to check on your purchasing system is to test it. Test it from different computers and devices, and use different browsers as well. And when you test on various browsers, be sure to do so with ad-blocking software or plugins activated – in some cases they can cause problems with shopping cart software. Go ahead and try to make purchases on your site (and maybe ask some close friends or colleagues to do so as well) in order to troubleshoot.
If you are using WordPress for your business website you can check for broken links on your site by going to Tools and then clicking on Broken Links.
Your Call to Action is Not Clear
What is it that you want your ideal client to do when they visit your business website?
Do you want them to call? Is your phone number in multiple places on your site including the header of every page and the words Call Us!
Do you want them to purchase on the site? Is the purchase process uncomplicated? Remember KISS – Keep It Super Simple. Every additional click you require will lose you sales.
Be sure that whatever you want them to do is easy to find on your business website.
Your Business Website isn’t Mobile-Friendly.
Having a business website that’s not optimized for smartphones and tablets can actually hurt you in two ways. First, sites that don’t display or function well on mobile devices are going to be punished by Google in its search engine rankings. In other words, if your site doesn’t work well on smartphones, then fewer people are going to find it.
In addition, a non-optimized site simply makes the buying process too difficult for someone who’s trying to make a purchase on their smartphone. The buttons and product pages that look good on a desktop computer need to look good on smartphone screens as well.
Finally, it’s probably worth taking another look at the way or ways you hope to make money with your business website. Do you sell your product or service? Do you sell advertising space? Do you promote affiliate products? Some combination of these things, or something else entirely?
For an example of how to create an easy sales page on your site check out my Business Training page.
