5 Minute Website Check: Have you put up barriers?

Many savvy customers are armed with information about your company before they make their first contact with you. What this means is that your customer has already started forming a relationship with you, which makes it easier for them to buy your product or services.

Are you making the most of this opportunity? Step into a customer’s shoes and test your website. Change hats and start viewing your website from your current and future customers' perspective.

Take five minutes out of your day and look for these common barriers that impede sales:

Poor navigation

Is your website easy to navigate? Are products clearly listed and easy to find? Can you navigate your way back to the Home Page from every page?

I’m wonderful

Do you tell them how wonderful you are, instead of telling them what you offer? Is your web content written according to specific web copy guidelines? People read web copy and printed copy in completely different ways. Can your customers tell, at a glance, what you do and how you can solve their problem? Or are you making them wade through paragraphs of promotional hype that puts you in the same class as your competitors?

Withholding information

Are you preventing your client from obtaining the necessary information before making a purchasing decision? Imagine that you are a customer that is looking for a particular service. They come to your site looking for basic information. To access this information, though, they have to register and provide personal information. Once they’ve registered, they get redirected back to the Home Page, not to the product information originally requested. You've made it clear to your customer that you are taking from them, before you are prepared to give them anything. It's not the best way to build any kind of relationship.

Customers are busy. Your website has about five seconds of solid convincing to do before you client makes a decision whether to stay on your site, or move on to your competitor. If they cannot find relevant information within the first few seconds of browsing through your site, they will happily click away from your site, never to be seen again.