First impressions are everything, especially for new and smaller businesses, and a poorly designed website can cost you potential revenue for years to come. 

Unless you’re a web designer yourself, it’s best to hire a web design agency to build your website from scratch. This way, you can be assured that your business website is in capable hands. However, whether through a lack of financial resources or lack of awareness, many business owners fail to give their business website design proper attention. 

Here are three adverse effects of a poorly designed website on your bottom line. 

#1 Slow-Loading Pages

One of the worst symptoms of a poorly designed website is slow loading times. One of the most common reasons for slow-loading websites is a maxed-out bandwidth limit. This is especially common in websites on free web hosting. While free web hosting is excellent for blogs that are just starting, it will bottleneck your website as soon as you gain any traction from your social media marketing or search engine optimization efforts. 

To solve this problem, contact your web hosting service provider and get on a premium tier. If the issue persists, consider transferring your website to another hosting provider. 

Another common reason for slow loading pages is outdated content formats like Adobe Flash. In the early 2000s, Adobe Flash was widely installed on personal computers to display interactive content. For a time, everything from ads, games, and even entire websites were made with Flash. However, as technology progressed, most browsers have stopped supporting Flash in favor of more advanced standards like HTML5 and WebGL. 

This means that if a user tried to access a website containing flash elements, it would most likely run into issues, causing your website to slow down. To remedy this, remove those flash elements immediately. 

Lastly, popular website builders like wix may experience issues with site speed due to their site editors.  Be sure to do your research when deciding what platform to use. If you are already invested in your current editor and you are experiencing slow load times, contact your provider to see what actions can be performed to boost site speed.

#2 High Bounce Rate

The bounce rate refers to the percentage of people who leave your website without interacting with any of its elements. A bounce rate of 26%-40% is excellent, and 41%-55% is considered average. A bounce rate of 56%-70% is higher than average, but may not always be a cause for concern, depending on your business website’s nature. However, if you get anything higher than 70%, you may have a problem in your hands. 

Having an inordinately high bounce rate means that for some reason, people leaving your website are not checking out your other pages. Most of the time, people may just be leaving because they saw your content, got the information they were looking for, and simply left. Diagnosing the reason behind a high bounce rate can be tricky because it doesn’t tell you much about what’s causing it. However, the first thing to look at is your web design. 

#3 Lost Revenue

As mentioned before, first impressions are everything. When customers look up your website to research your products or services, you should do everything to ensure that they are impressed by what they find. At the very least, nothing should tick them as particularly worrying, such as if your web design is at par with your peers and whether you have the information they need. 

If your website looks old, loads slowly, and doesn’t look like it has been updated for years, then they’ll likely move on to your competition. This represents lost revenue, which will impact your bottom line. 

It all comes down to the consumer.  Does your website allow them to navigate your site to get the answers and services they want?

About Us

The Stack Group provides affordable web design services designed around consumer behavior.  We specialize in custom modern web design, website re-designs, affordable SEO, and social media management.

Think your website needs help?  Schedule a consult with us