If your website is failing to deliver the visitors, leads and customers needed to help your business grow and thrive, you could be unintentionally committing one or more of what we refer to as the seven deadly website sins. But, will saving your site require a minor tune-up or an all-out overhaul? Let’s take a closer look.

1. Your Site Doesn’t Utilize Contemporary Design

As the old saying goes, you only get one chance to make a first impression and, in the marketing world, your website is likely the first touch a prospective customer has with your brand. But, according to design magnate Adobe, 38% of visitors will quickly abandon a site if they feel the design/layout is unattractive or the navigation is not intuitive. When it comes to creating your online presence, it’s essential to consider leveraging elements that attract and engage viewers, such as unique typography, large and impactful hero imagery, bold colors, iconography and infographic-style content. In addition, developing a site that boasts semi-flat design – like Apple and Uber – not only makes it easier for users to approach and understand your content, it tends to load much faster than sites that are complicated and overly-technical.

2. You Aren’t Mobile-Friendly

If you want to help build credibility, demonstrate relevance and make it as easy as possible for customers to learn about your company and the products and services you offer, delivering a mobile-friendly web experience is a must. Furthermore, Google elevates the search ranking of mobile-friendly sites because they inherently improve the overall experience for those conducting searches on mobile devices. So, if your site isn’t mobile-friendly, it will be automatically pushed down toward the bottom of search results and further away from your customers.

3. Your Site Isn’t Optimized and/or Updated Frequently

If your site lacks the optimization required for search engines like Google, Bing and others to crawl and index your site pages easily, or there are errors lurking in a few key sections of code, it could spell disaster for your search engine rankings and results. Additionally, failing to make frequent updates to your site (i.e., blog posts, news, new products and services) can also drop your search engine ranking and prove detrimental for connecting you with your future customers.

4. It Takes Too Many Clicks to Reach Your Content

Typically, high-performing websites focus first and foremost on creating a clear and logical path for users to get to the content that they seek. At Meta4, we regularly deploy a Two-Click Test when evaluating sites for our current and prospective clients. Meaning that it takes two clicks or less for visitors to encounter priority content that answers key questions, addresses their pain points and aides in decision-making. How many clicks does it take to reach the content on your site?

5. Your Customers Can’t Quickly Find What They’re Looking For

One of the most efficient ways to connect visitors to the information they want is to include a search bar. It sounds easy, but you’d be surprised at the number of sites we visit that fail to provide this valuable tool. In our experience, users simply don’t have the time or patience to wade through endless navigation and complex menus when searching for information to guide their buying decisions. They’re looking for content that is engaging, educational and inspiring, so search bars, hamburger menus and other useful navigation elements are critical. Failing to include these tools means that you may not meet visitors’ expectations quickly, and you may actually encourage them to move on to your competitors.

6. You’re Viewed as Anti-Social

If your business still hasn’t embraced social media or you somehow forgot to include links to your corporate social media accounts on your site, visitors will quickly pick up an anti-social vibe. The good news is you can quickly change their perception by linking your accounts to your site and showcasing at least one live social media feed. However, if you struggle to maintain a regular presence on key social platforms, you should elevate your social media program before connecting it to your site.

7. Your Site Lacks Forms, Landing Pages and Calls to Action

As your company’s virtual front door, your site is the most critical element in your marketing toolkit. Once you’ve worked hard to ensure that the right mix of visitors and prospects can reach you online, you want to foster leads and cultivate customers. As a result, your site should include engaging calls-to-action (CTAs), inspiring landing pages and simple forms to capture visitor information that can and should be leveraged for sales engagement, email marketing and other future marketing efforts.

If you’re wondering how you can get the most out of your site, or you’re unsure which priorities you should address to maximize your site’s performance, ask about our free website assessment.