You Have a Website,
But Does It Work for Your Customers?

Almost every business these days has a website.

In fact, with modern web options, business owners who have the time can build very good websites using online systems, attractive templates and modules that allow for advanced functions like ecommerce or online catalogs.

And in a lot of cases, these work just fine. But not always. And a big reason may be that you’re leaving out a big step: actually, using it.

Because you’re not a web professional – meaning you’ve not created a website before – you’re apt to look mostly or even entirely at how it looks. That’s important, very important, but it’s not the main thing. The key to any successful website is that it functions for the visitor.

The Devil is in the Details!

That’s because if the website doesn’t work for your customers, it doesn’t work.

It doesn’t matter if your site has a great homepage image or a cool slider/slideshow. Neat effects with buttons or popups are great. But if key functionality is even a little confusing or doesn’t work, you’re going to lose business. And you may never know it.

There are entire websites, books and other media devoted to these issues. Some websites will even analyze your site and offer advice.

The range of these potential problems is almost endless, but to get you started here’s some easy to miss issues you MUST ensure are done right:

• Do things make sense to the most possible people? As you’re designing the site so that important pages are only accessible after drilling down through one, two or more tabs? Does the overall organization make sense?

The answers to these and similar questions require several things, starting with not designing just for what you like, but trying to look at your site as if you know nothing about your business. Because that’s very difficult, the single most important thing you might do is ask other people to look at your site. The more the better, and you’re probably smart to take every suggestion seriously. The individual you know is not particularly computer literate may raise an issue some of your customers struggle with, too.

Seeing is Believing

Something you can do yourself is trying to view your draft site on as many computers as possible. If you have more than one at home, look at your site on all of them. And a tablet and your phone. Done pass on an old device gathering dust. Some of your customers may use that as well.

Likewise, try to view your site on devices with different operating systems and different browsers. The extreme differences that once made web design difficult are much less, but you still need to check as much as possible.

• Do critical site elements work? One of the most maddening things for visitors that plague many small business sites (and several corporate sites, too) is functionality that doesn’t function. Do you have a contact form that does nothing when the submit button is clicked? Is there a captcha that rejects every submission? Do you list an email that doesn’t work? Is it the right email address?

There are a lot of issues like this and it’s easy to miss one. You can bet a would-be customer will find it!

• We mentioned trying to examine your site with the eyes of a customer. One help to doing this is to think of the major patterns or paths you want a customer to follow. If you sell flowers, you obviously want them to go to your homepage and be able to find an online catalog, select from your offerings and buy one of their choices.

What you want to do is try this with as many options as you can think of, starting from arrival at your website to completing “your purchase.” Obviously, a crude way is to purchase some samples and give yourself a refund, but your ecommerce system probably has a “sandbox” that allows you to try this without racking up fees. Still, before you go live, it’s probably smart to actually buy something to make sure the entire process works.

There’s a lot more, but this gives you an idea of the detail you probably need to expect while creating a functioning site. If this sounds like a lot more than the few hours or even days you planned, it’s time to revise your plans! Good luck.