5 Signs Your Health & Wellness Website Needs Work

You have a website, but how can you tell if it’s performing the way it needs to? These days simply having a website doesn’t cut it anymore. It’s important to make sure that your website design and development is working up to speed and is easy to crawl for search engines like Google or Bing, and is easy to use and navigate.

Not sure if your website needs work? Here are 5 ways to find out:

1. Your website is too slow

If your website loads slow, you’re leaving an enormous amount of business on the table. For users experiencing an average page load time of 7 seconds, the bounce rate is 32.3%. [Section] This can not only affect user experience and website conversions, but slower load times will also have a negative impact on search engine rankings.

Ideally you’d like to see a page load in less that 2 seconds. Any page on your website, that is. If your speeds are slower than this, your website needs work.

It is a good practice to test your web page load times quarterly at the very least to ensure this is not an issue for your website’s visitors. To test your website’s page speed, we recommend you try using Pingdom’s Speed Test Tool or Google’s PageSpeed Insights Tool.

2. Difficult to navigate

Navigation is critical. It works to inform visitors where they are, where they have been, and show them where to go. Having a disconnect at any level of a user’s journey can lead to confusion, frustration, and website abandonment. This often leads to a decrease in sales and returning visitors, along with an increase in frustrated users and high bounce-rates, as we just talked about.

Fortunately, with proper planning and the use of great navigation design fundamentals, any visitor will be able to navigate your website with ease and have a great experience. Is your website difficult to navigate? Your website needs work!

3. It’s not responsive

According to Statcounter, over 50% of search queries come from mobile devices and Google is now basing its rankings on the mobile version of your website rather than the desktop. If your website is not responsive, meaning it automatically adjusts for different-sized screens and viewports, your search engine rankings are being diminished dramatically.

If you have questions about whether your website is responsive or “mobile friendly” Google provides a simple mobile-friendly testing tool that will evaluate your website in seconds. Not too happy with the results? This is a huge indication that your website needs work.

4. Poor SEO

When your website is not ranking well on search engines like Google and Bing, it’s bad for business. This could indicate a problem with your website, or a lack of optimization. Your website should be your most powerful marketing tool, so if your search results are less than desired, it could be time to revamp your website.

To be sure that your SEO issues are website related and not just a lack of proper optimization, it may be a good practice to have an SEO audit completed for your website. A digital marketing professional will be able to review your website and let you know what actions you would need to take to help increase search engine rankings. If your website needs work, they would be able to provide that information.

5. Low Conversion Rates

Having potential customers find and interact with your website is great, but if those visitors are not converting… there’s a problem. Websites that have a hard time generating leads and conversions are typically missing key elements on-page to help with the conversion process.

These missing elements could be an array of items including social proof, clear calls-to-action (CTA’s), content that speaks to your target audience or many other things. If they are not converting on your site, odds are they will be converting with a competitor, making low conversion rates a telltale sign that your website needs work.