As a small business, maintaining an effective online presence is essential to your success, with your website playing an instrumental role when it comes to reaching new customers, building credibility, and growing your brand. 
 
Unfortunately for many businesses, their websites are simply not performing well enough to be of any real benefit, and in many cases, these poorly executed sites can actually have a detrimental effect, driving potential customers away and causing businesses to lose out on valuable sales. 
 
Every day, we work with small businesses who are desperately in need of a website update to help them get ahead online, and all too often it is the same website-related issues that have been holding them back from reaching their full potential. 
 
Here, we take a look at the 3 most common problems, and how we have helped businesses just like yours to overcome them: 
 
Non-existent support 
No small business should be expected to manage and maintain their website without ongoing support. However, for many companies, this is exactly what happens, and for those of you that aren’t tech savvy, this can lead to costly mistakes, or at the very least, a poorly performing online presence that prevents business growth and development. 
 
Greengate Properties experienced such difficulties through their previous website provider, who they found to be increasingly unreliable and unaccommodating. Based abroad, he was unable to provide much in the way of support, and the communication of ideas and issues was near impossible, making any improvements or updates to their website design totally infeasible. 
 
Likewise, the owners of Ascot House Hotel faced problems with their original website provider, who they also received minimal support from. Whenever they encountered a problem with their site, they found they had to chase their web developer for a meeting, which prevented any issues from being resolved quickly. On top of this, they were paying over the odds for the service they were being provided with, and were not receiving any website performance reports as part of this service, meaning that they had very little idea what their money was actually going towards. 
 
The solution 
In order for your business to reach its maximum potential online, you need a professionally designed website and ongoing technical maintenance and support that will keep it performing at its peak. This will ensure that you can provide your customers with the best possible experience when they visit your website, and that you’re not left to figure anything out on your own. 
 
We pride ourselves on the level of support we are able to offer our clients, with local website consultants based throughout the UK and Ireland. This proved invaluable for Greengate Properties, who went from dealing with a website provider based overseas who they could rarely get hold of, to knowing that they had a local point of contact who they could rely on to provide one-to-one advice whenever needed. 
 
Ascot House Hotel were equally impressed by the level of support and assistance that they’ve received since moving to itseeze. Their local consultant has been on hand to advise them from their initial consultation through to the completion of their new website, and will continue to support them with expert guidance for as long as their site is live. 
 
Poor design 
Web design moves at an incredible pace. If your business website has not been touched for years on end, it is bound to look outdated and unprofessional – this was exactly the case for Glenn’s Opticians, whose website was 9 years old. Over this time, it had hardly changed at all, and as such it looked out of date and was not the high-end, modern site you would expect from a retailer of premium designer goods. 
 
Glenn’s Opticians’ old website was also non-responsive, meaning they were inevitably missing out on sales opportunities as it could not be easily viewed on mobile phones and tablets. This is an all too common problem with many small business websites, as numerous companies have not yet embraced responsive design, a necessity for any business with an online presence in 2017. Before moving to itseeze, Pro Outsourcing were encountering similar issues, having gone through 3 websites in 3 years, all of which failed to deliver what was needed. Not only were the designs poorly implemented and disappointing, but because they were non-responsive, they looked even worse on mobile devices. 
 
Of Pro Outsourcing’s 3 websites, the first was a self-build site that they created themselves in an attempt to get their company online as quickly as possible. Whilst self-build websites can seem like a tempting option to small businesses looking to save time and money, the reality is that self-builds rarely, if ever, look professional, and a poorly designed website made with a DIY builder can actually end up damaging a business’s online success. 
 
The solution 
Your business website should reflect the credibility of your company and help you win new customers. It needs to adhere to modern web design standards, help you convert leads to sales, and be optimised for all devices. After all, people tend to spend more time - and more money - on websites that are attractively designed than on websites that are low quality and difficult to navigate, especially on mobile phones and tablets. 
 
At itseeze, we specialise in creating professionally designed and fully responsive websites for small businesses. For Glenn’s Opticians for example, we were able to design a contemporary website that allows them to effortlessly promote their high-end products and appeal to their target market, with the responsive design leading to a steady increase in enquiries from mobile phones, as it is now easy for customers to browse on any device. 
 
Similarly, Pro Outsourcing, who were extremely impressed with the website they received from our creative team, have enjoyed a steady increase in website traffic since the launch of their new site, with customers often commenting on the professionalism of the design. 
 
Lack of functionality 
A small business website that is regularly updated stands a much greater chance of ranking highly in search results and reaching potential customers than a small business website that is not. One of the biggest problems that we often find companies encounter with their websites however is an inability to make changes to it, meaning they have no opportunity to improve their position on search engines such as Google and Bing. 
 
For Alconbury Hill, this was an issue that was becoming increasingly frustrating. They were unable to independently make any edits or amendments to their site, which left their website content out of date and irrelevant. This was especially problematic when the kennels and cattery business rebranded itself with modern imagery that was then used on all its marketing materials – except its website. Arguably their most important marketing asset, their site was no longer able to accurately reflect their brand due to the absence of any website editing system. 
 
A1 Capital came across a similar problem with their website, which was also not editable. Not only did this mean that they couldn’t keep it performing well in Google search results, but as a financial company they faced their own unique challenge in being unable to keep important information up to date. This regulatory data is required by law, and without any way to add and update it themselves, the business had no option but to contact their web designer, who quoted them nearly as much as a new website to have these simple changes made. 
The solution 
For any business, the key to keeping your website active and updated is to choose a platform that allows for easy editing. This way, you are in complete control of your website content, and can better optimise your site to appear higher in search results by frequently adding new content and keeping information up to date and relevant at no extra cost. 
 
Our unique website editor makes it simple for you to update and edit your site. Whether you want to add an image, rewrite text, alter a promotion, amend your contact details, or even change the page layout, you can do all this and more in just a few easy clicks, with no technical know-how or specialist software required. For Alconbury Hill, this has proven to be hugely beneficial, as since their self-editable website has gone live, they’ve started appearing on page one of Google for key search terms, and have doubled the number of enquiries they were receiving before. 
 
The itseeze website editor is also a real advantage for A1 Capital. They are now able to quickly and easily add and update their website content, and as such their new site features all the necessary, up to date regulatory information without any delays or further costs. 
 
 
Check out our website case studies to find out more about how we’ve helped small businesses throughout the UK and Ireland to overcome their website issues and achieve new levels of success online. 
 
If you’re experiencing your own website worries, why not contact us today to learn how we can help. 
 
Tagged as: web design
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