Building A Better Business: Episode 3

Today, I just wanted to write out a list of reasons why your website is not doing what it is capable of doing. There is a disclaimer though, I am not personally attacking anyone. If you become offended or triggered or think that I am talking specifically about your site, then hold yourself accountable and prove me wrong!

Anyways, on to the list!

1. Your design. Website design is ever more important today than it was 10 years ago. A lot has changed with html, css, javascript, and the plethora of other front end libraries out there. If you launched your website 5 years ago and have not updated the design, you are in the wrong. You should be continually judging and updating your website design all the time. As we speak I am rebuilding the design and look of ClickTrackProfit and it relaunched just about 7 or 8 months ago! Seriously though, update your design, it is gross. Also, if you do not have a responsive design of some sort, fix it. Another point here is that some people have responsive designs, but when I access their sites on smaller devices (like my phone), I just see default information or images instead of the site information.
2. Your navigation. Just like design, navigation of a website has changed tremendously over the years, the whole goal of navigation is to simplify how users get around your website and if your navigation menu is a cluttered mess (think CTP before we relaunched! and even now I think our navigation needs some work, hence the redesign!), then you need to do some work to fix it. The things you need your members to do first or most often should be right up front and easy to access.
3. You don't email. You own a website and have a list of members at your fingertips, but you do not email them. I do not know anything that you are doing with your website because I do not get any emails. Why should I give a crap about your website when you don't even care enough to let me know what you are doing?
4. When you do email it is depressing. I got an email from a website a few days ago letting me know that I referred a new member, which is great news! Except, the entire email said and I quote "You referred a new member". THAT IS HORRIBLE HORRID JUNK. Another bad example is when you email every single day letting me know that today's prize is 25 cents if I do 100 things here and 100 things there. Do you really feel that it is worth your members time to spend hours accomplishing a goal only to earn 25 cents? DO BETTER. These are the types of emails that I very quickly unsubscribe from, because I am more interested in what your website can do to help me build my business. I have zero interest in earning 25 cents, when I know that I earn much more than that by building and emailing my list.
5. You are not building trust or relationships. This goes hand in hand with the email pieces above. If the only thing you try to do is sell me on the next big MLM or penny earning capability, then I will have no interest in you or your business. STOP trying to sell your members a bunch of crap so you can have referrals in a program. START getting your members to know, like, and trust you based off of what you do as an owner and how you help your members achieve their goals within your site.

Okay, that is my top 5 reasons on why your website sucks. Again, if you feel personally attacked, just remember that I am not perfect either and do not have every answer there is. But I do know one or two things about building and maintaining websites and businesses. I am not targeting any website(s) or owner(s) specifically. These are just broad cases of what I have seen in the last 8 or so months since the relaunch of ClickTrackProfit.

There is nothing more that I want than for everyone to succeed in their goals of owning a business and running a website of any kind.

Please feel free to comment your thoughts and if you think there is anything that I missed!