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How Do You Know if Your Website Was Built Properly?

Your website is more than just how it looks. How it performs is the leading indicator of whether or not it was built correctly.

“How can I get more leads through my website?”

This is a question I get asked all the time. This question begs another question: how do you know if your website was built properly?

The answer is two part: if you put out the right website signals, and your website was implemented properly, you will get email signups and sales leads from it.

When I build a website for a client, we don’t start with the design, per se. We start with the business.

“Your website is built properly if it attracts visitors and produces inquiries from those visits.”

Obvious Errors

Certain problems are easier to spot than others.

For example, an image with a missing file is visible to the naked eye.

Broken image icon

This is how a broken image shows up

Google wants all websites to be secured by SSL and use HSTS. These technologies help to ensure that traffic sent back and forth between the website and the visitor is encrypted and can’t be intercepted.

Well, it can be intercepted, but, um, it’s harder now.

When a site is not secured, a little message pops up in the browser that can clearly be seen in the Chrome address bar:

Chrome Not secure

Snarky Chrome message about a website that’s not secured with SSL.

While this error may not be obvious to everyone, at least it can be seen by the naked eye.

Less Obvious Errors

Some tools, like our website evaluator, can spot errors that can’t be seen on the surface.

Some of the most common errors I see are:

  • The website is slow.
  • The site misuses H-tags; for example, multiple H1 tags on a page.
  • Incorrect or outmoded coding styles
  • Misconfigured SSL certificates
  • Missing meta descriptions or alt tags.
  • No Analytics tools installed.
  • Missing structured data to tie website to social properties.

These kinds of problems are typically found in websites that have been basically gathering dust since they were built.

“Good, the website is ‘done. Now we can get back to work!”

Except what “works” on the web and in digital marketing changes on a yearly, monthly, even weekly basis sometimes.

There are many tools that analyze the technical aspects of a website, and some of those tools produce these sorts of valuable insights.

The Most Subtle Problems

The most subtle problems that I find are sort of also the biggest problems.

Failure hook your ideal prospects and make them your clients.

Who are your ideal prospects? What are they interested in? What do they need help with? What tone are they used to seeing in their industry? Where do they hang out on the internet?

It’s not always what you’d expect, but there are ways to uncover those hidden information nuggets when designing a website.

Presuming for the moment that your website was designed and implemented properly, you should see traffic increases over time as you consistently create content and share your blog posts, post your video content.

Google, Bing and Yahoo all enjoy fresh content. You just need to let them know you have published something, and be sure they “like” your website.

The shortest answer to the question posed by this article is: if your site produces no inquiries, something is wrong with the approach, the implementation or your marketing pitch. Perhaps all three?

Your website was not built properly.

The 2020 stats show that 70% of the buying decision is made before a client ever contacts the business.

Maybe it’s time to take a second look at your business’ primary piece of web real estate.

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