Have you invested in a website only for it to sit dead in the water, generating zero leads?
 
In this episode of Design Imposter, hosts Jessica Valis and Monique Jenkins delve into the critical topic of recognizing when it's time to revamp your website to boost lead generation. As business owners, it's vital to ensure your website is a powerful tool for attracting potential clients. Join them as they explore five key signs for a website upgrade.

1. Website Speed: The hosts highlight the importance of a fast-loading website. Slow load times can deter visitors, leading to lost opportunities.


2. Functionality: Ensuring that your website is easy to navigate and provides users with the content they need is essential. Monique introduces the concept of card sorting as a way to improve user experience.


3. Clear Call to Action: A clear and compelling call to action guides users on the next steps they should take. Jessica and Monique discuss the best practices for effective calls to action.


4. Overall Design: Visual aesthetics matter. A well-designed website not only looks appealing but also instills trust and confidence in potential clients.


5. Conversion and Leads: The ultimate goal of your website is to generate leads. Jessica and Monique emphasize the importance of a website's role in lead generation and share insights on maximizing its effectiveness.

Throughout the episode, they stress the significance of designing a website with the user in mind, not just the business owner's preferences. A well-designed website can bridge the gap between professionalism and personalization, ultimately leading to increased leads and business success.



If you’ve spent money on a website but aren’t seeing results, you’ll definitely want to take notes (and reach out of a consultation).

 

Want to learn more about a topic?

Email us at hello@designimposterpodcast.com

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Transcription: 

Monique Jenkins: Welcome to the Design Imposter Podcast, where we unravel the enigmatic realm of imposter syndrome. My name's Monique Jenkins.

Jessica Valis: I'm Jessica Valis. We're two agency owners who've boldly faced the reality of imposter syndrome.

Monique Jenkins: We'll share relatable stories and practical insights that empower designers and business owners just like you.

Jessica Valis: Together, we'll help you conquer self-doubt and unleash your true potential. Get ready to unveil your true brilliance. Welcome to Design Imposter.

Jessica Valis: Welcome to another episode of Design Imposter. I'm Jessica Valis, and on today's episode, Monique and I will discuss five signs that it's time for your business to upgrade your website.

Monique Jenkins: There are way more than five signs, but we'll start with the basics.

Jessica Valis: All right, because of course, you guys should know at this point, Monique and I, we specialize in the website design, UX experience of everything. So if any of these tick your box, then it's probably time.

Jessica Valis: The first one is your website takes ages to load. Google consumer insights found that 53% of mobile site visitors leave a page. It takes longer than three seconds to load and mobile and website conversion drops by almost four and a half percent with each second of load time that goes by.

Jessica Valis: So that's a lot of clicks away if your site is just not pulling up immediately.

Monique Jenkins: Agreed. I think part of the user experience is sometimes as simple as how long a page takes to load and knowing something as simple as how long it takes a page to load can help you create a better inexperience for your user.

Jessica Valis: Yeah, there's certain ways that there's like a couple key indicators right from the get go. The first one is probably your image sizes. If you're uploading an image in its original form, like you took a picture on your phone and you upload it just like that, it's gonna be way, way, way too big.

Jessica Valis: And that's gonna slow down the site speed. So a really simple easy hack is just to open Canva, have something sized to the screen and just drag and drop that picture in there and then download it in the right format.

Jessica Valis: The other thing you can do to speed up with the website speed in images is to enable .webp, which is the web format of a photo. So it's no longer a JPEG. And this will take the file size down from like 100 kilobytes down to like 10 kilobytes.

Jessica Valis: So this is like standard on all my sites now. So that definitely decreases the time. But there's also implications of slow speed with Google and SEO. And that's Google who penalizes you if it takes a long time for your site to load.

Jessica Valis: And it just bumps you down in the ranking. So if somebody's searching for your website and Google sees that it's taking a long time to load, then you're just gonna go down. And there's different third party sites you can use to check your website speed.

Jessica Valis: One that I use a lot is just legit called pagespeed .web .dev. You put your URL in and it'll tell you the site speed on your mobile versus your desktop. And then it'll specifically tell you what is slowing your site down.

Monique Jenkins: Yeah, I think that, so certainly check your images and make sure, because I think that's a problem that a lot of sites deal with is that they're uploading, you know, 300 DPI images as opposed to 72, which is standard for web at least.

Monique Jenkins: And it really does slow down your website and people do very much leave your site if it takes a long time. So I think something that I've done for past projects that are in like application funnels or something like that is I use the extra four or five seconds of time on mobile to relay information that someone needs to know.

Monique Jenkins: So if you are filling out an application to refinance your mortgage, it might take a few seconds to like pull back offers. And in those seconds, I use information, I use that time to tell customers like how we generate offers or why we're gonna present the offers that we're gonna present to you.

Monique Jenkins: So sometimes it's about being very strategic. That's a point in your application funnel that there's a vested interest on the part of your client. So they might not be willing to leave in that specific space because they have a little bit more to like not lose, but they have a little bit more stake in the game.

Monique Jenkins: But on your actual like .com site, yeah, you got four or five seconds.

Jessica Valis: Yeah, I mean, there's a difference between me going to kayak .com. That's my go -to for flights and saying, hold tight while we find the lowest prices. I'll hold tight for those lowest prices. If it takes you like 30 seconds to find me a flight to Europe for $600, but I can get those flights in one second and it's a thousand, I will wait those 30 seconds.

Jessica Valis: Yeah, I will do that. So it really also depends on what the client is getting in return, like you said. But if you're just a standard .com site and you're like, oh, come over here and buy my services, it's pretty standard, then people will be like, no, it's just too.

Monique Jenkins: I think clients are really surprised by those numbers to find out that people leave sites so quickly.

Jessica Valis: I mean, just, I mean, think of your own patients level though. You know, I mean, I don't think I generally run into this too often anymore where I'm like, I need information right now. I'm going to click away.

Jessica Valis: I'm going to click away. But there are some people who are like that. And those might be the clients that need the service right away.

Monique Jenkins: Those people are me. I need it right now. You got some, so I need some kidding. I feel like, I won't speak for everyone, but I feel like it is a good majority of people just because the society in which we live, everything is very instantaneous.

Monique Jenkins: You can access information at the tip of your fingers. And when it takes someone along, takes the website a long time to do something. And even the way that we think about customer service or like we want our food hot, we want it fast, and we want to be gone.

Monique Jenkins: And we just sometimes don't want interactions. Like everybody wants everything right this second. I think that's a pattern of behavior across almost all the things that we do right now is that I should have it right this second, especially with Amazon packages.

Monique Jenkins: Let me tell you something. Every time I view, when they're like, we can get you your package by 7 a .m., I'm like, pst, pst. No, of course you should be able to do my package at 7 a .m.

Jessica Valis: I'm not thinking of... I'm over here like, oh, do the least number of packages so I can be, you know, economically friendly or economically friendly.

Monique Jenkins: I'm not at least a couple of backstages girl. I'm like, nope, gi