Running a small business doesn’t mean you’re exempt from having an online presence. Whether you’re planning to expand internationally or marketing locally, having a proper website increases your professional credibility. Instead of just building one and calling it a day, you also need to optimize your website for maximum leads and conversions. Take note of these important website statistics below to help your site perform well:
This is up from 2018, where only 50% of small businesses had a website. If you’re one of the 28% that still don’t have a web presence, take this as a sign to build one in the latter half of 2021. Having a website is not only important for your business’ name and brand recognition, but it can also help in lead generation and conversion.
People are spoilt for choice. Instead of trying to navigate through a poorly planned, organized, and designed website, 38% will head to the hundreds, if not thousands, of other sites out there that offer the same things—minus the headache. Don’t waste the opportunity to convert your viewers by having them bounce off the page before they’ve even begun, and design a good-looking website.
Forget about optimization for a second, and just think about how your site looks aesthetically. Is it sleek enough? Are you using high-quality images? Nearly 39% of professional web developers think that poor design drives users away from your website. Designing a site from the ground up isn’t the most difficult thing to do. However, if you’re having trouble, consider hiring a web designer through sites like Fiverr.
More than having high-quality images, optimizing your site means making sure those images load fast. In fact, many users expect a maximum of two seconds of loading time for each webpage (and that’s on the slower end). While having a visually impactful website is always great, if your audience doesn’t wait around to see it, then it still doesn’t do its job.
When we say make sure your site loads fast, we mean a matter of milliseconds, not seconds. Each second spent loading means a significant number of missed opportunities to convert. This is even more evident in mobile users. A study from Google shows that when page load speeds go from one to 10 seconds, the probability of mobile users bouncing increases to 123%.
A badly designed and optimized website does more than frustrate users. It actively drives 50% of potential customers straight into your competitors’ arms. That’s quite a bit of revenue, considering each shopper spends around $3.39 per visit on average. Don’t think user experience is a one-time thing either. Consistently improve your user experience, as around 80% of a business’ profits come from 20% of existing customers.
Forty-three percent of small businesses know just how important loading speeds are. The average page loading speed is 10.3 seconds for desktops and 27.3 seconds on mobile. That’s an insane amount of time, especially in this fast-paced world.
If your site is loading slower than the aforementioned two seconds, consider compressing your large file sizes, optimizing your code, and looking at where the bottlenecks occur so you can do something about them. A simpler way is to use a content management system (CMS) like Squarespace, known for its ultra-fast loading speeds.
More reason to have a beautifully designed site on mobile as well as on desktop—54% of Americans shop on their mobile phones. While you’re at it, make sure to integrate your social media profiles and marketplaces with your website. Think Facebook, Amazon, Etsy, Instagram, and Shopify—make it easy for your customers to hit that “Check Out” button.
Research shows that smaller screens lead to higher abandonment rates. Tablet shoppers, for example, abandon carts 80.74% of the time, and desktop shoppers abandon carts 73.07% on average. This is especially troublesome because most shoppers are now using their mobile phones to shop.
To combat this, ensure that your store is optimized for mobile, not only in images but in copy as well. Don’t forget your pop-ups. Many stores don’t optimize these, leading to a loss in revenue.
PayPal might have a host of anti-fraud features, but that doesn’t increase its trustworthiness in the eyes of many users. Only offering PayPal as a payment option on your website makes your site look dated and can be a huge mistake when trying to get customers to convert. While PayPal might be the default payment gateway for many businesses, try exploring other options like Amazon Pay, Apple Pay, Stripe, and Skrill.
Although having PayPal as your only payment option may be a mistake, it might be different if your small business is located in the European Union (EU). Studies show that digital wallets like PayPal and Alipay are the preferred payment methods for 42% of Europeans, with PayPal being the most popular in Germany and the UK.
It doesn’t matter how good your product or service is if no one is around to discover it, as evidenced by a fifth of small businesses. More than just investing in your site design and page loading speeds, invest in the rest of search engine optimization (SEO). Learn the basics of search engine marketing and lead your target audience to your site, or hire an SEO consultant through Fiverr.
Part of SEO is knowing which search engine you’re optimizing for. For example, if your business is conducted primarily on Amazon, you’ll also want to optimize your listings for Amazon’s search engine. Almost 70% of the world’s web traffic goes through Google, so small businesses should optimize their websites to be relevant to Google’s algorithm.
Even if you’re not planning to expand your small business globally, local SEO is still extremely important. Forty-six percent of searches look for local businesses, and these are also catalysts for in-person visits. At least 72% of these searchers visited a local store afterward. Don’t miss out on the web and foot traffic, build a beautiful site, and work on your SEO, even if you’re one of the 35% of small business owners who don’t think you’re large enough to need a web presence.
With the amount of competition in the market, your products, services, and website need to stick out somehow. Seventy-three percent of businesses achieve this by investing heavily in design. As a small business, you probably don’t have the funds to compete with larger companies, so instead of going through a design agency, create your own site with a drag-and-drop builder like Squarespace.
If you’re having a hard time lowering your bounce rate, try including videos in your content. Studies show that users spend 88% more time on pages with videos. Not only are videos generally more engaging, but users usually prefer watching videos to reading long blocks of text. However, use this tip sparingly. Don’t fill your site up with videos—not only is this more annoying than helpful, but it will also slow down your page loading speeds.
4.23% may not seem like a high number to you, but it’s higher than the 3.17% click-through rate (CTR) for Google ads—and much cheaper too. Spend time on your calls to action (CTAs), whether it’s by researching buttons (e.g., shape and color), changing your site’s copy, or fixing your web design.
Branding throughout your website and social media platforms influences purchase decisions in a major way. Keep your imagery, language, and colors consistent. Consistent branding can increase revenue by as much as 33%.
Now that you’ve created a beautifully designed, well-optimized website, research says the next step is to create a blog. Blogging can generate more leads by nearly 70%, in fact. It’s a fantastic way to personalize and humanize your brand by imparting your brand values to your readers. As a bonus, blogging can also help boost SEO by showing search engine bots that you’re an authority in the industry your small business is in.
Building a beautiful-looking, highly optimized website should be one of your priorities as a small business owner. Not only does it increase your professional credibility through brand recognition, but it is also a huge boost to your digital marketing strategies. Use these business website statistics and build a site that not only exemplifies your brand but generates leads and conversions through increased user experience.
