ways to Keep Your site from Hurting Your Business

When you got your first website for your bakery, you probably weren’t sure what you needed to put on it… what went into a good website… and you honestly were more focused on the day-to-day of running your business.

A website is a good thing to have, but you might not have realized that it could potentially hurt your business more than it helps if it’s not set up properly.

Here’s a short list of what to look out for to prevent your website from hurting your business, and why.

Is it mobile-friendly

Being mobile-friendly means that your website adjust to fit a visitor that’s coming to it from their phone or tablet.  Since April 21, 2015, Google has been penalizing websites aren’t mobile-friendly.  You can find out more about this, and get a free tool from Google to test your site and see if it passes at:http://info.ezfrost.com/blog/why-you-should-care-if-your-bakery-website-is-mobile-friendly

Is your content too wordy?  Or is it too hard to find information?

When you go to your site, can you read each page in 5 minutes or less?  Can  you easily find the info you think your customers will be looking for when they come to your site?  Is it too difficult to navigate around?  If your site is cluttered and hard to navigate, it can leave a bad impression on your customers and they will transfer that frustration to your physical business and be less likely to want to buy from you.

Do you have images of cupcakes?  Are they easy to see?

You don’t have to have a high quality camera to take good photos of your cupcakes for your site.  A typical cell phone camera can usually do a pretty good job.  Just make sure you have good lighting, and that you don’t shrink the photos down too small when you put them on your site.  You can use a free tool likehttps://kraken.io/web-interfaceto optimize your images to keep your site loading fast without having to make them tiny.

Is your content out of date?

When is the last time you clicked through your site and updated it?  If it’s been a while, you should definitely take the time to do that.  If the information on your site is out of date it can confuse your users, or even give them the impression that you’re out of business.  One common example would be something like still having a special for Valentines cupcakes posted on your site in December.

Is your contact information easy to find?

This may seem like an obvious one, but I come across a lot of sites that have no way to contact them.  So make sure that you have your phone number, address, and hours of operation on your site and easy for people to find very quickly.