Why a better website creates better business opportunities

A customer who has not dealt with your business before needs reasons to feel comfortable taking the next step. Your website can provide them through clear explanations, relevant evidence and an experience that works properly. Improving those things does not guarantee more sales, but it can remove obstacles between interest and an enquiry. The strongest case for investment combines what customers need with evidence of where the current site lets them down.

Give customers something credible to judge

Think about the questions you would ask before choosing an unfamiliar supplier. Can they do the work? Do they understand your situation? Is there evidence behind their claims, and will someone take responsibility when you contact them? A website should help a visitor answer those questions without needing to know the business already.

That is where presentation matters. A clear page makes it easier to distinguish the service explanation from supporting examples and the next action. Accurate contact details, a useful About page and work that can be traced to a real project give readers information they can assess. A polished appearance without substance leaves those questions unanswered; useful information buried in a difficult layout is also doing less than it could.

Google’s guidance on helpful content asks whether information is clearly sourced, whether relevant expertise is evident and whether the page contains factual or presentation errors. It also asks whether readers leave with enough understanding to achieve their goal. Use these as a content checklist; they do not establish how much trust a particular design creates. Google’s helpful content guidance

For your own site, review one important service page. Replace broad claims such as “excellent service” with a clear account of what the work includes and how enquiries are handled. Where you have permission, show a relevant project and explain what it demonstrates. If a qualification, review or result appears, make sure it can be checked. The aim is to give a prospective customer confidence based on evidence, not ask them to accept a confident tone.

Speed can affect commercial results

Waiting for a page is part of the customer experience. So is trying to select a button while the page is still moving, or tapping something that responds slowly. It is worth investigating these problems alongside the content because a visitor needs both the information and a usable way to reach it.

Google’s web.dev site published a Vodafone case study in March 2021. In an A/B test, visually and functionally identical landing pages were compared, with one version optimised for performance. The improved version recorded a 31 per cent improvement in Largest Contentful Paint, a measure of loading performance, and generated 8 per cent more sales. This is evidence from that particular test, not an expected return for every small business. Google’s Vodafone case study

The same study quotes Vodafone’s Davide Grossi: “At Vodafone, we test new solutions, measure results, keep what worked and question what didn’t, learning from mistakes.” That approach is useful even when a smaller website does not receive enough traffic to run a meaningful experiment of the same kind. Start with an observed problem, make a defined change and decide how you will check whether it helped.

A performance assessment should explain what a measurement means. Google’s PageSpeed Insights combines controlled laboratory tests with real visitor data where enough data is available. The laboratory result helps investigate possible problems; it is not a record of every customer’s experience. Ask for the findings to be connected to the pages and actions that matter to your business, rather than treating a score as the whole brief. PageSpeed Insights documentation

Connect the website to the rest of the customer experience

A visit often begins elsewhere. Someone may follow a social post, search for a particular service or open a link sent after a conversation. Your page needs to continue that context. If the original message was about one service, the destination should make that service easy to find and explain what happens next.

The work also continues after the button. A form needs to reach the right person, and the response should fit the enquiry. When planning improvements, include the route from the first message to the business receiving and handling the request. Otherwise, the website can appear complete while the process behind it still needs attention.

There is a search consideration too. Google says Core Web Vitals are used by its ranking systems, but good scores do not guarantee high rankings. Relevant, useful content and the wider page experience still matter. A faster website should therefore be part of a sound customer experience, not presented as a shortcut to the top of Google. Google’s page experience guidance

An older website does not need replacing simply because it looks different from current design trends. Review what remains accurate and useful, what is difficult to use and what the business now needs it to do. Sometimes a focused improvement is the right next step; sometimes the evidence supports a wider rebuild. Either way, the decision should come from the work the website needs to perform.

Explore digital presence and customer experience.

Share this article