Every once in a while, you may find that a website you are trying to reach is not loading
You refresh, and try again, but still no change.
It could be your own website, or you might be trying to access social media, news, entertainment, or shopping.
You try turning your data on and off but again, no change.
Is it the website with a problem, or is it your phone or computer?
It could be either, or it could be none.
Here’s a checklist for you to go through:
10 reasons why a website may not load
First and most importantly, check your data connection. If you are running on a metered or timed bundle, your access to the internet may have been cut off. So check and verify that you still have a valid internet connection.
Secondly, try loading other websites.
If you are able to load other websites, then the problem is isolated to that particular site and has nothing to do with your device or network.
That leaves the following technical reasons that would prevent a website from loading:
Incorrect URL: If the user types in an incorrect URL, the website will not load.
DNS errors: If the domain name server (DNS) is unable to resolve the website’s address, the website will not load. This may occur when a DNS has been misconfigured, or compromised by malicious actors.
Server downtime: The website’s server may be down for maintenance or due to technical issues, preventing the website from loading. This presents itself as a 503 or similar error.
Firewall or security software blocking: Firewall or security software on your device or network may be blocking access to that particular website.
Browser issues: The website may not load if your browser is outdated or not compatible with the website’s code.
Content Delivery Network (CDN) issues: If the website uses a CDN, and it is down or not working properly, it may prevent the website from loading.
Outdated software: The website may fail to load if it is built with outdated software or technologies, and the user’s browser or device is incompatible.
Heavy traffic: If the website receives too much traffic, it can slow down the website or cause it to fail to load.
Malware or hacking: If a website has been hacked or infected with malware, it may prevent it from loading properly.
Action Points
If the website belongs to you, you can contact your Web Developer or Administrator directly to rectify the issues preventing the website from loading.
If it doesn’t belong to you, you can inform the company or organization and have them resolve the issue.
For Do-It-Yourself solutions, try this guide by Kinsta.
One of the easiest ways to make money from your website is to sell advertising space. You can do this by signing up for a program like Google AdSense, which will place ads on your website and pay you for each click or impression.
2. Affiliate marketing:
Another popular way to make money from your website is to promote other people’s products and earn a commission for each sale made through your unique affiliate link.
3. Selling products or services:
If you have a product or service to sell, your website can be a great place to market it to potential customers. You can use an e-commerce platform like Shopify to create an online store and sell your products directly to customers.
4. Sponsored content:
Sponsored content refers to when a brand pays you to create content on your website that promotes their products or services. This can be done through sponsored blog posts, videos, or social media posts.
5. Email marketing:
Email marketing is one of the most effective ways to make money from your website. By collecting email addresses from your website visitors, you can send them targeted offers and promotions, which can lead to sales.
6. Subscriptions and memberships:
If you have valuable content on your website, you can charge people to access it. This can be done through subscriptions or memberships, which give users exclusive access to certain content or features.
When designing your website, it is crucial that you strike a combination of attracting, informing, showing, authenticating, and enticing your audience.
They must see enough to make them want to reach out and engage you further.
That’s almost the entire purpose of the website after all.
So here are 5 things your website must have:
Attractive Landing Page (Home Page)
The landing page, or home page, is the first page your visitors see when they view your website.
And you know what they say about first impressions – you never get a second chance to make one.
That first impression either makes the viewer interested in seeing more, or tells them you’re not good enough.
The images or videos used must be stunning, or in any way visually attractive enough to capture your audience’s attention.
Visuals are easier to digest, and they elicit emotions in us like excitement, interest, and optimism.
They also make it easier to get attached or remember something.
User-oriented copy
We love talking about ourselves, so most of the time you will find that even our approach to marketing our business is focused on us – what we do, who we are, and how long we’ve existed.
But your audience doesn’t even care about that, at least not initially.
They care about their wants, needs, and problems.
So if you want their attention, focus on them instead of focusing on you.
The expressions on your website should be user-oriented and provide a solution to a pain point.
What do your viewers gain by giving you their precious time?
What can you do for them and why should they scroll any further?
Examples of the work you’ve done
As the saying goes, ‘Actions speak louder than words”.
You may be the most talented person in your field – a certified genius who could solve riddles at 6 months old, capable of constructing a floating city- but without demonstrable experience, most clients will overlook you.
Even after all the honeyed words and attractive headlines.
“What shows?”, will be the question in their minds.
This is where displaying your portfolio comes in.
CUSTOMER REVIEWS
As humans, we instinctively abide by social proof. We look at the behavior of others in a given situation and do the same.
For example, if you go to a party and find everyone seated on the left side of the room – leaving the right side empty – you most likely will conform and do the same.
Similarly, seeing many people excited about a product or service makes you want to try it out.
And that is why it is crucial to have some of your customer reviews displayed on your website.
The entire experience of those other customers- what they wanted, what they got, what you were like as a service provider – is what emboldens your new audience to try you out.
CONTACT INFORMATION
After reliably demonstrating your ability and experience in providing a solution to your audience’s pain point, you need to provide a way for them to reach out to you for further engagement.
The easiest and most basic way to do that is by adding a section containing a brief message, and then your social media handles, email, street address, and phone number.
You could also go a step beyond and
Leave a form they can use to email you directly from the page.
Pinpoint your location for them with navigation using Google Maps.
So there you have it. 5 things that will delight your website visitors and make it easier for them to reach out to you for further discussion.
Using the capabilities of the internet, we can communicate with other people across the world in real-time, without having to board a plane or boat, or having to drive to wherever they are.
Resultantly, we can pitch our ideas, goods, or services; negotiate, receive payment, and ship orders to clients in a matter of minutes – conducting business effectively within the comfort of our offices or homes.
To do this, however, you need a website.
Why exactly do you need a website for your business? Here are 10 reasons :
1. Online office
Your website functions as an online office for your business, in a summarized, highly portable format.
People from all over the world can visit your office and see what you have to offer just by typing your domain name into a browser.
And just like that you have a global audience of billions, with no limitations to the number of people you can reach.
2. Credibility badge
These days, the first thing people ask for when you talk about your business is your website.
If you’re a company trying to get investors or market share, you will run into this request almost every time.
And if you don’t have the website, chances are you won’t get the deal.
Having one shows a considerable degree of seriousness and even traction in your growth as a business.
3. Visible to anyone at any time
Your physical office is located on a particular road, in a particular town, and closes at a particular time.
On the other hand, your website is available to anyone, anywhere, and has no closing time.
All those clients you were missing out on because they came after closing hours, can see your online office even at midnight.
4. No need for clients to move in person to see your goods and services
People love convenience. They want their lives to be as easy as possible. And the internet has made this a reality.
Now, no matter what we want, we just go online and look for it.
If I have a wedding coming up and I’m looking for decorators, I won’t drive all the way from Jinja to Kampala to see what’s in your store. I’ll simply check online for a store with what I want.
5. Allows you to sell products online
The biggest companies have already been doing this for a while.
Look at Amazon. It makes sales worth billions of dollars every year to clients all over the world.
Jumia right here in Uganda has taken over online shopping, closely followed by the likes of Jiji and Kikuubo.
KFC, Javas, and Food Hub all sell food online and provide delivery.
Before committing to making a purchase, most people look to see how others think of the business providing the service or commodity.
They want to be sure the person or business they’re giving their money to is trustworthy and will deliver as expected.
This is where it pays to have a well-built website with testimonials and customer reviews from your previous clients, which speak for themselves and get you new clients.
7. encourage customers to contact you
A website is a great place to make your contact information easily available to potential customers.
You can even publish your contact information at the top or bottom on every single page.
Websites also come with a ‘Contact Us’ form that invites visitors to reach out to you just by filling in their message or inquiry and email address.
8. Make it easy FOR CLIENTS TO LOCATE YOU
The best website designers in Uganda create websites that come with integrations to Google Maps, which provides a pinpoint location embedded on the page for clients to get to your premises easily.
They can view what street your business is on, nearby landmarks, and any other information they may need for the journey.
Google Maps even allows them to simply tag the location as their immediate destination and guides them step-by-step to your door.
9. Makes it easy to market your brand
The main result of all these advantages? It makes it easy for you, and others, to market your brand.
No need for people to come to your office, or even speak to you directly.
Wherever they are, whatever time, they can use your website to see your goods and services, contact you, place orders, and even recommend you.
If your website is well-built and your services are great, your brand will be marketed for you even as you sleep.
10. A website ensures your success over the long term
So if you’re lucky enough to get website visitors, you have to make the experience of viewing your website as smooth and painless as possible.
This increases engagement, reduces bounce rates, and gives Google a favorable impression of your website – which can lead to a higher search ranking later on.
So what exactly do you need to focus on to get started?
How to optimize your site and get more website traffic
1. Looks
Make sure your website is attractive, well-designed, and simple.
You want to wow your visitors with stunning images and a smooth feel to the viewing experience without clogging the page.
Less is more, especially here.
2. Focus on mobile.
If you didn’t already know, Google now indexes and ranks your website based on the mobile version of the site – given that a larger number of people now browse using mobile devices instead of desktops.
How well it runs on mobile devices is referred to as ‘mobile-friendliness’.
The better the experience, the better the chances of ranking higher and more website traffic.
3. Navigation
Imagine being stuck on a site, struggling to find the section you’re looking for. Would you keep trying, or would you go to the next alternative provider?
It’s the same thing with your website. Even your most interested viewers will abandon your website if it’s difficult to find what they came for.
So make it easy for viewers to find what they need.
Have an organized layout with clearly defined sections, and add page links to all the relevant parts of your site.
These can be in the navigation bars at the top and bottom of the website, as well as within the page content.
4. Speed
Remember the attention span?
If a consumer is searching for an item and clicks on your website, and it takes forever to load – with all your fancy images and videos – they’ll quit and check out the next website.
That not only results in a loss of clientele, it also hurts your ranking on Google.
Naturally, you want to impress your viewers with beautiful images.
However, images take time to load – with more time required for every increase in size and resolution.
Solution? Resize and compress those images before uploading them.
This not only improves loading speed but also reduces data consumption by viewers – making your website a great viewing experience for your clients.
6. Attractive, user-focused headlines
Yes, it is your website, and you want to tell the world about you and what you do.
Butno one is interested in anything other than how to solve their problems.
So switch the focus from you to your audience.
Tell them what they can benefit from using your products and services.
7. Product / Service description
Be clear and detailed in describing your services or products.
Use easy-to-use language so all viewers can understand and get the message.
Tell them how your product works.
Show pictures of examples where possible.
8. Social proof
Get testimonials and reviews from your clients, and then display them on your website.
These serve as proof that your company really does exist, does what it says it does, and does it well.
9. Content
Study your audience.
Find out their needs and day-to-day challenges.
Then create useful, engaging content on how to help them, without necessarily asking them to buy.
These freebies will get you traffic, and traffic definitely results in sales.
10. Backlinks
Backlinks are links on other websites that link back to your website.
For example, if someone read this amazing article about how reading can change your life, and wanted to share it so they posted the link on their own website, they’d have created a backlink to my website.
This new link allows viewers of their website to access my site through those links.
So you can ask your readers to share your content, or you can reach out to other websites in your niche and see if they can link to you.
Note: Google also uses backlinks as a ranking factor, with a high number of quality backlinks required to establish Experience, Trust, and Authority as a domain.
11. Advertise
Create advertising campaigns using Google Ads or Social Media to get as many people as possible to see your beautiful, well-optimized website.
By this point, your site has everything the viewers need and more.
Almost all your visitors will leave with a good impression, leading to return visits and referrals.
So, that’s how you can create a great user experience for your viewers and get more website traffic.
Also, keep in mind, that whatever makes your viewers happy, makes Google happy – essentially performing Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for your website.
