Does Your Website Suck?

Your website sucks, but it’s probably not your fault.

We know as well as anyone and better than most that building a website that doesn’t suck is hard.

As of today, there are nearly 1.2 billion websites on the world wide web. Since half of them are, by definition, below average, that means that at least 600,000,000 websites suck. But the truth is that most “above average” websites suck, so that number is really much higher.

We’re tired of websites that suck, so we’re taking the time to write this five-part series on why they suck. Expect them to contain plenty of what not to do and a decent amount of what to do to make your site better. Expect them to be long, well-researched, and full of strong opinions, loosely held. We hope to complete one of these a week.

We believe that a website is the best tool for results-driven marketing and each part in the series will be viewed through this lens. The following five sections will become links as each section gets written:

1. Your Online Strategy Sucks – A website is a marketing tactic, and tactics support a strategy. Chances are you launched your site without an online strategy, which is why it isn’t generating business. Bonus: the internet is not the Yellow Pages.
2. Your Content Sucks – Content is king and good content is the key to good search results.
3. Your Design Sucks – Research shows that users will make judgments about your site within 1/20th of a second. Design matters.
4. Your User Experience Sucks – Your users expect a lot from a website. If your user interface and user experience suck, they will leave.
5. Your Development Sucks – Optimization for speed and search engines will make or break an otherwise decent website. Don’t neglect this.

We hope that this series will be both informative and entertaining. We also hope that it will encourage you to figure out why your website sucks and do something to make it great, like hiring us.

Ian Kennedy

Strategist

Ian has worked in design and development for twenty years and has formed opinions about both.

When he isn’t obsessing and ranting about strategy, design, and development, he’s juggling four kids, teaching programming for a local STEAM school, and working on AthFest 2017. His websites suck too, but not as bad as yours. He likes parties with snacks.