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5 reasons why 80% of small and mid-size businesses in Atlantic Canada lose their potential income

Maksym Bezorudko / 07.21.20171340

5 reasons why 80% of small and mid-size businesses in Atlantic Canada lose their potential income

Atlantic Canada is a great region to do business and there is quite large amount of companies that have over $50 million of annual revenue. But, a lot of businesses here doesn't succeed or don't earn as much as they could. We want to share with you results of our research in the sphere of web design and online marketing.

This research was done prior to our decision to open our second office in New Brunswick and our relocation to Saint John. It showed the state of the web sphere in the region reflected both problems and predicted trends for the future. I'm quite confident in saying this, because this situation reminded me situation in my own city back in 2009 when we just started our business and nobody believed that company's website may become their main source of income.

So, we chose 5 random spheres (Dentistry, Production, Lawyers services, Real estate and different small businesses) and analyzed 10 websites in each one. Results in some way shocked us, because 40 of the 50 websites analyzed had the same problems. Those problems were significant, because it was impossible to find those websites in a simple search and that made it difficult to turn its visitors into customers.

TOP 5 problems why website owners lose their potential income

  1. Outdated Layout of Website

    It takes me only few seconds to decide wether I stay on some website or not. When layout design is poor, outdated or overloaded with information and you can’t focus on or easily find information on the website, you close it. Conversely, if page layout design looks great, you get more engaged and in most cases will recommend visiting that website to your friends who are interested in such products and services. 
     
  2. Not Responsive (Mobile-Friendly) Design

    It becomes a big problem when you open some website on your phone and everything is small: it is inconvenient to read text, it takes time to push the button that is too small, part of text on the page is out of your screen and the biggest problem here, that significantly lowers conversion rate is phone number that isn’t clickable and you can’t make a call directly from website. f you need to select it, copy it, paste in exact screen on your phone and than make a call. It is weird.
    To make search results cleaner for mobile users, Google implemented special algorithm that decreased ranking of websites that are not mobile friendly.
     
  3. Wrong Structure of Content

    For SEO purposes it is very important that each product or service should be on separate landing page and should be found for no more than 2 clicks. Our research showed, that 60% of websites have all services described on one page and structure of 15% of analyzed websites show they are too complex, so visitors need to make 3 or more clicks to get to a final page. This is a big SEO mistake that makes it impossible for websites to hit TOP 20 in Google or Bing SERP. As a result, such websites couldn't be found by those looking for such products or services.
     
  4. On-Page SEO Optimization isn't done

    That means: technical files of websites are not optimized, pages don't contain proper keywords, there are some mistakes that make website ranking lower. As result, such websites receive less traffic from organic search and less amount of leads.
     
  5. Wrong Way of Advertisement

    Some business owners still believe that advertising in newspapers works and they continue to pay big money for this. I'll give you head-up that in my country (Ukraine) a lot of newspapers dissapeared over last 3 years and most of them went online.

Another example is paying to big platforms (such as yellowpages, yelp, 411.ca and etc.) for premium profiles or ads. Those platforms are good for SEO to receive links, but not for receiving clicks, calls or enquiries on email. I think that money should be invested in the website, as it is real mechanism that could bring your company leads and new clients.

I understand that there is a lot of work to be done and the Maritimes really needs skilled specialists who can help businesses to solve all these problems. Because those 10 of 50 websites that were ok, were made by web agencies from Toronto, Vancouver or even in US. But why not from NB, NS, NL or PEI? So, we decided to accept the suggestion from ONB to open our second office in Saint John and help to change this situation make our contribution in regional growth!

If you want us to analyze your website and give you our advice on how to improve its performance, feel free to drop us a line using contact form or just send me message on Facebook.

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Tags:Marketing

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