Why isn’t my website working? (3 things that might be going wrong)

Reading Time: 6 minutes

Have you been asking yourself, “why isn’t my website working?” Look, I’ll level with ya: There are several things business owners don’t get told about owning a website. I’m going to share three with you in this episode, and how we can avoid issues. One of these issues can completely prevent customers from contacting you! 😱 Stick around and enjoy. I hope you find this episode insightful.

Listen on: Apple Podcasts.

Transcript

Hey would you buy yourself a really nice car but not get it serviced?

No! You’d get it serviced right?

Well, websites are like that too. And no one tells you that.

So today I’m going to talk about three common things that pop up in website ownership for business owners that they may not have known about; And some things that I do to get around them.

Reason 1 why your website isn’t working: You neglected security

So thing number one is website security.

This is stuff like making sure that it’s backed up and secure and that hackers can’t get in.

And you might be thinking, “But wait Lou! I’m such a small guy like who’s going to care about hacking me?” Look, the thing about that is that it’s not really about how famous or you know the scope of your business. The thing that hackers are looking for is easy opportunities — low hanging opportunities.

And this is a bit like having your having a small shop a small shop front and not putting any security measures in. ‘cause oftentimes as in real life thieves can be opportunistic, and the same can happen with websites. So as I said it’s not really about how famous you are but how easy it is to hack into your website. And hackers are relying on you having weak passwords or or out of date systems to do what they want to do.

This is something that is avoidable though! And I take care of website maintenance and updates and backups for my clients, so that you don’t have to worry about it.

Reason 2: Your website isn’t working in the sense that people can’t reach you

Now, the next thing is contact forms not working. And this is again something that is entirely avoidable. But it’s also something that is easily overlooked.

There can be circumstances where a contact form can break. For instance there’s extra steps missing in the setup that are preventing you from being notified a message has been sent through your website.

This is a bit like installing a doorbell on the front of your shop, but it’s not working. People come up to your front door and press the doorbell… But because it’s broken you don’t realise it’s being pressed. And they’re not getting a response from the doorbell. So it says “open” on the front but it’s or that Google says that you’re open but nobody’s answering the door! That’s really frustrating and confusing!
So the customer assumes that you’re not looking out for them. And you are totally unaware that the doorbell isn’t ringing.

Again, this is something that is avoidable and it is something that I can quite happily and easily fix for you.

Reason 3: No one is visiting your website – So, I don’t blame you if you think it’s a waste of resources

The third thing that you might not get told about owning a website is that uh people will not come automatically.

Just uploading and hitting the publish button doesn’t cause a flood of people to come.

There are things that you need to do regularly and and keep checking on regularly to make sure that your presence online is visible and that people can find you on Google. They can find you where they’re looking…

And now in this day and age with the advent of AI generated answers it is a clear reminder that we need to keep in touch and keep an ear to the ground in terms of how technology is changing. And we need to observe how people are changing their habits and their ways of discovering content and websites online.

Because of AI answers, something that may have worked a year ago in terms of getting your website to appear on Google may not be working now. If this sounds really overwhelming or something that you don’t have time for, don’t worry. Again this is something that I’m quite happy to help you out with.

Summary – Why your website isn’t working, and what you can do about it

All of these things…

Your tech updates,
Broken contact forms,
Keeping your website visible so making sure that your SEO plan is working.

These are things that I have seen business owners get frustrated with. It can be really annoying when they catch you by surprise. And sometimes it can be very expensive to fix.

I would rather stay on the side of prevention rather than having to fix something that’s been entirely derailed. So don’t worry this is something that I help my clients with.

If you’re wondering if your website is doing its job properly… Or you just want someone to explain it to you in normal human language and not gobbledegook tech words then reach out.

Feel free to send me a message and we can chat about it.

But wait there’s more! (How long should a piece of content be?)

So I looked at the run time for this podcast episode and I saw that it was about 5-ish minutes. And was like; “Wow that was pretty dang succinct.”

But I don’t want to make up some weird rules about how it’s meant to be a certain length or anything like that.

I often talk about this: When it comes to deciding how long your website content should be like… It should be enough.

You shouldn’t have to like force it up to 5,000 words or force it into a video if you don’t want it to be a video

An update about me and my services

Life update: As of March this year I’ve been full-time consulting.

I no longer work for someone else.

At this point in time I’m open to working on website redesigns. So if you have got a website that you’ve built yourself and you’re ready to step into something a bit more serious I can help you with that.

As well as websites, I’m offering SEO now! So if you’d like to get more visible on Google, I can help you with that

What about paid ads?

If you’ve heard some of my earlier episodes I may have talked about doing um Facebook ads, Meta ads. And occasionally I’ll talk about Google Ads. That is still a thing that I’m capable of. But I’m not offering it at the moment, and I’ve got some pretty important reasons why.

It’s got nothing to do with how I think my capabilities are. And it’s got nothing to do with it not being effective. Facebook ads and Google Ads are still totally effective! But I’ve got reasons why I’m not offering that, so I will include a link to those details in this description.

Can I ask a favour? (Or two?)

While you’re still here I would just also like to ask a little favor:

Actually two things!

First, if you thought that this was useful or you thought it might be of use to somebody I’d really love it if you could share this with them.

Second, if you’re out and about… Whether you’re at business networking or you’re in a Facebook group and… The topic is like:

“Should I do boosted posts or should I do SEO?” Or…
“You should get some backlinks”

Or if I start talking about something like backlinks, on-page, domain, hosting…

If you hear me or any person in this online marketing space say something and you’re not sure what it means for you please let me know!

Why? Because I would love to hear from you! What sort of content would benefit you?

At the end of the day I could spend hours talking about Facebook ads, SEO, and websites.

And I’ve got so much to say and so much to share!

But the problem is that it’s not that I don’t think my information is good.

It’s just that I need to know what you’re thinking. And the language that I use to describe doing stuff with SEO um might be totally different to what you or someone like you is looking for!

So if anything pops into your mind that you think “Oh I I don’t know what that means but I want to know.” Or “I want to get a second opinion… Somebody said I should be doing lead magnets… And this other guy said I shouldn’t be doing lead magnets…” Like let me know and I will schedule that for an upcoming episode!

If you’d like I could also give you credit for asking that question! So there’s a backlink for you if you’re into getting back links! And yeah, I can talk more about backlinks if you want to know about that!

In any case I would love to hear from you

I love getting feedback about these episodes.

I get told often that I make things easy to understand, so I’d love to do more of that!

Yeah, reach out to me. And I will see you in the next episode.