10-point Checklist to Boost Your Cybersecurity Website’s Performance
For small cybersecurity companies, your website isn’t just the face of your business — it’s also a critical tool for attracting visitors and converting them into leads. If it’s firing on all cylinders, your website is a powerful hub of your digital marketing. If it isn’t, then you’re missing out on new client opportunities every day.
Your cybersecurity website is the most important part of your company’s online presence.
If you aren’t getting the results you want from your cybersecurity website, it could be time to make some changes. But how do you know where to start? How do you identify the areas that are underperforming? The very thought of overhauling your website can be overwhelming — especially when you have a business to run.
Getting your website into shape doesn’t have to be a game of trial and error. Good Gnus has created a 10-point checklist that clarifies exactly where to focus your website improvements for your cybersecurity company. Let’s take a look at them.
1) Is it immediately obvious what we do?
Pop quiz: What’s wrong with these website headlines?
- Confidence as a Service
- Industry-leading specialists for over 25 years
- Confidence you can count on
- Partners in protection
- Next-gen solutions for today’s challenges
Actually, there’s a lot wrong with them. But in this case, we have no idea what any of these businesses actually does. If your visitors have to scroll down your homepage or dig through your content to understand exactly what it is you do, you’ll lose them every time.
Remember, just because you know your business, that doesn’t mean your website visitors do. Make it painfully obvious, from the very first glance at your site, what it is that you do.
2) How are we different from the competition?
Your difference isn’t your experience, your price, or your authority. Everyone in your industry has been around longer, does it better, understands it more, or sells it for less. None of that makes you different, it makes you the same.
More likely, your differentiation is the way you do what you do. It might have to do with your mission, your ethics, or your culture. It could be a process that no one else follows.
Figure out why your customers love you and stay with you, and make that part of your central messaging on your website.
3) How does our website look and feel?
If it’s been more than four or five years since you’ve updated your website, it’s time for a facelift. Web design styles are continually evolving, and it doesn’t take long for that slick new design to look old and clunky.
Take a fresh look at your website, as if you’re seeing it for the first time. Compare it to competitors’ sites. If your website is starting to look old and tired to you, you can bet it looks that way to your customers.
4) How does this website build trust?
It’s important for any business to build customer trust. In the cybersecurity industry, it’s everything. You won’t gain new clients unless they trust you to protect their company from threats they can’t see.
Infosec company websites that build trust are more likely to help boost your sales. Some important trust factors that should be on your website include:
- Certification badges — What security standards are you compliant with? What industry certifications have you earned
- Industry awards — what authorities have recognized your company?
- Social proof — Customer testimonials are powerfully compelling
- Proven results — Display hard numbers to show undisputable effectiveness
- Case studies — Show prospects how you’ve achieved specific successes
5) How enjoyable is it to use our website?
Believe it or not, this may be even more important than building trust. If your visitors can’t use your website easily, they’ll give up and move onto the next company on Google’s list. Your customers can’t just trust you, they need to like you, too.
By “like,” I don’t mean they’re saying, “Boy, that Joe Smith sure is a great guy. I’ll bet we could be best friends.” Although, if it happens, great.
Instead, I mean that they like the experience they have when they interact with your company. Your website is fast and easy to navigate, and visitors get the information they’re looking for. If they submit a contact form, you reply quickly. Your messaging resonates with your prospects and they feel like you get them.
Go through your website as if you were a prospect and ask yourself, “If I were a potential customer visiting this website for the first time, how would I feel about the experience?”
6) How do visitors become leads?
Every visitor to your website is like a first date. First dates are great and all, but they don’t mean a thing if you don’t get that ring. What you want is a commitment.
To get from the first date to the altar, you have to ask for a second date, then a third date, and so on — you can’t just pop the question (usually). Same thing when you’re trying to land a new client. Your website is the first date, and your contact form is the proposal. What do you have in between those two?
Ideally, you should have various calls to action (CTAs) on your home page and throughout your website. Help your visitors take the next step in their relationship with your brand, whatever that next step might be.
Maybe you have a cheat sheet they can download. Perhaps you offer them a case study. You might have webinars to attend or ebooks to download.
Often, it makes sense to capture contact information in exchange for those resources. Now you can start an ongoing conversation with them through email campaigns and, eventually, sales calls.
See how you’re building a relationship that leads towards a sale? Make sure your website has the right elements in place to make that happen.
7) Do we have tons of valuable content and are we continually adding to it?
The thing about a website is that you can’t just build it and wait for traffic to pour in. It takes a lot of work to attract visitors to your website, and a big part of it is creating LOTS of valuable content — and then creating MORE of that valuable content.
Search engines (and humans) want to see new content. Your visitors want to get the latest and greatest industry insights, especially in an industry like cybersecurity, which is so dynamic and continually evolving.
And because Google knows that your customers are looking for new and valuable information, it ranks your website higher when you’re cranking out VALUABLE content (not the cheap and easy stuff).
The easiest way to keep producing new content is to publish a blog and post new articles on a regular basis — every week or two at least. Also make sure that your other website pages are up to date with relevant information.
8) How does the website perform?
Nobody likes a slow website, but page speed is more important than you might think. Twenty-five percent of website visitors say they will abandon a website that takes longer than four seconds to load. Almost half of users won’t revisit a poorly performing website.
When users abandon a site before it loads, it gets logged as a bounce. High bounce rates tell search engines that visitors aren’t finding what they’re looking for, which affects ranking on search results.
Check your website’s performance on desktop and mobile devices. Test your website on HubSpot’s Website Grader (mostly desktop) and Google’s Chrome Extension, Lighthouse (mobile). Both tools will give you good insights into the performance of your website — including load speed, SEO, security, mobile, and accessibility.
9) Is our website mobile friendly?
Speaking of mobile performance, be sure to use Lighthouse to verify that your website looks good on a phone and is easy to use. More than half of all internet traffic is mobile, and has been since 2017. If your website isn’t built for mobile devices, you’re alienating the majority of your customers.
Test your site on various mobile devices, including tablets. Ask yourself:
- How does the site look on mobile devices?
- Are the tap targets (buttons and links) large enough and spaced far enough apart for easy tapping?
- Does the site’s layout make sense on a mobile device?
- Are images sized appropriately?
- Is the text easy to read?
- Will a customer enjoy spending time on your site if they’re using a phone?
Also use the Lighthouse report to make sure your website is giving visitors a positive experience.
10) What’s in the footer?
It’s lonely at the bottom — especially if you’re a website footer. Nobody scrolls all the way to the bottom of your website, and no one really cares about the footer content. But that footer is important real estate, and it should contain some vital information.
Search engines pay attention to your footer, and anyone with any kind of security or privacy questions will check it out as part of their vetting process — and in your world, that’s a lot of people.
So what should be in the footer of your website? Check for these elements:
- Company name, address, phone number
- Social media icons that link to your profile pages
- A map of your location, even if you operate virtually
- Links to your privacy policy, terms of service, and site map
- Up-to-date copyright info
- Website menu (recommended)
- Industry certifications (optional)
You might choose to add other elements in the footer, which is fine. Just don’t make it too busy or difficult for visitors to use.
Jumpstart Your Website’s Performance
Getting your cybersecurity website into shape doesn’t have to be a black box. Walk through this 10-point checklist and you’ll be able to diagnose your most important website issues to resolve.
Don’t have the bandwidth to audit your website? Good news! Good Gnus can do it for you. We’re fast, and you’ll have a detailed report complete with observations, opportunities, and recommendations to improve your website’s performance.
