What is a webshite, and how to avoid ending up with one.

We work with a lot of clients that come to us with webshites.

Unfortunately, it’s far too common – people commission a ‘WordPress Expert’ to build a new WordPress site for their business, and what they end up with is something that achieves nothing.

The problem is that you don’t often find out that your website is dead in the water until several months after it goes live.

How do you know if you’ve got a webshite?

You can do many things to check your site’s build and optimisation quality.

These are technical tools that will give your website a score:

Page Speed Insights.

Head over to Google’s tool and run your site through the test.

You will get a score out of 100 for both mobile and desktop versions.

Ideally, you want these scores north of 90/100 for both versions.

GT Metrix.

This is another tool that does the same thing, handy if you want a second opinion.

Pingdom.

This is another site that does, well, the same, but it gives you a waterfall report on your site’s loading prowess.

This tool helps to identify if your website’s hosting is at fault.

Interpreting the results.

No flies on our site! This is one of the benefits of having a bespoke-built website.

The results will speak for themselves – low scores mean your site needs some work, but it doesn’t always mean you’ve got a crap website; it means it needs some optimisation (see below)

Other signs your website is far from perfect.

There’s no point in having a website if it doesn’t deliver new leads for your business (whatever they look like for your business).

Keywords.

The Google search console will give you data on what keywords your site ranks for and the traffic you get for your site.

This is easy to add to your website. Using Google’s own Site Kit plugin automates the process for you and makes it quick and simple.

Once installed, you can use Search Console to view impressions and clicks on your website and analyze your ranking for keywords.

This data will give you insights into your site straight from the horse’s mouth: if you are not ranking for much or getting click-throughs, it’s another sign your site is underperforming.

Common sense.

Another thing you can do is to ask yourself how many enquiries come from your website.

Phone calls can be difficult to track unless you ask new business enquiries directly, but things like form submissions and emails (if you use a specific email on your site) can be tracked.

If you are not getting many, your website is not performing as well as it should.

What do you do if you’ve got a webshite?

The first thing to do is to work out why this has happened.

Assuming you have admin access to your website, you can do a few things to understand what’s happening with your site.

Your Theme.

Go to your website admin, Appearance > Themes, and look at your active theme.

• Is it up to date?
• Is it an off-the-shelf theme or a custom WP theme?
• Is it one of the WordPress default themes like Twenty Twenty-Four?

The best place to start with this is to ask the person who built the site for you in the first place.

If you don’t know code yourself, it can be tricky to ascertain exactly what’s happening with your theme. If you need help, get in touch, and we will run a free audit.

Crap themes are often the major cause of underperforming sites, so it’s important to rule this out as an issue before you do anything else.

Plugins.

Just as too many apps on your phone slow it down, too many plugins can also slow down your WordPress site.

Take a look at the number of plugins you have installed on your website—if you have more than 10-15 plugins, it’s probably too many, and someone has been very trigger-happy installing them.

If you have loads installed, an audit will be required to determine what does what so you can reduce the number and streamline your site.

Hosting.

Cheap hosting can often make a well-built site perform poorly. If your hosting is slow, your website will be slow, and this will directly affect your rankings.

We recommend spending at least £30–£40 per month on hosting your site. You pay more for your mobile, but your website is equally as important – better hosting means a faster site.

What happens when it’s not your website’s fault?

Quite often, it’s not your website’s fault that it’s performing poorly; it’s yours.

Uploading large PNG files, writing low-quality content, and asking your developers to do things they advise against can also result in a low-performing website.

To ensure the health of your site, it’s important to learn the basics of technical optimisation, website management, and content production.

Publishing reams of low-quality content is a way to ensure your site doesn’t surface in the search.

If you want some help with your website if it’s not performing as well as you think it should, get in touch to arrange an initial meeting.

To avoid sabotaging your site, I recommend you get to grips with the following:

• Image optimisation
• Content research and planning
• Keyword research
• Content structure
• Internal linking (we built a handy SEO plugin for this)
• The basics of on-page SEO
• The basics of off-page SEO
• Yoast or Rank Math

These skill sets are often too much to add to an already busy schedule, so if you don’t have time, don’t half-bake it; employ experts to do it for you; it’s money well spent.

When optimising your site, it’s often better not to do anything than to do things incorrectly, as mistakes can take months to show up and twice as long to correct.

How did you end up with a webshite in the first place?

In addition to everything above, there are other reasons why your website might not perform as you had hoped.

• Budget: If you did not invest enough in the right WordPress team in the first place, this could be the cause – pay peanuts, get monkeys is 100% true in WordPress development.
• Lack of brief and clear objectives: A crystal clear brief is crucial for all website projects; if one didn’t exist at the start, that’s what got you where you are now.
• An inexperienced developer: Choosing an agency to work with can be difficult, especially as many WordPress agency websites look very professional but do not represent the service you receive. Unfortunately, you picked the wrong people to work with.
• A salesperson: You got sold to by someone promising one thing and delivering something completely different.

Tips for avoiding a webshite.

How to avoid getting a bad website starts with due diligence.

Asking the right questions and checking the companies you are considering for the project sets you off on the right foot.

1. Research the company at Companies House. By looking at the agency’s financials, you can get a good idea of its success and whether what it says on its website checks out. The two main things to look for here are the Shareholder’s Funds—this figure should be increasing (showing growth), and also the number of employees—often, unscrupulous agencies show large teams on their website but number their employees as 1–2 on their annual returns.
2. Ask the agency how they build sites; do they use off-the-shelf themes, bootstrap, and so on? Do they use Elementor, Divi, or other page builders (all of which slow your site down)?
3. Ask them what plugins they use and how any licences are managed.
4. As for references or speaking directly to past clients – this will give you a real insight into how actual projects went.
5. Get a detailed explanation of their process, what they will need from you, and what they will bring to the project.
6. Ask them what tools they use to audit websites and ensure their build is quality-checked.
7. Ask them if they do the work or get other third parties to do it.

Watch out for these red flags.

If you encounter any of the following, consider them red flags and potentially look for another agency.

1. Their team on the website is larger than the number of employees listed on their annual report on Companies House.
2. They don’t have a process they can explain efficiently and show you.
3. They are 100% focused on design rather than content.
4. They don’t do SEO.
5. They don’t provide post-live support.
6. You don’t get it if you ask for a reference from someone who left them a review.
7. They use Elementor, Divi or page-builders – these people colour in websites; they don’t build them with bespoke code.
8. They have large brand names on their website but are unable to provide references or substantiate the work.
9. They are freelancers masquerading as multi-person businesses (there’s nothing wrong with freelancers, but if the agency is just a one-man band, it can cause delivery issues, especially for larger projects).

Wrap up.

Having a bad website is not the end of the world, but it does mean that you will not get a return on your investment, and it will be more expensive to remedy the poor work.

Depending on the size and age of your site, this can take significant time to fix, especially if your SEO is also poor: six months of bad SEO can take twelve months to put right.

Checking the companies you work with before you commission them and asking the right questions are the most important things to do before any money changes hands.