For business owners, quality control is crucial for website traffic

Quality control issues have been around for many years. In fact, I took a course on quality control when I was at Georgia Tech getting my industrial engineering degree 50 years ago.

At that time, quality control was production-driven. We dealt with measuring the failure rate in the production process and then doing everything we could to reduce that rate.

Today, quality control needs to go beyond production processes. Websites, for example, should be subject to quality control, but most are not.

For many companies, websites have become the primary way of transacting business. For this reason, it is critical that websites be designed and formatted so that it’s easy for the customer to use.

For example, I recently went online to apply for a new credit card. After spending about 15 minutes on the first institution’s website, I gave up and went on to the next. There, it took less than two minutes to complete the application and less than five to get approved. Where the first site made me type the same information three times and answer what I thought were ridiculous questions, the second made it much simpler.

When I shared my experience with the CEO at the first institution, he said he had not received any complaints about the application process. I asked him how many people gave up without finishing the application, but he didn’t have an answer.

Of course, this isn’t meant to be about credit cards or application processes. Rather, it is about ensuring business owners have adequate quality control on their website.

As the first credit card provider in my example shows, simply having an online presence is not enough. Websites should follow the “KISS” principle – Keep It Super Simple – and testing is the way to ensure yours earns a high score.

So often I hear entrepreneurs say how proud they are of their new website designs. But when I ask if they have used their website to purchase something, they usually say they have not.

Every page of every website must be tested (or quality evaluated) from the customer’s point of view, and if it is not simple to use, it must be fixed.

My No. 1 suggestion for evaluating the quality of a website is to have prospective customers use it, then compare it with those of their competitors. Have them run through all the sites, then tell you what they like and do not like about yours.

Another thing I have seen folks do is try making a purchase or completing a transaction with unusual information so they can see how their site responds. You may be very surprised at your results.

Now go out and make sure you have a mechanism in place to evaluate the quality of your website.

This story was originally published January 19, 2017 at 12:22 PM with the headline "For business owners, quality control is crucial for website traffic."