So we’ve all been there. You’re sitting in a meeting and someone unveils a webpage or website a group has been working on… and you think, ‘Yuck’ but feel like you can’t say that without sounding like a complete jerkface.

What we need to do is talk about the different *kinds* of sucking that we can objectively talk about. Because just because you hate the color purple or Raleway font, doesn’t mean the whole website is terrible. Below we’ll taking about the different kinds of sucking and how to show objectively if it indeed does or not. Essentially these fall into two groups: a) testing alternatives and b) looking at data for the existing, potentially sucky website.

Sucking #1: Inaccessibility
How to tell if it may suck in this way: Hard to read text, something that should be obvious doesn’t feel obvious

Show suckage: Use accessibility tool like: https://wave.webaim.org/

Sucking #2: Slow/Disfunctional
How to tell if it may suck in this way: Something doesn’t work (ex: you try a site search and it pulls up irrelevant or no results) or site loads very slow.

Show suckage: Show website speed tool (like https://tools.pingdom.com) or screenflow of the thing that isn’t working.

Sucking #3: Bad/Unclear UX
How to tell if it may suck in this way: The page has a lot of stuff in it, multiple buttons, you show it to your friend not in the company and they think it seems confusing.

Show suckage: Run two ad sets (one going to the website and one lead generation ad) and/or hold user testing sessions.
More about Lead Gen ads:

More about Lead Gen ads versus other kinds of online ads: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WA6dunGyRn0&ab_channel=BreakingEvenCommunications (a bit more background info)Suckage

#4: Inconsistent branding.
How to tell if it may suck in this way: Clicking from social media, email newsletter template, or other online locations to the website it seems unclear that they are the same company. Different logo uploaded in the Google My Business listing versus the actual site.

Show suckage: Show userflow from other online locations (referring websites and social media) to the website, showing the visitors didn’t stay at all.

Suckage #5: Lack of conversions
If you sell things on your website, you can show conversion rate. If not, you can show things like lack of time on the site, lack of inquiry form completions, etc. compared to data from a similar project/business. (This is where working with a marketing firm can be helpful, perspective on your data!)

In short, just telling someone the website sucks is probably not going to win you any points at work…. but pointing out actual issues with the website will not only help it suck less (in your opinion) but also make the overall site look and work better for everyone. Making something suck less without looking like the bad guy? We call that a win-win!

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