Low-Performing Websites Throttle Growth Potential for Printers

Most B2B and B2C print service providers have company websites that compromise their growth potential when they don’t meet Google’s criteria for five key performance metrics.

Low-performing websites jeopardize the company’s ability to capture prospects organically from search results while also delivering a poor user experience that underserves visitors and dilutes the brand.

An analysis of over 60 websites for print service providers listed in Printing Impressions’ 2022 list of Top 300 Printing Companies showed only three of them achieve scores above 90 (the threshold for “Good” scores in the four assessment categories).

Some printers’ websites did score above 90 in two or more categories.

Websites for Worzalla, Impact of Minnesota, and AWT Labels & Packaging scored over 90 for Performance, Accessibility, Best Practices, and SEO.

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Companies that optimize their websites and achieve high scores position themselves to outperform competitors in search results. This organically funnels more search traffic to the site since search users are far more likely to click the top results. Optimizing performance also makes it more likely the website will convert visiting prospects into new leads or customers.

Going Beyond the Design

As the industry’s pool of new customers shrinks due to factors including increased competition, an uncertain economic future, and market consolidation, print service providers can’t afford to have their websites be the obstacle to growth.

To ensure their website captures a larger share of increasingly shrinking markets, the results of the study indicate that most print service brands will need expert development help. No matter how stunning their site’s design may look, the technical underpinnings must also be optimized.

Poorly-performing websites negatively impact many KPIs for marketing and sales:

• Fewer sales leads and lower revenue due to fewer prospects coming to the website organically from search engines.
• Higher bounce rates when new visitors immediately leave the site due to a poor browsing experience.
• Falling search rankings as Google elevates your competitors and pushes you down the page below websites it believes are higher quality.
• Loss of traffic when fewer people see you in search as a result of falling rankings
• Lost sales and opportunities for international engagement and new business when your site runs slowly on low-bandwidth networks.
• Poor user experience reflects poorly on your brand and the quality of your business offerings.

Why Focus on Website Performance?

Nearly every piece of online and offline marketing content intersects with a website. When prospects encounter the brand on social media, email, advertisements, media mentions, or a business card, they will often go straight to the company website, yet leave quickly if they have to wait for more than one or two seconds.

The likelihood of a visitor immediately leaving a website, also known as bouncing, increases over 30 percent as page load time increases from one to three seconds.

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A high-performance website does more than improve search positioning.

• It elevates the brand position for all audiences, no matter where they originate or how they discover the website.
• It differentiates brands from competitors with inferior websites.
• It supports organic search optimization (SEO).

With a better user experience (UX), websites earn higher conversion rates, supporting business growth by producing more qualified sales leads from prospective customers.

The website enhances the customer experience for existing customers by improving the quality of the company’s customer service and support.

The Performance score incorporates six assessments within what Google calls “Core Web Vitals.”

Core Web Vitals Performance Metrics

• First Content Paint
• Speed Index
• Largest Contentful Paint
• Total Blocking Time
• Cumulative Layout Shift

In a nutshell, these terms reflect how quickly the content loads on a website page and its overall stability and interactivity on multiple devices. Higher scores for Performance indicate that the site offers an improved user experience.

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Best Practices - Websites Struggle to Perform

Printing companies rely on best practices for workflows, color management, machine performance, and more to deliver high-quality client results. These tested methods offer consistency and confidence.

Similarly, website developers rely on best practices for reliability and performance.

Many of the printing websites reviewed aren’t built to industry best practices. Over 70% of the websites tested don’t meet development best practices, meaning they score below 90, which is considered “Good.”

Of those sites needing improvement, two don’t use secure domains (HTTPS), a shortcoming every visitor quickly experiences.

Out of actual or perceived risk, users often quickly leave a site after encountering a “Not Secure” warning. That hurts business.

Best Practices for Websites

• Avoids requesting the geolocation permission on page load
• Avoids requesting the Notifications permission on page load
• Allows users to paste into input fields
• Serves images with appropriate resolution
• Page has the HTML doctype
• Properly defines charset
• Avoids unloading event listeners
• Avoids deprecated APIs
• No browser errors logged to the console
• No issues in the Issues panel in Chrome Devtools
• Displays images with an incorrect aspect ratio
• Strong Content Security Policy (CSP)
• Detected JavaScript libraries
• Source maps deployed
• Uses HTTPS

About the Website Study

A study of 60-plus websites representing various printing services was conducted in April. The segments sampled ranged from digital and traditional printers of flexible films, labels, and direct mail to apparel, packaging, and transactional documents.

About The Scoring

The scores for the four tests break down into three divisions. Websites with scores between 90-100 are considered “Good.” The second category for scores 50-89 indicates “Needs Improvement.” Sites that register scores below 50 are considered poor.

Snapshot of Results

• Two websites scored 100 in the Performance category, and 3 scored 99. Of the 65 sites reviewed, 19 scored above 90.
• Four websites scored poorly on the Performance test, with the lowest score being 37.
• Only 30% of the websites scored above 90 for Best Practices.
• Two companies don’t have secure websites.
• 67% of the websites risk legal liability for not meeting web accessibility criteria.
• Just under half the websites scored above 90 on the SEO test, putting them in the Good category.
• None of the websites are a Progressive Web App (PWA),

The results of the study match a larger analysis of 200-plus industrial websites in February.

Quick Takeaways

• Underperformance is industry-wide - While some of the sites reviewed were visually appealing, the findings paint a clearer picture of company websites across various sectors, all needing moderate or significant technical improvements in coding and architecture.
• Poor accessibility creates legal exposure - The majority of websites do not meet basic accessibility standards established by WCAG and mandated by legislation in various countries throughout the world, including the ADA in the United States.
• Progressive web apps (PWAs) are rare - Even as Google tests websites for PWA requirements and considers them a best practice for search performance, none of the websites were built to this standard.

Why Print Service Websites Fail to Achieve High-Performance

Mid-market companies typically do not have the in-house expertise to design, develop and maintain a healthy website that performs up to the highest standards–or they may settle for "good enough" because they’re unaware of the lost opportunity.

Kao Collins, a global industrial inkjet ink manufacturer, bucks that trend. The Cincinnati-based B2B company achieves the highest scores on the test. Recent testing showed that the company’s website registered perfect scores for every Google category.

“We focus on maintaining our website’s high performance because we know how essential it is to our growth. It represents our brand on the world stage and ensures our potential customers have a positive impression of our company the first moment they visit kaocollins.com,” said Kristin Adams, the company’s Marketing Manager.

Optimizing the site’s technical performance also supports the company’s effort to attract and engage new audiences in locations worldwide where site visitors may have poor network connections.

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Accessibility Isn't a Luxury

Over half of the sites reviewed scored below the threshold for a website to be generally considered accessible. Of the 65 sites scoring below 90 points, 43 sites scored below 90, and six sites scored below 70.

Despite notable lawsuits against companies like Domino's Pizza, Target, and Harvard University, companies have not gotten the memo about the need for building and maintaining a website that complies with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) or the EU Web Accessibility Directive. Today that generally means meeting the WCAG 2.1 AA criteria.

Benefits of an Accessible Website

• Improved search engine performance
• Positive brand reputation
• Faster user experience
• Improved user pathways
• Attracts and serves a broader audience
• Reduced legal exposure

The accessibility scores of websites for printing-related companies match the findings of a similar study of 50-plus medical-related websites and 200-plus industrial websites. Most websites have scores below 90. That’s a red flag that indicates a company with legal exposure.

Websites that meet Web Content Accessibility Guidelines administered by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3) offer a superior user experience for everyone, regardless of ability.

For example, an older B2B buyer may have vision difficulties, while a younger buyer may have a temporary impairment from an extreme sports injury that makes using a mouse difficult. An accessible website makes it easier for all visitors to navigate.

A website designed and developed to meet accessibility requirements typically achieves higher search rankings. Incorporating the nuances that make a website accessible pays dividends for SEO and user experience.

The Mobile Experience Matters

The analysis of printing websites also matched the findings of the review of industrial websites. None developed their website as a Progressive Web App.

Simply put, PWAs are a way of building websites that are faster, more responsive, and capable of performing like a smartphone app, yet can still be indexed for search and usable as a traditional website. The architecture of a PWA supports a better user experience.

PWA Benefits

• Fast loading
• Operates on poor networks
• Small development footprint
• Integrates app-like features
• No app stores, no downloads
• Instant updates

A company’s lack of a PWA affects the increasing number of international B2B companies buying or selling products or services, especially in areas with unreliable internet service.

Users have high expectations for websites. They want to get information and move on. That’s especially true for Millennials and Gen Z users. A Forrester report estimates that Millennials comprise about 73% of B2B buyers in the customer journey. This group and the upcoming Gen Z use mobile devices and expect high performance.

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SEO Success Requires More than Keywords

B2B and B2C marketing teams understand the importance of content marketing focused on keywords. The website analysis results indicate that half the companies need to improve.

On the upside, 9 of the 65 “Good” websites scored 100 for SEO. None of the sites scored below 60, although that is still deep into the “Needs Improvement.”

Success in the SEO category involves more than incorporating keywords throughout copy. It requires more than rudimentary experience in coding for many adjustments to improve scores.

Digital marketers can perform some of the optimization tactics without technical skills. Other changes require website managers and developers or ongoing help from outside experts.

SEO Best Practice Criteria

• Has a <meta name="viewport"> tag with width or initial-scale
• Document has a <title> element
• Document has a meta description
• Page has a successful HTTP status code
• Links are crawlable
• Page isn’t blocked from indexing
• Image elements have [alt] attributes
• Document has a valid hreflang
• Document has a valid rel=canonical
• Document avoids plugins
• Descriptive link text

Partnering to Help Your Website Stay Healthy

The poor scores highlighted in the survey represent an excellent opportunity for businesses to implement website performance improvements. Companies can document the results of the effort with improved search rankings and higher click-through rates.

That may be a challenge for companies already stretched thin as they face challenges with the supply chain, employee hiring and retention, and more.

While a company often tracks website performance with Google Lighthouse, PageSpeed Insights, Google Trends, etc., most B2Bs need experts in the latest SEO trends and strategies to improve search rankings, visibility, and user experience.