Remove the live feeds. Put the phone number, a short quote form and proof of your work in the sidebar, link to the one or two accounts you keep current, and show recent jobs on your own pages.

The site

A roofing company with three crews, doing replacements and repairs on houses across a group of suburbs. Its site has a home page, a page for each service, a gallery and a quote form.

Down the right of every page runs a sidebar, five boxes tall. A Facebook page box with the latest posts. A Twitter timeline. An Instagram grid. A YouTube video. A Google+ badge.

The Facebook box shows a post from March about a spring promotion. The Twitter timeline opens with a retweet about a hockey game.

The Instagram grid is a set of empty squares, and the video is a two-year-old clip of a finished roof filmed from above.

The feeds were added one at a time, each when someone suggested the company ought to be on that platform.

The inference a visitor makes

Someone looking for a roofer wants to know two things quickly: is this company competent, and is it still in business.

The sidebar answers the second question badly. The newest thing on the page is seven months old, and dates are the first thing people read in a feed.

A visitor does not conclude that the crews are too busy on roofs to post. They wonder whether the company has closed, or whether anyone will answer.

The empty Instagram squares add to it. A broken box on a site selling workmanship invites the visitor to wonder what else was left unfinished.

Five feeds, five sets of code

The fourth surprises people most. An embedded video looks like a picture until it is played, but the player behind it loads in full on every page, for every visitor, whether anyone watches or not.

What the feeds cost in speed

Each feed is a small page from another company's servers, loaded inside yours. Five of them means five extra sets of requests, scripts and images before the sidebar finishes.

At a desk on a fast office connection, that adds a delay people notice without knowing why. On a phone using mobile data, the feeds can take longer than the rest of the page combined.

And because the sidebar is on every page, the cost is paid on every page: the home page, each service page, the quote form itself.

None of that weight sells a roof.

What happens on a phone

On a phone the sidebar drops below the main content, so the feeds stack up underneath each service description.

A visitor who scrolls past the text, looking for the phone number or the next step, meets five boxes from other platforms before reaching the footer where the contact details sit.

Some boxes keep their desktop width and spill off the screen. Others load slowly enough that the page jumps as they arrive, moving whatever the visitor was about to tap.

Every feed is a way out

Each feed is full of links, and every one leads to another company's site: a Facebook page, a tweet, a video page with suggestions running alongside it.

A visitor who clicks lands somewhere designed to keep them, where other roofers' posts and ads may be a scroll away.

The company paid for that visitor's attention, through its search ranking or its advertising, and the sidebar hands it to someone else.

The quote form, meanwhile, sits in the narrower main column, competing with five boxes for the eye.

Content the company does not choose

A feed shows whatever was posted last, on whatever account it is connected to.

Here that means a retweet about hockey and a promotion that ended in the spring. On another day it could be a personal post from whoever runs the account.

The website has become a display for decisions made elsewhere, by whoever was holding the phone, and nobody chooses what represents the company on its own pages.

A worked example

The owner's first reaction was to start posting again, so the feeds would look current. That lasted two weeks.

The second was the right one: decide what the sidebar is for. The answer was getting a visitor who has read about a service to call or ask for a quote.

The five feeds came out. The sidebar now holds the phone number as text, a three-field quote form, a line on licence, insurance and warranty, and one photograph of a recent roof with its neighbourhood named.

Small icons in the footer link to Facebook and YouTube, the two accounts someone actually keeps up. Twitter, Instagram and Google+ no longer appear on the site.

A recent work page on the company's own site, updated each month with photographs of finished roofs, took over the job the feeds had only been pretending to do.

The counter-case within the site

Some businesses genuinely post every day, and their feed is the most current thing they have: a restaurant's daily specials, a bakery's morning trays, a venue's lineup.

For them, one feed can earn a place, on one page such as the home page or a news page, loaded after the main content rather than before it.

Even then, a feed belongs only where someone keeps it current, and it should never be the only place recent work appears.

For a roofer posting a few times a year, the advice stands: remove the feeds, keep the sidebar for the next step, and show recent work on pages the company owns.

What to change

  1. Remove the live feeds from the sidebar.
  2. Show the phone number first, as text.
  3. Add a short quote form with three fields.
  4. Show licence, insurance and warranty in one line.
  5. Build a recent work page on your site.
  6. Link only to accounts someone keeps current.
  7. Check the site on a phone afterwards.

Step five is the one that replaces what the feeds were for. Visitors do want to see that the company is active, and a page of dated recent jobs shows it far better than a timeline nobody updates.

Another sitewide feature that costs visitors on every page is covered in a winery site with an age gate on every page.

Frequently asked questions

What do visitors conclude from old feeds?

That the company may have closed or stopped answering. Dates are the first thing people read in a feed, and a seven-month-old post suggests nobody is there.

Do social feeds slow a website?

Yes. Each loads its own scripts, styles and images from another company, and a sidebar feed does it on every page, which costs most on phones.

Why is an embedded YouTube video costly?

The player behind it loads in full on every page, for every visitor, whether or not anyone presses play.

How do feeds pull visitors away?

Every item links to another company's site, where other businesses' posts and ads may be a scroll away, and the visitor the company paid to attract leaves.

What should the sidebar hold instead?

The phone number as text, a short quote form, a line on licence, insurance and warranty, and one photograph of a recent job.

Can any business keep a social feed?

One that posts daily and keeps it current can show one feed on one page, loaded after the main content. It should never be the only place recent work appears.

West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.

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