Please make sure the ‘www’ and the ‘non-www’ version of your website works. If both don’t work, it means your website designer or whoever set up your website has made a big mistake that is HURTING your business. This is because:
- A percentage of your website visitors can NOT access your website.
- If the ‘www’ version of your website is displayed on your business cards (and other marketing materials) but the ‘www’ version of your website has not been correctly configured, when people type it into a Web Browser, they will get an error message saying something like: “This site can’t be reached”.
Thankfully it is easy for website experts like us at Green Valley Digital to fix this.
I’m sure it is obvious why you would want to get this fixed. You paid good money to get your website created, plus you pay monthly fees for it to remain online. If only a percentage of your website visitors can actually see your website, this is hurting your business. It’s HURTINGÂ your hip pocket.
What prompted me to write this blog post? We were recently asked to redesign and rebuild a website for a new client. I visited their Facebook page and clicked the link to view their old website. The old website did not display. Instead I got an error message. I did some quick tests and sure enough the ‘www’ version was not set up.
This meant that for all the years the old website was online, anyone who clicked the link on their Facebook page could not see the website. AND it wasn’t just their Facebook page. I checked their Google Business Profile and a few of their other online business directory listings. The problem was occuring there as well.Â
When we launched their new website we made sure this mistake was rectified.
This is not the first time I have seen this issue on a website. Not all people who create websites know how to set them up correctly. It is also NOT a good idea to rely on AI.
Website development is part of I.T. (Information Technology). I.T. professionals who specialise in creating websites should always be involved when setting up a website for a business, organisation or other professional entity, club or ANYONE who wants their website to work correctly. I strongly urge you to check your own website(s), or ask us to. Read below to learn how to check for this issue correctly.
Side note: You might be wondering what do I mean when I’m talking about the ‘www’ and the ‘non-www’ version of a website? This refers to the website address (the URL) – eg:
- https://www.example.com.au
- https://example.com.au
PLEASE check that your website is displaying when using both the 'www' and the 'non-www' version
This is very easy to do and takes less than 5 minutes. Simply open a Web Browser and visit both the ‘www’ and the ‘non-www’ version of your website. If either of the following things occur, feel free to contact us and we’ll get this fixed for you:
- You should see your website redirect from the ‘non-www’ version to the ‘www’ version (or the other way around, depending on how your website is set up). If it doesn’t it is easy for us to fix this. [I have included a video below explaining why this is important.]
- If you get a ‘page not found’ error message (or similar message) in your Web Browser this is a big problem. We can fix this as well.
If you care about SEO (Search Engine Optimisation), organic website visitor traffic and/or gaining the most value from your website that you can, checking these things is very important, as is getting them fixed.
Please note: If your website is not redirecting to the ‘www’ version (or the other way around) this is causing SEO issues due to what is called ‘duplicate content’. If no redirect is correctly setup Google considers these as two totally different websites (duplicates). There is a lot of information about this topic on the internet, if you wish to do more research or learn more.