Are You Making These 9 Common Business Website Mistakes?
Sep 16th, 2008 | By Optimal Webworks | Category: Web Business DevelopmentA company’s website is the most powerful and inexpensive marketing tool you can possibly use. So why is it that so many businesses pay little attention to making the website function properly?
If you operate a website, or are in the midst of creating one for your website, study the following list of business website mistakes and compare these items to your site.
9 COMMON BUSINESS WEBSITE MISTAKES
1. YOUR WEBSITE IS ABOUT YOU AND YOUR COMPANY
Focusing your website on you and your business is no fault of your own. We often want to use our company website to discuss our services and tell our company story. Sadly, our company story isn’t the most sought-after information customers want.
You company’s website should take aim at providing for your customers and site visitors. If your website fulfills a need, your audience has the potential to expand, exposing your company to new clients and customers.
2. YOUR WEBSITE DOES NOT SOLVE A PROBLEM
Web users seek out businesses that can solve problems for them, not tell them what problems they have.
Your customers know what problems they have. They want solutions.
When writing about a service your business offers, rethink the content and instead write about the problem your service or product targets. In your content, explain possible solutions to the problem, including explaining how your product can help.
But remember what we learned in mistake No. 1: Your website should NOT be all about YOU!
3. VISITORS NEED MORE THAN 4 SECONDS TO UNDERSTAND YOUR WEBSITE
Are you a company that sells soups or soup bowls? Your website visitors won’t wait to find out.
Website users often judge a website’s usefulness within a matter of seconds, and if you’re not ready, you may not get a second chance.
Your business’s website must explain its purpose clearly and quickly.
4. YOUR WEBSITE DOES NOT TELL SITE VISITORS WHAT TO DO
What is the purpose of your website? Why do you want people to visit?
A better question is “What do you want visitors to do?”
If the reason for your website is to get new customers to contact you, make sure your website leads users to the contact form. TELL VISITORS to contact you. Don’t make them guess what you want them to do.
Obviously, we don’t want to order all of our new friends around, but we do want them to know exactly what they should do to get the most out of our website.
Know what you want out of your website and help visitors perform accordingly.
5. VISITORS MUST LEARN HOW TO NAVIGATE YOUR SITE
Website users don’t want to spend time learning how to use your website. Navigation must be intuitive, otherwise, new visitors may not be able to find what their looking for.
Imagine that you have the perfect content on applying your wood sealer to an outside porch. However, a user must navigate through a number of pages just to find your “deck care” page. If your navigation isn’t intuitive, how many clicks do you think a new user will make before deciding to click back to Google?
6. WEBSITE DESIGN TAKES PRECEDENCE OVER CONTENT
We all love great looking websites. We enjoy bright colors, sharp images, fancy text.
It’s where business websites get into style over substance that they get into trouble.
Building an website with an interesting design could get people to pause on your website a second longer. That’s true.
But if a website visitor doesn’t understand what your site is about because content is overrun by distracting images and the visitor fails to find how your website addresses their problem, that visitor will likely think to themselves ‘that’s a good looking site’ and then return to Google to find another site that can fulfill their needs.
7. YOUR WEBSITE IS BUILT ENTIRELY IN FLASH
Flash is GREAT! It’s really an amazing technology. But it’s not one that should build your website.
Flash creates a number of problems, one of them main hindrances being that search engines have a tough time navigating your website. Flash also depends on users to have Flash plugins enabled in their browsers.
Websites built in HTML and utilize CSS play much more nicely with search engines and increase your chances of being indexed. The better you rank in search engines, the higher your potential traffic.
Building your website entirely in Flash greatly limits your website’s potential traffic.
8. YOUR WEBSITE IS OPTIMIZED FOR ONLY ONE BROWSER
About 30 percent of all web users use the Mozilla Firefox browser.
If 100 people visit your site in one day, potentially 30 of those visitors use the Firefox browser. If your website isn’t optimized to display properly in that browser, that’s 30 people that could likely be turned off by your website right off the bat.
Already, we’ve seen a number of factors that can work against your website, from visitors’ short attention span to poor navigation to the wrong content. Make sure you website designer tests your website for proper display in all the recent browsers.
9. YOUR WEBSITE IMAGES CONTAIN TEXT
Images are for visual accents, not text. And not search engines, because they can’t read text in images.
Text is for your readers, and it helps search engines understand the purpose of your website. If any of your important text lies inside an image, search engines likely won’t be able to read your text and add any value to your page for keywords you may be targeting.
————
Now that you know some mistakes to avoid with your business website, take another look at home on the web. Are you making any of these common business website mistakes?
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!
This is the clearest, most concise presentation of this material I’ve seen anywhere. Helped me do an immediate diagnostic check. Thank you!
Enjoyed this – thank you – good straightforward advise
Sue Atkins
Thank you for sharing this most valuable information. I will pass it on to my colleagues and friends.
Njideka “Queen of StressFree Living” Olatunde
I think my website fails on eight of those nine counts.
Wondering how to fix it. More important, when to fix it.
Too busy even though I now know my website is probably not helping me get business.
Sumit
Thank you for posting this and putting it in terms that I can understand.
I am a money management expert, but when it comes to my website and internet marketing I’m a kindergartener.
This will really help me through the learning curve.
Sandra
Great going on your article. :)
Thanks! Your article followed your own advice. That was refreshing and very helpful.
[...] DISCLAIMER: Nu sunt o specialista in chestii tehnice. Toate aspectele tehnice semnalate mai sus nu sunt rodul gandirii mele, ci al dialogului pe care l-am avut cu specialisti sau citind articole de specialistate scrise de autori prestigiosi in materie. S-ar putea deci ca daca vreti sa va spun mai multe detalii tehnice, sa va indrum catre bibliografie sau catre specialisti in care am incredere, ceea ce ar putea sa va manance mai mult timp, dar sa dea rezultate foarte bune pentru voi. Pentru inceput, v-as recomanda lectura asta: Are You Making These 9 Common Business Website Mistakes? [...]
Good information! I will be passing it on and giving you credit.
Good information.
If you want to get cash back on your online shopping. Follow my link.
No. 10 reason – No one knows the Strategy:
You think your website is marketing.
Your developers think the site “looks” great.
Your authors think the once-fresh content now needs updating.
Your visitors see it as just an “electronic” business-card.
Your competitors gleefully look at your “client” list to gain market intelligence.
But since few firms have both PR and Marketing time-and-talent in-house, there’s no one to update the site regularly and maintain its Strategic-relevance.
Ask yourself: “What is the strategy of our website, and does the website still meet our objectives and goals? And how do we know?”
There are many reasons to have a website…as there are flavors of websites.
Just make sure your website is the flavor you want.
Let the strategy be the blueprint that guides your developers, content authors and website’s reason for being.
Web sites are a vital part of any business- online or off! I’m still shocked when I see businesses with poorly managed sites, or no sites at all. What better way to connect with an increasingly online world than with a web site?