Every business needs a website to promote itself and build market credibility. However, when deciding on the functionality and design of your site, you must take the right approach. Often, businesses make key mistakes when designing their websites that lead to online and offline problems. Here are six common mistakes to avoid when creating a website for your business.
6 Mistakes to Avoid When Creating a Website for Your Business
1. Not having a goal for your website
When planning your website, it’s important to have a goal in mind. Is your website meant to provide the information that visitors are requesting? Is it for educational or marketing purposes? Or maybe you have a blog and want this website as an outlet for you to post your articles? You may have multiple goals. Whatever your goals are for your website, it’s important to keep them in mind during each development phase.
2. Forgetting to make your website mobile-friendly
A lot of people think that having a website is enough, but the reality is that you need more than just a site to survive in today’s competitive world. You also need to make sure it’s mobile-friendly.
In case you’re not aware, Google announced that it would start penalizing sites that aren’t optimized for mobile devices in April 2015. Unfortunately, this means that if your site isn’t mobile-friendly, you can expect to see your rankings drop and traffic decline (along with all the associated benefits).
3. Making the design too complicated
If you want your website to be successful, you need to keep it simple. The simpler you can make your design, the easier it will be for visitors to navigate around your site and find what they’re looking for. However, please don’t make the mistake of thinking less is more in web design because this isn’t true!
It would help if you aimed for simplicity without being boring or bland. For example, if you have too much text on one page, or if all of your pages are overly busy (this often happens when people try to cram as much as possible into their designs), it can be difficult for visitors to focus on what’s important and find out what they need from you.
4. Making it hard for users to contact you
It is a mistake to assume that everyone who visits your site will be able to find their way around without any problems.
Many websites have contact forms on their home page, but this is not always the best place for them. If visitors can’t find your contact information, they will move on and never return.
Instead of putting your contact form on every site page, please keep it in one place where users can find it easily. This could be a dedicated page or an area of the homepage with links to your website’s other pages.
5. Overlooking the importance of good content
Your website is an extension of who you are as a business, so the content must reflect who you are and what you do. If there’s one thing I’ve learned about creating websites for small businesses, it’s that most people don’t understand how much work goes into them. It’s not as simple as plugging in some text and hitting ‘publish.’ A lot of thought, planning, and effort goes into creating a high-quality website that will reflect well on your business.
6. Not including testimonials and reviews
It’s not enough to have a beautiful, functional website. You also need people to visit it through word of mouth. If you can’t get people talking about your business online, you’re missing out on a huge opportunity to build your brand and reach more customers. One way to do this is with testimonials and reviews.
If you’ve ever ventured onto Yelp or TripAdvisor, you know how powerful these platforms can be for local businesses. But they’re not the only ones — plenty of review sites are dedicated specifically to small businesses and startups (like Yelp for Business Owners). And even if they’re not dedicated specifically to your niche, there are still plenty of other places where people can leave positive feedback about their experiences with your company.
Takeaway
So, if you want to create a website for your business, consider these things and implement them. Remember that the website has to be practical, simple, reliable, and useful. The way to success is not making typos and mistakes, so do not rush things, thinking you can always edit them later. If you follow these tips, you will surely have a decent website, and your clients will keep visiting it whenever they need something or want new news.
