Often the first point of contact for many potential customers, a good website is essential for a small business owner. Getting a new website up and running is an exciting process, but far too often, we see mistakes being made by small business owners that lead to ineffective websites. Are you making these mistakes with your website?
Designing Before Having Content
Content must come first. Before you ever start thinking about design, you need to think about your website’s content.
- What do you need your website to say?
- What pages should be included?
- What will be the purpose of each page?
These are all questions you need to be asking yourself before you start designing. Ideally, you should have all your content done and ready to hand your designer at the beginning of the project. Copy should influence design, not the other way around.
Wanting to Do It All
We see a lot of small business owners that come out of the gate wanting fancy, expensive features on their website that they don’t really need. A better approach is to start off simple and continue to make changes based on your business growth and the feedback you receive from customers. There’s no reason to pay and maintain a feature on your website that not many people are using. Start off with the essentials and add as needed.
Not Managing Updates
Many small business owners think their website is “just something they need to have nowadays” and once it goes live, they do little with it. If you invested time and money into your site, why aren’t you using it to its full potential? It’s important to have a person to manage updates, backups and make changes as needed, so you can get the most out of your site instead of letting it go stale.
Not Thinking About Your Target Market
Your website should be designed with your ideal client in mind. While you may like flashy animations or cool buttons, will your customers find it confusing? Don’t be afraid to ask for feedback on your website, and make changes if necessary.
Are you making any of the above mistakes with your website? We can help you fix them. Contact us today.
