Jul

10 Business Website Mistakes

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10 Business Website Mistakes

If you have a website for your company, by now you already know that just having it is not enough. The web is a massive popularity contest and your site needs to be visible through the rest of the sites out there. It is quickly becoming apparent that site design is a cornerstone to making a site successful or not. Correct structure and use of web services will attain greater results. Here are 10 mistakes that companies make when erecting a website for their company.

1. Inadequate Design and Function: Correct design and function are integral to keeping people on your website. Content is important but when the user cannot access it, this creates a massive problem for the user and ultimately you as a company. Items such as navigation should stay constant the pages should conform to WC3 compliance (this will maintain integrity in all major browsers). Keeping your web pages consistent in colour, design and layout is vitally important. Also note that keeping your logo and tag lines clearly visible at all times will increase brand awareness for the user as well.

2. Too much Glitz and Glam: Many business’ make the mistake with adding too much to their sites. Flash is one example of something that is perhaps too much. Although flash looks great it may be too complex for the average user. Look and feel is important but you do not want to slow down the user experience. Flash also takes longer to load and it is possible that some users do not have flash installed and this would render the flash application completely useless. Flash used in small applications is recommended but an entire site would be overkill. Flash also causes problems for the marketing of your website as well. If you are looking for maximum effect for your marketing efforts online steer clear of Flash.

3. Staying Fresh with Content: Adding new content on a regular basis is highly advised. Letting a site sit and do nothing and not adding new technologies to make the site better is a common mistake. This is not the way sites work anymore. A site now needs to be maintained on a regular basis to attain maximum performance and to stay in the search engine results at a high level.

4. Choosing a Domain Name: When choosing a domain name be sure to pick one that is appropriate to the business. In many cases using multiple domain names that vary from the business name to using the business’ genre in the domain is something to take into account. For instance if you run a Real-Estate company or an Electronics Shop you would not want a domain called lucythellama.com, that is completely inappropriate for the company type. This is a simple example to make the point, be careful in choosing a domain, it can affect your ranking and where you show up in the search engines.

5. 404 Errors and Dead Links: Make sure all the links and pages on the site work. The users that visit your site will more than likely leave if they come to a page that shows “404 Page Not Found”. Using custom 404 pages that help the user and your webmaster know about the page problem is a highly suggested method of finding and fixing these issues. Be sure to include a form on the custom 404 pages so the user can submit the broken or missing page.

6. Site Statistics: Using detailed site statistics to measure the amount of traffic to your site is vital to leveraging more traffic. Many businesses are not even aware that these services exist. If you own a business and do not know this, contact your host and inquire about this service. The statistics give you vital details such as unique visitors per day/month, what terms they are finding you by in the search engines, what times of day is your site the busiest and what countries people are finding you in. This information gives you something you are able to measure. What we like to say is “You cannot manage what you can’t measure”.

7. Contact Details: Many sites simply do not have a way to contact anyone or their contact measures are so poor that it turns people away from the site entirely. Your site needs to have a form of some sort where people can request information, ask questions or file a complaint and suggestions. This form should be reachable from every part of the site. Also, an important item to keep in mind is to have a speedy response to all inquiries, either by auto response with links to FAQ sections on the site or giving a response time. If you do not want to do it this way be sure to respond quickly to inquiries.

8. Your Web Host: Steer clear from FREE or Cheap hosting. Often times these hosts have multiple down times per month due to having so many clients on one server. Check for a low downtime, that they offer features such as statistics, spam protection, anti-virus protection on emails and above all quick customer service response. Note that problems do arise and that some form of downtime can occur, but this should not happen very often. Remember that you get what you pay for. This is a great motto to follow when getting web hosting.

9. Search Engines, Crawlers and Spiders: Spiders or sometimes referred to as Crawlers are scripts or robots that scour the internet for websites, content, links and traffic. These little “bugs” are crucial to search engines; these are responsible for every result you find on the popular search engines such as Google, Yahoo and Bing. In most cases these “creepy crawlies” you want to avoid, but on the web you actually want to attract these to your site. You can do this through Search Engine Optimization (SEO) practices. There are certain ethics and strategies to SEO. Some practices (such as hidden text, redirects, etc) will result in you being banned from search engines. These “dark side” techniques are called Black Hat. When looking for someone to do SEO for your company look for someone who only does White Hat techniques.

10. Doing SEO Yourself: Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is complex. In order to make top ranks in your genre you may want to hire a professional to do your online marketing and site placements, especially if your business relies on the web for the majority of its business.

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