5 Mistakes People Make With Their Website and How To Fix Them
I’ve talked to a lot of business owners and individuals who needed (more-so wanted) a Website. Here are 5 common mistakes I’ve encounter while helping them through the web design process, and what you can do to avoid them:
1. Focusing on the Look Instead of the Content on Your Website
Content is king! And it’s the most valuable part of your Website. It always amazes me when I talk to prospects about their Website idea and they start telling me about how they want the color to be this, how they want this pictures here and that picture there, and how they want the color of their font to be blue here and red there.
After they finish telling me their idea, I ask them, “What message are you trying to communicate? What is the primary action you want your visitors to take?” “What’s the singular focus for your home page?”
And then silence…
Before you start thinking about the look and feel of your Website, focus your time and energy on the words and content that your Website visitors will be reading. You’ll be better off with a Website that has quality content and a decent look, as opposed to a Website that looks like a painting you would hang in you office, but has the worst content ever created.
2. Communicating Features And Not Benefits
Since content is king, it’s important for your content to communicate the benefits you plan to provide your Website visitors. All to often I read content that prospects send to me that is heavily feature oriented. It’s important to let your Website visitors know the features of your products or services. But that’s not really telling them why they should perform the action (buy from you, or subscribe to your newsletter) you want them to.
Start communicating benefits along with your features.. For example, if you sell laptops, you want to let your prospects know that the laptops have fast processors and huge storage drives. But all the technical jargon that you use to express that is usually going to fly right over the heads of your average Website visitors.
But if you say that fast processors help you surf the Web faster so you don’t have to waste time waiting for pages to load, and a huge storage drive is going to allow them to save all their precious pictures and videos, then you’ll start talking in a language that your Website visitors can understand, which may entice them to buy from you instead of your competitors.
3. Not Having Clear “Calls To Action”
One of the main reasons you set up a Website is to make you’re life and your Website visitors life easier in some shape, form, or fashion. But all to often Websites end up confusing Website owners and Website visitors alike. A while back I read an article about single purpose Websites to communicate your message because you can focus your content around a central topic, as opposed to having multiple topics and offers that end up confusing everyone.
4. Not Having A Personality For Your Website
When I say personality, I don’t mean adding personal narratives. What I mean by personality is adding your picture, add pictures of your office or building, add videos. Do what ever you can to humanize your Website. In this day in age, people do business with people, and the better you are at communicating that there is an actually person behind the Website that they [Website visitors] are using, more than likely, they’ll be willing to do business with you.
5. No Visible Contact Details
Contact details are key. I read another article awhile back that talked about how adding contact details (phone numbers and addresses) does a lot to build rapport with your Website visitors because in the event that something does go wrong, they’ll have a way of contacting you outside of email. There are plenty of other mistakes that are made when people decide to build a Website.
These are just the 5 common mistakes I encounter more often than none. Hopefully you’ve gain some valuable insight into building your next Website. If not, you’ll just have to keep reading!
Tagged as: Online Marketing · website mistakes
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I have to admit, I have been guilty of doing some of these in the past. Even if you already know these lessons, it’s always great to to get to know the basics again.