7 Mistakes That New Website Owners Make

Establishing yourself online as a successful business does take time and hard work. But are there things you are doing which are in fact harming your online presence? This post will explore the top 7 mistakes that new website owners make.

Use of Technology

When you are building a website yourself or you are instructing a creative agency or web designer, it can be tempting to add in as many features as possible from flash animations through to scrolling text or audio and more. It is important however that you keep your web pages as simple and uncluttered as possible. You don’t want all of the additional features to slow down the load speed of your page to a snails pace so customers give up waiting and end up and visiting a competitors site instead. Ensuring that you have a reliable host can increase loading times. Depending on the sever location it’s critical that you locate one that’s within your target market. If you’re looking for a UK provider then we suggest you check out ukwebhostreviews.com to compare the hosting market. Also make your website easy to navigate and structure the content so that your web visitors can easily find what they are looking for.

Website Holding Pages

Although you may be building your website and it’s not yet developed, placing  ‘Under Construction’ pages on your domain name can be a big mistake. Websites are meant to evolve and they do change over time so really there’s no need to be taking your website down or putting up ‘Under Construction’ pages. With WordPress you can have a professional website up and running in no time at all and you can alter the style and appearance as you go along. If your web page isn’t ready to display, don’t publish your site. Save the page as a ‘Draft’ and publish it when you are ready.

Content and Keywords

Writing great content that converts is a skill and one that takes time to master. If you’re not the best with content development you may find that appointing a professional Copywriter may be beneficial. Many new website owners make the mistake of either writing too much content or writing too little. Both of these can be off putting to the customer. As a general rule, you should aim for between 300 and 500 words of content per web page to ensure that it is appropriately optimised.

Another mistake which is very closely related to content is the use of keywords within your web pages. As a newbie to content writing and the dreaded Search Engine Optimisation you may think that to get to the top of the search pages you simply have to incorporate as many keywords as possible within your web pages. This not only has a serious impact on your rankings but it can also result in penalties from Google for keyword stuffing which can take a lot of time and hard work to fix. Again, employing a professional Copywriter will help ensure that your pages are written correctly with SEO in mind.

Products/Services

Your products and service pages are your opportunity to persuade potential web visitors to make a purchase. One of the biggest mistakes that you can make is to provide a lengthy list of features for each of your products but failing to highlight the benefits. Customers are looking for a solution when they are browsing for a product and through your website content you need to convey the reasons why they should buy from you and the benefits that the product can bring. Instead of explaining how great a product is, tell them what problem the product will solve.

Call to Action

Great websites all include a strong call to action. If you forget to ask the visitor to take action, whether its making a phone call, filling out a sign up form or making a purchase, you are potentially losing out. Typical calls to action include. Order Today, Sign Up! Or Call Us.

Marketing

The work doesn’t stop once your website is built and it is online. You will need to spend time and resources in building your brand and marketing your business. If you don’t let the right people know that you are there, you can’t make the website as successful as you want it to be.

Updates

Failing to keep your website updated. Ensure that copyright statements are up to date on your footers and blog posts correctly refer to events in the present. Customers will immediately sense if your website seems outdated so take some time periodically throughout the year to make sure everything is up to date.

Avoiding these top mistakes will ensure that you get off to the right start when creating your website. There’s lots to learn but there’s plenty of free resources online and best practice guidelines that you can follow to help you build a strong online presence.