A website can either make or break your business. A well designed website with all of the important aspects included can be all you need to sell your product/service to your target market and get plenty of traffic/conversions. However, a badly designed site missing the essentials could be costing you lots of money! Here are the mistakes you need to avoid:
No Call to Action
All websites need a clear call to action in order to get as many conversions as possible from their visitors. If you dont have a clear call to action, your visitors will have to search for it, and most of the time they are reluctant to do this. Youll find that visitors opt for a competitor over your own site simply because they make it easier to order.
A Poor Design
A poor site design which is difficult to navigate around will not do you any favours. Users only stay on your site a matter of seconds before realising they are going to have trouble. Information that is difficult to find, colours that dont look right on screen, and poorly designed navigation are just a few aspects of a bad site design.
No Social Media Links
Social media is a huge deal these days, with over 1 billion users on Twitter and Facebook alone. If you dont have a strong social media presence to engage with your target market, youre missing out on a load of traffic and conversions. Worse still, is having a social media presence but not including social media links and buttons on your site! These links and buttons make it much easier to follow you, like you, and share your content with other people - which, of course, increases your exposure!
No Mobile Optimisation
Mobile internet is becoming more and more popular by the day. In fact, many users say that they shun using the internet on a PC or laptop and use their mobile device alone! Searching on a mobile is much quicker than searching on a PC or laptop, so you can see why many internet users opt for this. If you dont have a responsive web design or a mobile site, you could be missing out on a lot of custom.
Not Tracking Visitors or Goals
If you dont track visitors, e.g. what they do on your site, and how long they stay on certain pages, how can you continue to improve your site and service to keep them coming back for more? You wont be able to! Youll simply be guessing and leaving it to chance, which is a very old fashioned thing to do. Track your site visitors so you can work out what kind of page layout and content your audience prefers, and edit other parts of your site where you need to.
Setting goals will help to keep you moving forward, so make sure you set yourself goals and aim to meet them regularly!
Poor SEO
Search engine optimisation helps to make your website more visible in the search engines, so you pop up when somebody searches for your service/product. A great SEO campaign is essential if you want to make your way to the top of the search rankings in a natural way, without using PPC. The first 3 sites are usually the most popular, so aim to rank high for relevant search terms to your product, service, and industry. However, some search terms will be virtually impossible to rank for, so you need to be smart. For example, shoes is a very broad term, butladies pink spotted shoes is a more targeted search term. Use a mix of terms but concentrate on the longer tail search terms so that you experience more targeted traffic. More targeted traffic could very well equal more customers as theyre the people actively searching for your exact product! Its vital you make your search terms relevant though as somebody searching for cheap shoes wont be pleased if they click on you to find you sell high end, designer shoes.
Make sure the person in control of your SEO campaign knows exactly what theyre doing!
No Designated IT Worker
A designated IT worker will be able to prevent and fix problems that may arise with your site. If you dont have one of these onboard, you may experience site crashes and problems that visitors just arent willing to tolerate. Have somebody on hand to fix these issues in a timely manner!
Avoid the above mistakes like the plague for a successful site that brings in a constant flow of visitors and conversions!
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