Creating a website for your company can be a huge benefit for your business when it’s done right – bringing in a solid audience, followed by good sales and profits, in time, as a result. However, when it’s done wrong it can do quite the opposite.
With this in mind, digital marketing agency every1 explains some of the common pitfalls to avoid when creating a new website for your business.
- Not knowing your budget
The first mistake when creating a website can be not determining your budget. It’s all very well and good putting the plans in place to design a fancy new website – whether by your in-house team or an external agency. However, if you haven’t decided on a budget, and the kind of site you can create that will meet that budget, you can run into trouble either early on or in the future.
You could overspend and end up with an unfinished site, for instance. Or you might be left with little money to operate, update, or generally do anything with the site in the future. You might also have to cut costs (and corners) on crucial design and navigation elements, which can affect your SEO rankings, sales and company reputation.
- Mismatching your company image
Your website should be an accurate reflection of your company image. How you want your business to look and come across to people who use your site should be clear to the web developers creating it. Not doing so can result in a website that doesn’t fit your business.
This could include a site with a mismatched tone of voice, like formal, corporate and serious, when you would to come across as informal, chatty and fun. Or you might appear traditional when you want to be seen as modern and trendy. As a result, people can come to your business expecting one thing and get something else – leaving a dissatisfied customer. You can end up with the wrong kind of audience and confused people who won’t buy your products, nor benefit your business.
- Not explaining what you do
It might sound obvious saying that’s it’s crucial to explain on your website what your company does. Yet, there are so many companies that forget to do this. Your business might have an all-singing, all-dancing site that looks impressive. But if it doesn’t explain your company, like the services or products you provide and your key business goals, you can lose an audience almost instantaneously.
Your web development team needs to know this information to include it on the site, so your audience can understand in seconds what your company is and what it’s about. Otherwise, they’re likely to get inpatient, frustrated and look elsewhere – possibly contacting some of your key competitors in the process.
- Not including key information
Following on from this, another common mistake can be not including key information that’s essential for your audience. This includes details about all your services and products, as well as contact details, like telephone numbers and email addresses, so customers can reach you if they have a query.
Not doing so can result in some of your key products not being sold, or items being returned because they weren’t what customers expected. As well as losing potential customers that can’t get in touch, you could also miss out on people offering some key business opportunities. This includes people that can be key to your business development like researchers, job recruiters, investors and the press.
- Publishing irrelevant content
Producing content that’s not relevant to your business is another pitfall when creating a website. This includes unrelated news, topics and advice. Writing articles about trends in popular family holidays won’t be affective if you company only promotes business travel. Publishing blogs about garden furniture also probably won’t benefit your sales if your business only sell interior furniture for the home.
Not including the right content on your site can attract the wrong audience, while being confusing to, and turn away, your target audience. This can have a negative effect on your product sales and your SEO rankings, as potential customers turn to other sites for more relevant content.
- Missing your launch date
Finally, not having your website ready for your launch date is another common mistake. It might sound obvious, but it’s important to know all your deadlines to make sure web build, design, SEO and content is all complete to launch your site successfully on time.
Not factoring the sufficient length of time for your web teams to pull everything together, resulting in you missing your launch day, can have a detrimental effect on your company. For instance, you could miss key sales you were banking on for customers to buy your products or use your services. You can put off your core audience as they try to get on your site, only to be told it’s not ready. It can also make your company look unprepared and unorganised, especially if you’ve promoted the site in advance.
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