Most businesses make big mistakes in creating their website. They will just put up information up about themselves and the products or services they provide. They depend on their visitors to wade through the information and sort out what they are interested in. This greatly reduces the business they get from their website.
- Unclear Message: You have just 3 seconds to convince an arriving visitor that what you offer will be the solution they are seeking. Your home page needs to clearly state what you do and how it will benefit the visitor. People’s eyes are attracted to the page headline and they will scan the first paragraph. Make this first text powerful, active and attention getting.
- No Action or Offers: If visitors leave your website without taking action, then what benefit is there to having them come to your site? Your website needs to convince visitors to take some sort of action. Another error is to have too many possible actions where you confuse a visitor and they just leave. Make your offer clear, visually important and visible to visitors when they first arrive.
- No Traffic Strategy: “Build it and they will come” may work for an Iowa corn farmer (Field of Dreams), but it doesn’t work for business websites. Decide your traffic source such as organic search, pay-per-click or referral traffic before you start the design. Organic SEO is much more effective when designed into a site.
- No Phone Number or Address: Some businesses hide behind an anonymous contact form without any phone number or address anywhere on the website. This makes visitors nervous about doing business with you. After all, what happens if something goes wrong? How can they reach you? They immediately suspect that you are not even a real business? Place your phone number and address on your home page AND on your contact page.
- No About-Us Page: When someone comes to your website, they immediately want to learn more about who you are. In their mind, they are asking: “Why should I trust you?” The job of your about-us page is to answer that question. The about-us area for a website can be a single page or a section of pages, depending on your website. Read more: How to write an About-Us page.
