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- Small Business Website Design – Mistakes that Can Kill Your Home Business
As a home business owner the worst case scenario for you is that the design of your site keeps your site from ranking highly in the search engines. In that frightening scenario, you won’t even have the chance to market to prospective customers. A better problem to have is not converting any of your visitors. In that case, a bit of redesign can turn those visitors into buyers or subscribers.
Here are some business website design mistakes you must avoid to help ensure success of your home based business.
Small Business Website Design Mistake #1
Too busy and cluttered, with no clear message. People on the web have very limited attention spans. You need to make sure they get your message instantly. If they can’t tell what your site is all about, you’re doomed. You need what’s known as a unique selling proposition, and you need to effectively communicate it almost instantly to your site’s visitors. If you can’t show your visitors why they should take the action you want them to in about 5 seconds, and compel them to do so, you’ve lost the battle.
Lay out your site in such a way that not only can they get the message quickly, but can also go right down the path you want them to without distractions. Take advantage of web surfers notoriously short attention spans by using lists with bold headings and other design features that are easy to read quickly.
Small Business Website Design Mistake #2
Having sound start automatically when a visitor reaches your site is, in most cases, a huge site design mistake. A large percentage of web users are surfing the Internet at work. Your audio blaring from their computer’s speakers can get them in trouble. That’s not smart. According to the 2006 Websense web@work survey 93% of workers report surfing the Internet at work, with a large portion, 24% of that time being spent for visiting non-work related sites. Furthermore, the 2006 edition of the same survey showed that 46% of employees report fearing for their jobs due to their web surfing.
From the examination of my server logs I can tell that the number of people who visit my sites and blogs is much greater during normal work hours than on weekends or in the middle of the night or early morning hours. This is true for all my sites and blogs, no matter the subject matter, so I would imagine it’s much the same for most websites.
If your visitors are visiting your site while at work, the last thing you want to do is get them in trouble for it. Their at-work surfing may not be a good thing for their employer, but it is a great thing for you. You need to thank them for their visit, not get them fired for it. Having what you think is great music, or more recently, a trendy message from you, start blaring from their speakers the moment they land is a sure way to make that happen.
Small Business Website Design Mistake #3
Another common business website design mistake is failing to give your visitors an easy way to give you their contact information and permission to contact them. The most common way to do this is by having them sign up for a newsletter or exclusive subscriber content on your site. It is important to comply with the FTC’s 2003 CAN-SPAM act, so you have to get approval before you send emails to people, or face severe criminal penalties. From a business perspective, you want people to want to subscribe and feel they are getting value for their subscription.
Why is so important to get your visitor’s contact information? (Especially as you’ll notice there’s no way to do that here) Because, an oft repeated bit of marketing wisdom states that it takes 7 contacts for the average customer to buy something from you, weather that’s on-line or off. If you’re providing your subscribers with solid value, you’ll have repeated opportunities to sell them things now, and for years to come.
You’ll be doing something that’s the hallmark of every successful business, building a relationship. By so doing, you can create a group of loyal, repeat customers. It is much more difficult and expensive to obtain a customer than it is to retain one. The longer you keep a customer, the higher the return on your marketing expenditures. Building a good list is one of the most powerful ways to keep your customers, and more importantly, keep them buying from you.
Small Business Website Design Mistake #4
Not offering any content, and more to the point, not offering any content that has value to your visitors, and is regularly updated. This is important for three reasons.
1 - The first is to build value for your visitors, which will keep them coming back.
2 - The second reason to offer valuable and regularly updated content is that it will help you rank highly in the search engines. Google and Yahoo look to your sites content and the frequency with which it updates as one of the major determinants of your site’s ranking. The content should be built around the keywords that you hope to be listed for.
3 – The third reason to offer great content is that it will get you that one thing that can build your business for free; referrals. Positive word of mouth is the single best thing that a business owner can get besides huge profits, and usually you can generate those profits if your get positive referrals from your visitors.
These are some of the small business website design mistakes to avoid when you’re building or redesigning your website. A great website can, and often is, the difference between record sales numbers and going back to your real job. What’s it going to be?
