Many small to medium businesses invest a lot of time and money into their websites. Their wise investment to establish a virtual home for their business where customers can find information at all times can be a waste if simple mistakes are overlooked.
In a great article from “Small Business Trends” common website errors in small businesses are discussed. Below are the highlights from the article. The full article can be found here.
No Design= No Credibility
“Building a professional looking Web site is one of the most powerful ways to gain instant credibility with visitors. When someone lands on your site, they’re going to take one glance and immediately use it to determine whether or not they can trust your business. If your site looks too standard or like you just threw it together in an hour with things not in their proper place, they probably won’t find you trustworthy enough to do business with. And they’ll leave for a competitor.”
Your Conversation Funnel is Too Long
”If you’re an e-commerce site, try removing some of the unnecessary steps cluttering up your conversion funnel. Count how many screens there are between when a customer puts a product in their shopping cart to that final confirmed checkout. Is it more than three? If so, you may want to check your analytics to see how many visitors are abandoning from the shopping cart. Typically, each additional hoop that you make a customer jump through to buy something, the less likely it is you’re going to make that sale and the more likely it is someone will leave your site prematurely.”
There’s No Method Behind The Madness
Before you create your Web site, lay out a strategy behind it. What is the purpose of the site? To educate? To sell? Whatever your goal is, that’s going to have a large say in how it’s developed, how things are arranged on page and the type of Web site that you create. Unfortunately, many small business owners don’t take this into consideration before building out the Web site. They get so wrapped up in just getting something out that there that they end up creating a site that isn’t usable or useful to searchers.
There’s No Reason to Re-Visit
The fatal flaw of virtually all small business Web sites is that they offer no reason for someone to ever revisit the site. You got the email? The phone number? Good, because that’s all this site has to offer.
In order for your site to be interesting to users, there has to be some interesting or dynamic content. Find ways to incorporate dynamic content onto your Web site. Whether it’s a coupon that updates monthly or widget that allows customers to book appointments and services through your website, create something that will keep people coming back for more.
Great article Small Business Trends!