24 May Small Business Websites
If a small business decides to take their small business website there are usually several mistakes that they do. This really is partially due to lack of experience and often lack of knowledge. There seems to be a trend that small businesses think of their website as an online business card rather than a advertising tool. That’s in which the most of them make a mistake. So let’s take a look at probably the most common mistakes done when a small business takes their business online.
- Order of links
So many times you go to a small business website and they proudly flag the “about us” link as their first link. This is called the pride link because they often think that telling people about the business is the most important thing. The links needs to be in order of importance. Not in the order of the business owners EGO! If you use a website designer and that he does consult you on the order of links, chances are you ought to be using someone else or at least be sure to educate yourself about internet marketing when your website designer sure hasn’t!
- No focus
Most small business websites lack focus. Once you enter you’re not sure what to do next which makes it hard for the user to understand what exactly he is supposed to do. The website should flow and the user should be able to understand the site in just a couple of seconds of opening it up.
- No sale / No lead setup
Many small businesses don’t use their site to increase sales directly or capture leads. It is simply an internet brochure or business card. Sometimes the information is more confusing than it is helpful. In the event you competitors website is simpler to navigate and captures either the sale or lead, you just lost a client. A small business websites needs to be even more on top of catching leads than a corporate website because every client lost counts more!
- No analytics
Most small business websites have no clue what individuals do once they enter their site. No clue what users are actually looking at and where they may be losing their potential sale or lead. If customers just walked in and out of their workplace eyebrows could well be raised then one would be done. Shouldn’t the same way of thinking apply to the site? You need to know what’s going on with your small business website and what users are going to do.
- No marketing purpose
This is actually the biggest “Whammy” of all of them. Small business websites tend to fail seeing the potential of using the website as a complete marketing tool. The fundamental need to take a business online is always to do marketing. The lack of marketing vision explains the mistakes from above. If just this single piece was in place when a small business builds the website, most of the other things would be solved because they would educate themselves about what this means to have a marketing strategy!
- No results!
This really is not surprising thinking about everything above. If you have no objective, no focus, no vision and no marketing thought behind the site there are probably no results from the site either. What is even worse is that most small business websites do not even measure results or understand how to measure results from their site. Once again it is a lack of knowledge above all else!
Exactly what can a small business do when they are willing to take their own business online and setup their small business website? What is important is always to educate themselves in a few areas. The most crucial ones being, what you need to consider before building or having someone build your website. How to use the website as being a marketing tool and it might be extremely beneficial to you if you at least had some familiarity with what SEO is and how it works. Exactly what is the big difference in between an online site designer, website developer along with an internet website marketing company? All of them do something else entirely and have a different familiarity with how to use the internet; absolutely suit what purpose is your website supposed to serve? For almost all it should be a marketing tool, for the reason that internet is regarded as the effective marketing tool available!
If you own, operate, manage or perhaps you are starting up a small business then we suggest that you’re taking some of the WEBPROS: Get your website up right. It is a great source of small businesses planning to make a website and consider the step online. You can find all the basic important information to understand before you take that step and taking your business online. Make sure that you are choosing the power of the web fully as a small business. The interest rate of businesses that fail is adequate; at the very least make sure your business is getting the many leads and sales that it can be getting. Don’t make the same mistakes that others are doing, it will require so very little effort for you as a small company owner to stop those common mistakes!