Are You Making These Small Business Website Mistakes?

March 13, 2016

Poor navigation, clutter and lack of clarity will steer people to your competitors’ websites

In today’s market, big money can be made if you are invested in cyber real estate, but you can make big mistakes with your small business website if you’re not careful. These mistakes are easy to avoid, so it’s important to be aware of the pitfalls.

Here are some small business website mistakes that can turn your audience away, and the actions you can take to correct the problem before it begins:

You Don’t Know Anything about Your Data. It doesn’t matter what industry you’re in, if you’re like many small business owners, you have enough numbers to worry about when it comes to your bottom line without staring at a bunch of analytical interpretations of your website visitors, right?

You need to consider the analytics of your website as part of your bottom line because your audience (or lack thereof) truly does impact your business. If you’re not sure how people are finding you, you need to get in on the game right away.

Google Analytics will help you understand how people found you, why they’re on your site, how long they are staying on your site and what kind of information you can give them so they will keep coming back.

Your Site is Easy to Navigate – If You’re the One Who Created It. As a visitor to other companies’ websites, you have probably experienced the frustrations that come from poor navigation a time or two. If you have created your own small business website, it’s imperative that you have other people who aren’t you give you honest feedback about the look, feel and overall navigation of the site. It’s easy to become consumed by your own project, and if you have worked on it for any length of time, you know the ins and outs of your pages without even blinking an eye, but that doesn’t mean your site’s navigation is as second nature to your audience.

Poor navigation, clutter and lack of clarity will steer people to your competitors before they even get a chance to get to know you. Focus on creating navigation that makes sense, headlines that clearly explain what customers can learn from your pages and calls to action that make it easy for them to find out even more about you.

You Went with Your First Instinct. As a businessperson, you probably have excellent gut instincts when it comes to your company, but bear in mind that your first website may not be the most attractive to your main audience. Set aside some time to conduct A/B testing between two different options for your small business website. Your first instinct may end up the winner, but you will only know for sure once you understand which option gives you the most traffic, conversions and overall results.

Your Site Looks the Same as the Day It Launched. You have a business to run, which means you’re busy with a billion things to do every day. Your website is supposed to maintain itself while you take care of your business, correct?

This is a trap you don’t want to fall into. Search engines and the general public will penalize you in their own ways if your content becomes out of date. Keep the aesthetic appearance fresh, which means updating the pages from time to time. Keep your prices, services and other information up to date, and beyond anything, utilize blogs and social media to keep constantly fresh content circulating on your pages.

Do you need help taking your small business website to the next level? Our team at McCabe Marketing is here to help! Contact us, and let us know what we can do to propel your company to the next level!

Check out these tips:

Branding Strategies for Small Business
Why It Is Important to Update Your Website’s Content

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