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8 Classic Business Website Mistakes

Many businesses make the following mistakes, read on to help your business avoid the most common website problems.

1. No clear purpose
Without a clearly defined purpose, websites often become great layers of ideas and thoughts, all carefully arranged to create as much confusion for the user as possible.

2. Targeting everyone
If your target market is everyone, make sure your company has a website promotion budget to rival Coca-cola or McDonalds. If not, you may have to start off a little more modestly.

3. Choosing your favourite design, flashy bits and all
Buying a website is not the same as buying a piece of art. Make sure the design is most appropriate for the message you want to create. Are you high-end or budget? Professional or friendly? And if you find flashing and whizzing annoying on other websites, don't fall into the trap of thinking it adds that something extra to your site.

4. No thought in promoting the site
Build it and they will come? A lovely idea, but it does not work on the internet. Unfortunately, your website is competing with billions of other pages. Unless you shove it under people's noses, they will never know it exists. Change your business cards, email footers, headed paper, set an advertising budget, and use a combination of online and offline promotion for the best results.

5. Dead ends
Your user visits your site, reads down a page and wonders what to do next. You think your beautiful navigation will stand out, but your visitor is left wondering what to do next. There should always be a link at the bottom of any text, either a call to action or a link to a related page.

6. Everyone will land on your home page first
Many sites are designed with the idea that the user lands on the home page, clicks through each of your navigation links in an orderly fashion. Calls to action and useful links are carefully hidden away so as not to clutter the design. When was the last time you used a website in this way?

7. Not addressing user anxiety
Website users don't know you, they can't talk to you, they can't ask questions, they can't make the judgements they usually make. You have to reduce this anxiety in order to make them feel comfortable. Useful, quality content will help to build your reputation, but forgetting the little details like spelling mistakes and quality of photos will undermine your great work.

8. No change in operations
If you want your website to be a success, something is going to have to change. You or your marketing team are going to have to dedicate some time to promoting the site. Someone is going to have to ensure the information is accurate and relevant. Someone is going to have to deal with requests through the site. Think about how much you can handle.

So now you know what not to do, but what should you do instead? Read our 'guide to the perfect business website' to find out more.

Once you know what to change on your website,
the question becomes how...

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