It’s the 2020s. With few exceptions, all businesses have websites nowadays.
Yet despite this, many businesses treat them as a bit of an afterthought. Maybe because websites are complex and intimidating things or perhaps it’s because they can be too expensive to actively maintain.
Whatever the reasons, the fact of the matter is that, as a digital marketing agency, we see many businesses squander their website’s potential because of misunderstandings and critical mistakes.
Here are the most common mistakes businesses make when designing and creating a website and how you can avoid them.
Mistake 1) Businesses don’t have an established “purpose” or “function” for their site.
All too often, we see SMB owners who throw together a couple of web pages — because, again, it’s the 2020s, and having a website is just ‘the thing that businesses do now’ — without considering how to integrate them into their sales process.
How to fix: Clearly define how and where your site fits within your sales funnel; define its role in how it helps achieve business objectives. Depending on that answer, your priorities and website will look very different.
For example, if you’re a B2B firm, then a probable function of your site might be to generate leads for your sales team. If that’s the case, then investing time and resources in good search marketing, copywriting, and conversion rate optimization is a must. On the other hand, maybe you’re a restaurant looking for more sit-in diners. Then strong local SEO, a Google Business Profile account, clear branding, and an appealing menu with quality images on your website will be critical.
Mistake 2) Fail to understand how search engines work at the most fundamental levels.
If you expect a significant amount of traffic to come from search engines, then a strong understanding of how those search engines crawl and index websites is crucial. Specifically, mistakes can include a lack of internal linking (such as orphaned pages), no sitemap, and lots of unnecessary code that can slow down load speeds.
How to fix: In the absence of professional developers or search marketers, unfortunately, the best fix here is simply to research. Don’t worry, there are a wealth of good articles and explainer videos teaching the best ways to design, organize, and code a website to rank on search engines.
Mistake 3) Designers don’t give enough thought to marketing and SEO.
You’ve made your sleek new website. Great. Now, how do your potential clients/customers find you? Whether business owners handle it themselves, they hire in-house, or go the agency route, marketing is a step that CANNOT be overlooked if a website is to be worth the effort, resources, and frankly, the headache.
This is the scary part for most business owners. Nobody wants to fork over a ton of cash — usually thousands of dollars a month — for something that won’t guarantee returns right away.
How to fix: If your website plays any role in your sales process, ensure that your marketing team has at least some grasp of SEO and digital marketing. Search marketing tools such as Moz or SEMRush offer great SEO overview courses and are well worth the investment.
Mistake 4) Don’t have a dedicated in-house webmaster.
Even if a business outsources its website management, there needs to be someone in-house who is responsible for overseeing the website. As a digital marketing agency, it’s common for us to onboard new clients who have forgotten the login credentials for their CMS, hosting service, or Analytics accounts. Needless to say, if you can’t even access the site to make changes, install updates, or fortify security, it can quickly become a major liability for your company
How to fix: Assign or hire for the responsibility of webmaster at your company. Ensure the person can, at the very least, keep track of login credentials, make simple updates, content changes, and ensure that security measures are up-to-date.
How can these mistakes hurt a business?
A bad web designer has the potential to put a business under. This is especially the case when established sites decide to redesign and relaunch their site. Here’s a true story from one of our clients (again, we are a digital marketing firm for SMBs):
The client was a small Ecommerce site selling heavy equipment. We had been working with them for years at this point. They had strong SEO, decent year-over-year growth, and a good website structure. They wanted to redesign their site and went with a small, local firm — turns out to be just one guy.
Without our consultation (another big mistake; everyone working on a website needs to be in the loop about big changes at all times!), the client and designer changed the URL scheme of ALL of their core landing pages.
This guy (a “professional” webdesigner) didn’t realize that Google operates by keeping all of the URLs it knows about in a massive database. So when the new URLs didn’t match anything Google had in its database, in the eyes of search engines, the landing pages simply disappeared and new ones were created. And, for many different reasons, new pages take time to start ranking on Google (and also note: THEY DIDN’T BACK UP THEIR SITE — maybe the biggest, most costly, most avoidable of all possible mistakes involve big changes and no back up).
Predictably, traffic, and therefore sales, plummeted. However we’re still making a slow but steady recovery. So in short, this bad designer hurt their business because he and they (the client):
1) didn’t understand just how important their website was to their sales process (mind you, this is AN ECOMMERCE WEBSITE!)
2) didn’t understand the fundamentals of the internet and search engines in particular.
3) gave no thought to the SEO aspect of web design.
Should You Go With a Pro?
Websites are extremely complex and powerful tools that have the ability to skyrocket your business beyond the ‘small-midsize’ level. But, at the same time, one bad line of code can tank the whole thing. The more ambitious your business objectives are, the more necessary a good professional web developer will become.
Fanatically Digital is here for all of your digital marketing needs. Whether it’s SEO, PPC, social media marketing, or any other web-marketing project you have, contact us today!
