As an entrepreneur, you know how important it is to grow your business. That’s why the prospect of developing a website that will help you do just that is so exciting! However, the reality is that many businesses spend time and money on websites that are doomed from the start. They make mistakes that create websites that are ugly, hard to navigate, and detrimental to their business instead of helpful.
Today, I’m sharing the 9 most common mistakes that business owners make when developing their website. This information can be the difference between success and failure for your website, so read on…
1. Hiring a Web Designer who is Not an Expert in what you Need
Developing a website is not as simple as many business owners think. While a web designer may have extensive knowledge of general design concepts and skills, they may not know how certain elements will affect your website’s functionality.
If you need a webpage that will help people find your business online, for example, then you’ll need a designer with experience in SEO. This type of designer can create a website that helps your business rank first in the search engines, but someone without experience may ignore this crucial aspect and create a site that does not have these vital elements.
Avoid this mistake by hiring web designers who specialize in specific niches – such as local business websites or e-commerce websites. These designers know exactly what goes into such sites and can design yours with success in mind.
2. Not Optimizing your Site for Mobile Users
These days, more than half of all web traffic is generated by users accessing websites on their cell phones or other mobile devices. As the popularity of these devices increases, so does the competition for users’ attention.
If you do not have a website that is optimized for mobile users, you will be losing out on potential sales and customers. Most people browse the internet on mobile devices using a small screen device that does not allow them to view a full-sized site without scrolling horizontally. To use these small screens effectively, websites must have larger text and images without losing clarity because it will cause them to blur or lose quality.
Avoid this mistake by creating mobile-friendly layouts before your website goes live. You can pare yourself a lot of work by using mobile-responsive themes when setting up your website.
3. Not Using a Content Management System
This is a mistake that many business owners make. With a CMS, you can create content and make changes quickly and easily. This allows you to be able to update your website without hassle or the need to send out an entire team of programmers or designers to update some elements. If you are using WordPress, for example, you can access it via the admin interface, which helps make things easier for you. Many CMSs also allow you to add different types of social networking links that will allow your website to become more dynamic.Avoid this mistake by using WordPress or another CMS when you are setting up your website.
4. Not Using a Premium Theme
Just as you need to hire a special kind of web designer for your website, you also need to buy special kinds of premium templates. Many free templates out there are severely limited in functionality and offer little or nothing in terms of design options. If you want to have a unique website, try to afford yourself some extra budget from the start and find a premium theme that offers more options. Thousands of themes are available for most CMSs, but only a tiny portion deliver the power that business owners need to create an engaging site.
Avoid this mistake by investing in premium themes with powerful features like unlimited color schemes and full-width page/posts layouts.
5. Not Setting up SSL for your Website
: With SSL, your website will be able to display the “https” symbol so that visitors know that they are being sent to a secure website. This protects your site’s information from being intercepted by a third party and stolen. If you have a WordPress website, for example, then you can add SSL only for its login area or admin area. You don’t need to change anything in the rest of your theme because it already utilizes SSL.
Avoid this mistake by determining whether you need an SSL before opening your site and ensuring that the administrator area has one too. If not, consider purchasing a high-priced domain name with an online store that uses SSL like Amazon or eBay, etc.
6. Not Backing up your Website
You should always have a backup plan in place. If you don’t, then any data created on your site could be permanently lost if your website crashes due to hacking or other reasons. Backing up your websites is also important because even if the website is not accessible to users, at least you can retrieve useful information from the backup data. Your website will be able to auto-generate this backup file on its own, so you don’t need to worry about doing anything extra for it.
Avoid this mistake by regularly backing up your website using special software or plugins.
7. Not optimizing your Website for Search Engines (SEO)
SEO is the process of making your website accessible to search engines. If you want people to find you, you must make sure that your website and content offer the most possible value to search engines. The more valuable content on your site, the more it will be indexed by search engines. Your content should also be well-written and include keywords that are closely related to your target market. SEO also requires a lot of time and effort from the web designer because there are plenty of conflicting elements involved.
Avoid this mistake by hiring a professional web designer with experience in providing SEO services for websites. The design process will be long but ultimately worthwhile for gaining higher rankings in search engines like Google, Bing etc.
8. Not Adding Legal Pages to Your Website
A website without a legal page is like a bird without wings. You need a legal page because your website is an extension of your business. It doesn’t matter how big or small your website’s content is; you should always include legal pages. These pages ensure that all third-party content on your site complies with relevant laws and regulations. You also need to have pages that tell visitors about your privacy policy and terms visitors can use when visiting your site.
Avoid this mistake by creating a legal page for every language when you translate or import other websites into yours. This will also give visitors a clear idea of what they can expect from your site.
9. Not Compressing and Optimizing your Images
The average person spends about 20 minutes per day looking at photos online. It makes sense that if you want to keep their attention on your products or services, you should give them something they actually like seeing. If your website doesn’t have high quality photos, you may bore your audience or put them off. But uploading images without compressing or optimizing them could slow down your website.
Avoid this mistake by ensuring that your customers see only the best possible versions of your images. Compress them before uploading them to your server. There are several free tools available that allow you to easily optimize your images. If you’re using WordPress, there are also plugins available that automatically resize and optimize all of your uploaded files.