6 Mistakes Businesses Make With A New Website

1. Launch It and Leave It  

Your new website is going to require ongoing work. Businesses that invest in a new website, only to launch and leave it, would be better off investing that money elsewhere. In order for a website to work for your business, you have to continue to put work into keeping it updated.

What kind of updates? Fresh pictures, new content, updated links to external sources, seasonal product and services updates, and more. In addition, blogs can be incredibly helpful for some industries.

2. New Site = First Page of Google, Right?

Launching a new website does not get you onto the first page of a Google search on the first day, or the first week, or the first month.  In order to increase the probability of your site appearing on the first page of Google you must invest in a long term Search Engine Optimization (SEO) strategy. There are some practices you can try to increase your organic SEO performance. However, it is far more likely that you will have to “pay to play” in order to rank well for specific keywords in your industry. SEO takes time, expertise, strategy, and careful analytics. We highly recommend seeking professional SEO assistance.

3. Analytics Get Ignored

Your new website is ready to tell its story, but many businesses fail to make the time to listen. The analytics for your site will tell you who is visiting your site and when, how people are engaging with your site, the most popular pages, how long they stay and so much more. Learning from these patterns can help you update your site to fit your customer’s needs and improve your website’s performance.

4. Quality, Not Quantity  

Consumers, and Google, want to see a website that is easy to navigate on a mobile device, presents in the information in an easy to read format, and has a clear call to action on each page.  

More pages on a website do not constitute a good site. Your new website should have pages that have

• strategically planned out information about your products and services
• answers to common questions customers ask
• an easy to navigate form to contact you or other appropriate conversion metric like signing up to receive emails

5. Being Too Close To The Forest

You are an expert at what you do. Your new site has all the information a person could want, and it makes perfect sense to you and your team. But have you asked for customer feedback? Ask a few people who are not on your payroll, ,or related to you to give you a candid review of your website. Getting that fresh perspective can highlight ideas that you can’t see from your position.

6. Forgetting Future Marketing Plans

Your new website should have at least one landing page that you use as a link in your digital marketing. This landing page is a one page snapshot of your company that summarizes key points for customers and offers a call to action like an appointment request, email sign up, or registration. A well designed landing page should be simple enough to update going forward so you can adapt it as needed.

We strive to help clients avoid all of these common mistakes when we are designing a custom website. How do we do it? By taking the time to learn about your business, researching your customer’s habits, and designing a site with your long term digital marketing efforts in mind. If you are thinking it is time to redo your current website, or if you need a brand new site, we’d love to talk with you. Contact us today for a free, no obligation consultation.