If you are thinking of making your own website there are mistakes you should try to avoid. There is much help online to assist you, but sometimes the advice can be a bit confusing if you have never done anything like this before. Your website is a very important factor in the success of your business, but not everyone can afford to pay the experts to carry out this vital task for them. Here we will discuss some of the most common mistakes people that are building their own website make so that hopefully you can make sure you do not make them too.
Customize Your Theme
Before you start, make sure you know what your theme will be so that you can stick with it on every page of the website you create. A big advantage of content management systems (CMS) is that they have lots of free themes ready and waiting. When you have decided on a business name, and a domain name then you are ready to choose which platform you will use.
Whichever one you opt for, it is important to remember that you will have to customize it to suit your brand. If you do not do this, your website will look just like thousands of others and that will not be good for your small business. There is software available that will help you to upload images and logos to make sure your website stands out from the rest.
Keep It Simple
Your website should explain your products or service as simply as possible. Do not use long technical words or jargon when you are trying to show consumers what you do, as this will put them off seeing any further. Remember that your viewers might not know what abbreviations stand for either, so avoid them as well.
It is estimated that you have just 4 seconds to engage someone viewing your site, and whether that is with written copy, images or videos, it needs to be something they will instantly understand.
A headline that is straightforward without any jargon or technical words is the best, with subheadings that lets them know exactly what it is your business is offering. Then you should always have a call to action that either gets them to sign up to your newsletter or leads them to the place to buy.
Your layout should be kept simple too. Anything too fussy will just start to look a mess, and that will not encourage users to trust your brand. You can help to this end by keeping your font size consistent and readable and by using contrasting colors, but not too many of them. Consider things such as pale green on w white background will not be easy to read, and nor is red on blue.
Search Engine Optimization
Having lots of keywords on your homepage will; not help you climb the search engine rankings. Google, Bing Yahoo, and all the other search engines are too clever to fall for that.
You are better to choose one top keyword and insert it as often as you naturally can into long-form content. You can be penalized in the rankings for trying too hard, and you will have more success if your content is aimed at the user and not at marketing your brand. Be as useful as possible if you want the search engines to reward you.
Use subheadings, as they will help give structure to your homepage, and with your call to action at the end, the whole page is more likely to help you move higher in the search engine rankings.
Loading Times
If your website takes a while to load, users will get fed up of waiting and go elsewhere. The speed with which your page loads is vitally important, and you can read more about it here. Modern consumers expect sites to load in just a couple of seconds and it is said that is they have to wait more than 3 seconds, they move on. A slow website can also hurt the number of conversions that your business gets, and it will be hampered even further if the load time is more than 7 seconds.
Slow speeds also affect your SEO, as the search engines look at the number of visitors you have and how long they stay on your website. If none are staying, they assume it is a site not worth viewing and drop you further down their rankings.
User – Friendly
Your site needs to be easy to navigate and user-friendly in every other way. Consumers do not want any more difficulties than they already have in their everyday lives, and if your site presents them with some, they will just move onto one that doesn’t.
Your navigation bar should be simple and take them straight to where they want to go, and that will be one of the best things to help you convert viewers into customers.
A Responsive Website
One of the most common mistakes for anyone new to making a website is to not make it responsive to all devices. This is crucial if you want your business to be a success. Consumers are not concerned about any issues this may cause you. If you want them to trust your brand they will want to see the same no matter what size screen they are looking at.
Somewhere in the region of 80% of Internet use is on smartphones, and a large portion of that is for shopping purposes. If your site is not as good on a mobile as it is on a PC, those viewers will look for somewhere else. A recent survey showed that around 40% of viewers move on in these circumstances, and that is a lot of potential sales lost.
Building your own website may take you some time to get it right, but in the long run, you are wasting your time unless you avoid the pitfalls. Make sure when you start your own site, you are aware of the things that can be done wrong and avoid them.
