9 Small Business Website Mistakes you Need to Avoid

Starting a new business requires a lot to be taken care of. That’s the reason why many small business owners overlook their online presence. But with the advance of technology the internet presents a huge opportunity for companies from almost every industry to gain exposure and find new customers.

Having a website for your small business is a solid start but it’s far from enough if you want to really benefit from it. You need to have clear goals, have an idea of who you want to target with it and decide who will create your site and take care of the maintenance afterwards.

But don’t worry. If you’ve already created a website without having these things in mind, there is still time to fix things. To do that, check if you have made one of the following small business website mistakes.

Not enough info about your company

Your website is all about providing valuable information for your visitors so that they would eventually trust you and become your clients. One of the most common mistakes small business owners make is not including enough information about the company itself. A good way to fix this is by creating useful and content-rich About us page. For the About us section be sure to include as much info as possible. State clearly what you do and what your goals and values are, but do not stop there. Tell your story and share some photos. Visitors love to read some insights about companies and are way more likely to engage with you if they know you better.

Not enough contact information

Among the most common small business website mistakes we see is not providing enough contact information. Making it as easy as possible for your visitors to get in touch with you is essential. Take enough time to consider how to properly organize your Contacts page. Include there as many means of communication as possible as people have different preferences. Some are likely to write you an email, but other will call you. Another good idea is to include a contact form as well. This way you will let visitors easily get I touch with you without having to leave your website. Furthermore, don’t underestimate the power of social media as a way of communication. Monitor your social media profiles and answer every time when someone reaches out to you there.

No mobile website

You must have been living under a rock if you haven’t heard of the mobile mania and all the craziness about mobile-friendly websites. The time when mobile devices are only used about phone calls and texts messages is long gone. Now most people own a smartphone (or even more than one) and they used it to browse the internet all of the time.

Imagine that a smartphone user stumbles upon your not-mobile-friendly website. Too bad for you! You are most probably losing him as a prospect client. But things go even further. Not only users prefer mobile-friendly website, but also search engines totally love them. Earlier this year Google announced the so-called “Mobilegeddon” – an update in their search algorithm that is all about giving an advantage to mobile-friendly websites in the search results.

So, if you are one of those small business owners that have underestimated the power of a mobile website (and there are quite a few of them), you might re-think your decision soon.

No CTAs

One of the biggest mistakes in small business websites we’ve seen is the lack of a clear call-to-action (CTA). The importance of CTAs comes from the fact that you cannot expect visitors to know all by themselves want you want them to do. They need a little push. The way to do it is by including CTAs on your pages signaling what the next step for your visitors is.

Keep in mind that although the primary goal of a CTA is to convert a visitor into a buyer, that is not always possible. If your product is more expensive you can’t expect people to instantly hit “Buy Now”. Still, this doesn’t mean you should give up on using CTAs. In fact, they are pretty useful for plenty of different situations, such as providing special discounts, demos, tools, contact information and much more.

A website that is not social media friendly

OK, you know now that you need to have a website that is mobile-friendly, but you also need to make it friendly in terms of social media. Creating a social media-friendly website means to give your visitors the opportunity to easily share your content with their own audience. The way to do it is by including social sharing buttons on your pages. Social sharing buttons are mainly associated with blogs and news website, but they are a good fit for almost every website and every type of content which has the purpose to engage.

You are not using analytics

A huge small business website mistake is not using an analytics software. Becoming familiar with such tools (the post popular one is Google Analytics) is very important for your future success. Using such platform is the only way to receive real and accurate information about what happens on your site. Google Analytics can give you tons of useful data about your traffic – how many visitors you have, where they come from, how much time they spend on your pages and much more.

Setting up an Analytics account is super fast. You only need to put the tracking code you will get on your site and in 24 hours you will start receiving information. This is one of the first things to be done when you launch your new business website.

Using a free subdomain

It’s true that many small businesses don’t have a big budget for marketing and want to use free services for as far as possible, but creating your website on a free subdomain is a huge mistake. A new domain name doesn’t cost much at all (We will even give you one for free if you sign up for a yearly subscription) but is a strict condition for further success. Nobody takes serious websites on free subdomains. They just don’t look professional at all. ‘Nuff said!

Your navigation is not good enough

When you think of the structure of your website, you need to take into consideration how your visitors will navigate through your pages. First of all, it’s important that they don’t get lost on your site. This means that there shouldn’t be any pages without any links on them to other pages and to the home page. To put it simply – never make the exit button the only option for your visitors.

Moreover, you need to make sure that there are no pages on your site that are practically unreachable unless this is the purpose. But in the usual scenario, you need to have links to your pages from somewhere else on your site.

No SEO

OK, your website is ready and it’s out there on the web. But there are usually thousands of other websites in your industry. Your newly created site has no chance of standing out without some help from your site. This is where Search Engine Optimization (SEO) comes in handy. Many small business owners think that they will create a website and users will magically know about the site. But that is not going to happen. It’s a good idea to allocate some budget on SEO if you rely on your site for sales and new customers.

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