It's all too common for small business owners
who build their own websites to make a handful of rookie mistakes. Luckily, the professionals at IES know how to effectively design and code websites. If you need a website designed, give us a call at 781-816-9437 or email contactus@iesadvisors.com.
Your website is one of your most important marketing tools, so
whether you're taking on the creation and design of it yourself or
you're hiring someone else to do it for you, make sure you avoid these
all too common home page mistakes:
1. Too Many Choices
People won't actually read your home page. They'll scan it, looking
for the information that's most immediately relevant to them. If they
can't find it quickly and with minimal effort, they'll visit a site
where they can.
Your site should be designed to guide new eyes exactly where you want
them to go, even if they don't know for sure what they're looking for....especially if they're not sure what they're looking for. Simple
navigation with clean lines is the way to go. If your business requires
that you offer robust, complex choices, do that on a deeper page. Your
home page should be simple and easy to navigate.
2. Wall Of Text
A few years ago, a multimillion dollar ad campaign
from five major magazine publishers who were touting the power of print
stated "We surf the Internet. We swim in magazines." To do that
surfing, people will interact with, share and return to websites that
have pages with:
- Bullet and numbered lists
- Images and other graphics
- Sections with subheadings
Anything that breaks up the information you're presenting means
people will read more about your company, your products and services,
and why they want to do business with you.
3. No Blog
Blogging for your business doesn't mean you have to post something
every day, but it does give your website dynamic, rather than static,
content. Dynamic content means something on your site changes often
enough that people will come back to see what's new. More important, it
engages Google in a way that unchanging pages don't.
Even one post per week will be enough to get the
attention of Google and other search engines. To attract the attention
of human readers, be sure to announce the newest blog updates on your
social media platforms and encourage subscribers to sign up for your
blog.
4. No Optimization
Yes, there's a lot of luck to search engine optimization
(SEO). No, this doesn't mean you shouldn't build your site without
sound SEO practices in place.
A full discussion of SEO could fill several books, which would then
need new editions fairly quickly because of how rapidly Google changes
its algorithms. A short list of essentials includes:
- Identifying three to five keyword phrases for your site to aggressively pursue
- Including keywords in metadata, URLs and similar "behind the curtain" aspects of your home page
- Avoiding "black hat" SEO methods like keyword stuffing and courting unrelated links
- Using smart, natural instances of your keywords in your blog and on the static pages of your site
5. Neglecting The Obvious
Google gives bonus points for including a handful of simple page
components on your website, which will help your site perform better in
searches. Including "Privacy Policy" and "Contact" pages with specific
data about your company, information about how to reach you and what
you'll do with customer information takes no more than 30 minutes per
page, but it's been shown to give sites preferential ranking over
similar sites that lack those pages.
