1. Stale Content

Keeping the content up to date on your website is important for several reasons. It keeps people excited about your product or service and has them check in regularly to see whats new.  It also keeps the search engine spiders and bots busy by crawling your site to increase your page rankings. Higher page rankings result it your site being easy to find.

2. Boring Design

Nothing is worse than a boring design that lacks a WOW factor. People just don’t want to click a link if the site is boring or amateur looking. Hire a professional to give your website some pizazz!

3.  The use of Frames

Frames in web pages are a throwback to the early days of the Internet.  frames were used to create scrollable content areas and also to “tack down” areas that are on every page such as a navagation menu. The use of frames is discouraged by all of the search engines and result in low page rankings.  Additionally, the use of frames usually creates a small main windows where content is hard to read.

4.  Not a true representation of the business

Some business owners feel that it is important to throw a website online without giving it much thought. The reason for this is sometimes because their competition just launched their website.  When this is done, the website usually doesn’t represent the company’s core values or mission. Spend some time with your web designed and make sure your website matches your business.

5. Poor Navigation

If your website is hard for users to navigate, they will stop using it and may not get past the first page. Make sure your menus are intuitive. Always makes sure there is an option on every page to get back to the main page of your website.  Consider using breadcrumbs to help with navigation (i.e.  Home > Sales > Refrigerators > Side By Side ) where each part of the breadcrumb is a seperate link. so that users can step backward through the site.

6. Browser Incompatibilities

Make sure that your website is compatible with several different browsers and devices. Test your website with Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, and mobile devices.  Consider additional browsers such as Google Chrome, Opera, and others. Just because your website looks fine and is functional on one browser, doesn’t mean it looks and works the same way in another.  Failure to test in multiple browsers is a quick way to lose potential customers.

7. Lack of Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Just because your designer has submitted your website to the search engines (or has he/she?) doesn’t mean your website is going to receive a ton of traffic. It takes some search engine optimization incorporated into the website itself to drive the customers to your site.  What keywords do you want people to find you buy? Make sure your content contains these keywords as well, not just the meta tags.  You will notice that this is a common theme on this blog and we’ve spent years perfecting our SEO strategy.

8. Lack of Promotion

Once you launch a new website, make sure you have the web address (URL) on EVERYTHING.  This includes your business cards, letterhead, trade show booth, t-shirts, e-mails, etc. If you were previously using a free email service such as Yahoo or Gmail,  set up an email address on your domain name (johndoe@yourdomainname.com) and start using it, this will make your business appear much bigger than having to resort to a free service. You’re already paying for the domain and website, promote it and make it work for you!  If you haven’t done so already, join the social media sites like Facebook and Myspace and promote your business. Not sure the best way to do all this? Just ask us!

9. Poor Photography

The old saying “a picture says a thousand words” is true for websites as well. Make sure that the photos on your website are top notch.  If you have a photo of your staff or product, make sure it is in focus, has proper lighting, and enhances the product or person instead of detracting from it. Stock photography is fine, but make sure you have some of your staff, your office,  or your products as well.

10. Forgetting to Budget

For all of the reasons above, you need to set a budget for the creation of the website AND maintenance. Remember, stale content bores people. They like to see that your business is growing and if you haven’t updated your website in a while it will appear that your business has stagnated. Remember to budget for maintenance costs and assign a person (or company) to do the maintenance on a regular basis.  Also, don’t forget the hosting costs for your domain in your budget.