5 Biggest Website Mistakes That Too Many Small Businesses Make
Let’s face it – your company needs a website. For many customers, your website will provide their first impression of your business. A simple, well designed website can go a long way, but watch out for these common errors that can turn customers off.
1. Making your Customers Work to Find You
For me, the most common reason I visit a business website is to get their phone number or address. I’m of the opinion that contact information should be on the header or footer of every page of your website. Unless you are doing online sales, the ultimate goal is to get customers in your door, right? Don’t make them work so hard.
2. Burying the Lead
Ever click on a business website and think ‘what are they even selling?’ Every page of your website should give a strong indication of your product or service. This can be as simple as throwing a picture of a truck on every page is you’re a trucking company. A strong company name and logo can also do the trick. But if your company name is “Dynamic Systems Enterprises”, you’ll need to be clear of what your website is about, and remind your customer on every page why they are there.
3. Out of Date Content
It seems pretty basic: keep your contact information and prices up to date on your website, but too many small business owners forget it. Changing prices and disconnected phone numbers can immediately kill a new lead. But also watch for old information in other parts of your content. If I see a website advertising an event from 6 months ago, or running a promotion that ended last season, I don’t trust that ANY information is current. I might even think you’ve gone out of business.
4. Goofy Stock Photos
Stock photos are inevitable, but some of them are downright ridiculous. These photos have even sparked the new trend of “stocking”, or imitating stock photos.
Sure, visuals are a must for your website, and if you don’t have high quality photos of your business, products, and employees buying or getting free stock images can be a quick and cheap alternative. But really look at the picture before you put it up there, is this really how your employees look when celebrating a success?
5. Too Many Gimmicks
Skip the crazy animation and graphics; the last thing you want is for your website to take a long time to load. This can lead to instant click off. Small business owners also can’t seem to resist the allure of Hit Counters. Not only will it reveal if you have low traffic to every person who visits your site, it just looks tacky.
Avoid these mistakes by remembering that your website should match your business. If you are an upscale restaurant, your website should feel upscale as well. If the client services your store is relaxed and personable, that’s how your website should feel too.
Approach designing your website like you would designing your store front. Would you put those two colors together? Would you have a photo like that hanging up? Would you have any information out of date? Use these questions as your guide when setting up your online presence as well.
Having a website for your business is essential to staying competitive in today’s marketplace, make sure it’s bringing new customers in rather than making them “click off”.
About the Author: Becky Canary-King is an Account Manager and Press Contact at Direct Incorporation, a company focused on providing a more economical and efficient alternative to using a law firm for common legal/entrepreneurial issues. She blogs for Direct Incorporation’s Blog, offering tips for the first 6 months of your small business.
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4 Traits of a Good ISP for Small Businesses
Whether you’re working from home or providing internet to your small business’s office, there’s more to consider when choosing an internet service provider (ISP) for business than for personal use. Even with an office of only 8 people, internet failure for one hour means an entire business day’s worth of productivity went out the window. While no internet service can be perfect all the time, some providers are more reliable than others. If you’re looking into a new internet service for your small business, be sure to keep an eye out for these criteria:
24/7 Customer Support
Technology is not always our friend, which is why you need the best friends you can find at your ISP. A quality tech support service will be available any time of day (if you work from a home office, you know 1am is not an unreasonable time to need service). The speed with which an issue is given attention and even the courteousness of the staff can make all the difference in the world when you are experiencing problems. Investigate whether your provider has local support that can visit your location if an issue cannot be resolved over the phone. Perhaps the best way to gauge the tech support is to ask friends who have used the service; if you don’t know anyone personally, check reviews on reputable consumer watch websites like consumer search.
IP Address Options
Your IP address, or the identifying number assigned to your computer as it connects to the internet, can take one of two forms: static or dynamic. Dynamic IP addresses draw from a pool of addresses that gets shared among other dynamic users. It usually changes each time the user logs in, and several users will often be assigned the same number at the same time. This is often the cheaper option of the two and is acceptable for less internet-dependent businesses. Static IP addresses stay constant and are recommended for VOIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol) or for using your computer as a server. It’s more expensive than dynamic hosting and is allegedly less secure because it is easier to track an unchanging address — but it is indispensable when you have more rigorous internet needs. Make sure your ISP provides the IP Address options you need, and allow for changes if your needs change in the future.
High Bandwidth
Of course, no discussion about ISPs would be complete without touching on bandwidth. This number, measured in megabytes per second (MBPS), the big selling point ISPs use in their advertising, but you should be aware of the fine print. Bandwidth comes in two forms: upstream and downstream. Downstream bandwidth is the speed that users can download data from the internet – the bulk of most internet usage. Upstream bandwidth—the speed with which you can upload items—is typically a fraction of the downstream speed, but should be considered if your business requires large files to be uploaded on a frequent basis. Be cautious when comparing advertised bandwidths; usually, the number you see is the maximum speed under the most optimal conditions. The actual speed may be lower, so you should investigate the minimum guaranteed speed.
Included Security
A good ISP will include a security package for you. Security is important for any user, but it’s crucial for a business owner. Features should include firewall protection, which is software or hardware that protects your computers against outside attackers. Both hardware and software firewalls offer specific advantages, but the best protection includes both. Other security features an ISP may offer include virus protection and identity protection software, data backup, and network monitoring. Evaluate the security features offered by various ISPs to determine who offers the most; if you are sold on an ISP that offers less free protection than the competition, they may offer more if you tell them you are considering another company that offers more.
About the Author: Chris Turberville-Tully is a marketing strategist for NewNet, a UK-based internet, hosting and networking solutions company. NewNet services include data centres, dedicated servers, web hosting, business ISP and more. Follow NewNet: http://twitter.com/#!/NewNetISP
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How to Find a Killer Strategy for Your Small Business Website in 3 Simple Steps
In this post you’re going to learn how to make your website more effective in three simple steps that you can implement right now.
Step 1) Choose a single goal for your website.
“If you don’t know where you are going, you will probably end up somewhere else.”
- Credited to Laurence J. Peter
Your website may fill many shoes, and that’s okay. It can provide information to new visitors, it can help retain existing customers, and it can support e-commerce sales all at the same time.
The trouble with this is that more often than not, there’s no real goal for the website other than vague statements of wanting it to support the business. The purpose gets lost in all of the fancy features and great things that can come with a website.
It’s time to pick a single most important goal for your website. All decisions will be based around this goal, so it’s very important you think about it all the way through.
Why does your website exist? Here’s some sample answers to get your wheels moving:
- To bring in new local customers to my brick and mortar store.
- To provide support to existing customers in a convenient, 24/7 manner.
- To sell products nationwide through the power of e-commerce.
Step 2) Know your target audience.
If you want to sell something, it’s very important to know who you’re selling to.
For example: if you want to sell dog food, your target audience is dog owners. Your average dog owners will identify with a bond and connection they have with their dog and be interested in finding how they can give their pet the best they can without breaking the bank.
Think about the troubles that your audience encounters on a regular basis – go ahead and make a list. Here’s a few considerations for our dog owner example:
- Vet fees
- Scooping pet excrement
- Keeping pet at healthy weight
- Dog misbehaving
Now, make a list of all the positive things your audience encounters on a regular basis.
- Walks (in the park, at the beach, with other dog owners)
- Fulfillment and friendship in their dog
- Community with other dog owners
These examples are very short lists to give you an idea of what we’re going for here. Make these lists as big as you need to – these lists should be referenced every time you make a decision or write anything that is about or for your customers.
Usage Example: If you want to show how your product can help alleviate a common problem encountered by your audience, you have a list to refer to for that.
Usage Example: If you want to appeal to your audience’s likes and experiences, you have a list to refer for that.
Knowing how to communicated and reach your audience is one of the most important ways to develop a killer strategy for your website.
Step 3) Brainstorm a work flow that satisfies your audience’s needs and leads to your goal.
Now you have a clear goal for your site and you know how to appeal to your target audience. You’re already 95% there – by knowing why you’re making a decision and how to angle it for the people you’re selling to, the answers come fairly naturally from here on out.
Where does the audience start?
Hypothetically your audience could land on any page of your website. Where will you lead them? To your goal.
Perhaps you want customers to come to the brick and mortar store – the “Visit Us” page should be clear and prominent from every page on your website.
Perhaps you want to help answer any existing customer’s needs. A well designed FAQ section would do a great job at providing that. The FAQ should be easily accessible from every page of your website. You may even consider highlighting the most popular questions and answers throughout the site.
Think outside of the box! Put yourself in your audience’s shoes (by using the lists you made above) and think about what you might be looking for and where you’d expect to find it.
Take Action
Now it’s time to make things happen. If you haven’t followed these steps, you need to do so right now and make the appropriate changes.
Here’s to your effective website!
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About the Author: Anne Dorko is a business web consultant helping business owners like you succeed online every day. Whether you need to create, shape or grow your website, Anne is there for you every step of the way explaining how to get it done in a way you can actually understand! For more tips and a free worksheet, be sure to sign up for the Web Tips newsletter.
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Is Your Website Customer Friendly?
For a small business owner, Internet marketing can seem like an insurmountable obstacle to increased sales. Fortunately, small steps can make a small business website efficient, cost-effective, and most importantly, customer-friendly. Read more
5 Lessons for Brick and Mortar Small Businesses from a Website Perspective: Is Your Store Readable?
First impressions count. That is an accepted maxim and there is truth to it. Within the first 7 seconds, what will your visitors see? Is your store “readable”?
I bet you think I’m talking about an online store, but I’m not. I am talking about bricks and mortar, real world storefronts, where you and I shop. Or at least we used to. I just recently worked on a hyperlocal small business project where I walked and visited along the main street of two towns near me. I visited 70-plus retail stores, shot 170 short videos (1.89 Gigabytes worth), had 10 great conversations with employees or owners, experienced 2 epic fails, and discovered 21 takeaways for small business owners based on my usual online work combined with this Main Street walk.
My motivation for doing this project came from hearing stats that approximately 50 percent of small businesses don’t have a website and I would argue that a higher number have a useless website or online presence. Please print this (or my 21 Tips from link below) and share it with a local merchant when you don’t see them mentioning their online efforts in their retail stores. Help your neighborhood store.
1. First impressions do count
Have you really thought about what happens when someone walks into your store? I mean, from a sales perspective, what will they do? What do they do? Here are a few thoughts:
- Where do your eyes go when you walk in the store? Better, recruit 20 customers and buy them lunch after they help you sort this out.
- Does the store seem inviting?
- Do you engage the senses? Is there music playing? A video playing with people using your products? A touchscreen computer that customers can use to find things in your store?
- Is there one thing that captures attention and captivates your walk-in customers and that they head straight for, every time?
2. Is your navigation easily understandable?
What am I talking about here – there’s no navigation in a retail store… Really? Signage is navigation.
- Is it compelling, fun, energizing?
- Do you have a location in your store that shouts “Contact Us” or “About Us”?
- Do you have testimonials or quotes hanging around?
- Awards you’ve won? Client list? Customer success stories?
3. Does your store have a lead capture mechanism?
This goes with the Contact Us comment in point 2, but do you think about using the point of sale to capture email addresses or cell phone numbers for a text messaging campaign? Do you offer coupons or special deals? I think your customers and prospects probably want to know about them and are probably willing to give you their contact info.
4. Readability
Can they read the signs you have up or are they in some frilly, elegant, fancy font that people can only read them when they are five inches away. You may think I’m kidding. We drive at 80 miles per hour and we usually have a cell phone in our hands; the same brain speed continues when we enter your store. Put up road signs so large that the visually impaired can read them from outside the store. Okay, so I’m laying the vegemite on a bit thick here and you only need a thin spread to get the flavor.
5. How many visitors did you have last month? How many purchased something?
I have yet to see a store besides Costco count people when they come in. Why not? Do you think they are doing anything with that data? I think so, but I don’t know for sure. Doesn’t matter. You could. It might not be pretty or pleasant, but you could start asking yourself hard questions about how many come in, how many that come in actually purchase, how many come in and leave without buying? The “ouch” moment could lead to an “Aha” moment and more sales.
In Conclusion
Small business is the lifeblood of our world economies. If you believe that, don’t just shop and buy local, encourage your local merchants to step up their intensity, get in the social stream, and make a difference in their own sales success. If 50 percent of small businesses don’t have an active, useful, or profitable website, many will start to wilt and die. Some will survive without an online presence, to be sure.
Remember Smokey the Bear with “you can prevent forest fires”? Well, you can prevent small business failures. Are your local merchants making their stores readable? Is the first impression a strong one? This isn’t just friendly advice you’ll share with a local merchant. Advice like this is what will keep them in business and on Main Street and that’s what we all want: Diversity and energy and success for retailers and other small businesses because they help drive our economies.
About the Author: TJ McCue is the founder of SalesKickstart.com, which helps small businesses increase website traffic and sales. He visited 73 stores over two days in November 2010 and wrote 21 Takeaways to Save Small Businesses on Main Street at his blog.
Photo Credit: esparta
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5 Tips On How To Create a Business Website With Minimal Expenses
Nowadays many people deal with Internet business. Some use World Wide Web as an additional marketing channel to engage their target audience. For others – domain and hosting resellers, web-designers, social media marketers, etc. – all the Web is actually the primary target market.
Whatever your business is, you need your own website to run the desired project. If you are just starting out, you may get easily trapped by big expenses and the choice of costly and sometimes unnecessary solutions.
Here are some tips to help you build your own site without a risk of money waste:
Free domain name – the domain name is much needed for a business site – it should be catching and easy-to-spell. But who said you should pay for that? Many hosting providers offer free domains along with their hosting packages, so you should search for one, which does. Usually those domains are provided free-for-life, which means, that you’ll keep using this domain for no fee for as long as you stay with your host.
Cheap hosting – in the world of hosting the word “cheap” does not stand for “low-grade”. Modern technologies allow hosts to have hundreds of clients on one server and provide great services. Of course, there are many limitations on such so-called shared servers, but if you are only starting it may very well server all your needs. Once you feel your business needs a step-up – you will be always able to upgrade to a bigger plan or to your own powerful server.
Promos and discounts – constant updates and competitive spirit of hosting companies makes them constantly release new promotions and discounts. If you are lucky, you may come around a 30%, 50% and sometimes even 75% discount. But even if you get a 15-20% discount – the most usual rate – you may consider you’ve got a couple of months of free hosting.
Scripts-installers and sitebuilders – if you have never dealt with website building, it’s not really advisable to start training while creating your business page. On the other hand, no one says you should hire a webdeveloper. Many hosting providers provide script-installing and site-building tools, which let anyone create a simple but nice and professionally looking web-site with the help of couple of clicks.
Feedback – if you have just launched your business website, make sure your “Contact Us” page has only your current telephone number and a shared email address (e.g. info@mycompany.com). As you are only starting, you shouldn’t expect too many calls and emails to arrive, so you’ll be able to cope with them on your own, without involving additional staff.
Those tips should not be taken for a universal cure, as some projects may need a hi-end, top solution, which cannot be cheap or free. However, if any of those helps you make sure your online business is granted a smooth and affordable start.
About the Author: Arkadij Shkolnik is the PR director for SiteValley.com. SiteValley.com is a reliable Cheap Web Hosting provider that can help you meet your online business challenges. They exist to provide the highest levels of quality and service in the highly specialized area of Internet hosting and deliver value and performance to our customers.
Photo Credit: hellochris
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Don’t Create Your Business Website Without Reading These Five Tips
If you’ve got a small business, you need a website – that much is clear. But don’t go off hiring a designer until you check out Corey Perlman’s five website design tips to help your website not only look good, but make your business money.
If you leave your website’s look and feel strictly to the designers, be prepared to get a beautiful, sexy, artistic site that does everything but make you money.
Why? Because they know website design, but they do not know your business. The five tips below will help ensure that you not only have a website that looks professional, but a website that’s open and ready for business!
Five Design Tips for Your Business Website
#1 – Keep your important information above the fold
64.9% of people don’t scroll. And 77.3% of statistics are made up on the spot.
So forget the statistics, just remember that your phone number, physical address, “Buy Now” button all have a greater chance of being clicked on if you don’t require people to scroll down to click on them. Make sure all of your important information is eye level and consistent on every page throughout your site.
#2 – Include an Opt-in Form on your Website
By securing a person’s contact information prior to them leaving your Website, you’ve ensured that you can continue to communicate with this person down the road.
This is critical to your success via the Web. As you know, people are very protective of their information and will be hesitant to give it away. To increase your chances of having a successful opt-in box, offer something of real value so people feel good about giving you their name and email address.
Remind them that you will only email a periodic eNewsletter and that you will NEVER sell or give their email address to anyone else.
#3 – Link Clarity
Another rule of thumb: if the user doesn’t feel confident they know where the link they are about to click on is taking them, they won’t click on it. So take the guess work out of it and make your links abundantly clear. Contact Us. Yep, that’s pretty clear.
#4 – Color Pollution
Remember when your mom thought anything you brought home from art class was the most beautiful masterpiece in the world? Well, no offense, but I’m willing to bet it fell into the category of color pollution. Color pollution is simply more than three primary colors on a page. Any more than three and your brain slowly begins to turn to mush. This is crucial when it comes to your website because you want your user’s attention to stay focused on the content, not that odd shade of mauve.
#5 – Include Key Words in your homepage content
This is not your web designer’s job, so you can’t blame them for not doing it. Again, they don’t know your business and wouldn’t have the slightest clue what words would make the most sense to include on your homepage. Key Words are those words your users will type in search engines to find you…or your competitors. You want any word or phrase that they might type in to be scattered throughout your homepage as the search engines will give you credit for those words and that will increase your likelihood of a higher search engine ranking.
Author Bio:
Corey Perlman is the author of the #1 Amazon.com bestseller eBoot Camp: Proven Internet Marketing Techniques to Grow Your Business. The book provides easy-to-do strategies and techniques to help you market your business on the Web. It covers topics such as social networking sites, Web site optimization, online articles and press releases, video marketing, and much more. To learn more about eBoot Camp or to purchase a copy, go to www.ebootcampbook.com.
Photo Credit: billaday
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5 Small Business Website Tips
Spending a lot of time on the internet you see quite a few small business websites. Some are quite good, others come close but miss the mark. These 5 tips for small business websites will not be hard for your business to impliment (if you haven’t already) and will help insure your customers have a positive interaction with the virtual you!
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1. Have a Website
That’s right the first “tip” for your business is to simply have a website. It still amazes me that some businesses do not have a web presence! Some think they don’t need it, others think it would be too hard to setup, and they’d both be wrong. Every business, regardless of what you sell or do, needs a webiste. Even if it has nothing but a brief description of your service and a phone number, the first place people will look for you is online so you better be there. As for it being “hard”…it’s not. You can always contact us to help you out if need be.
2. Important Info – Front and Center
Do not make your vistors hunt for the most important information on your site. For most small businesses the majority of your information should be right on your homepage. Which leads me to my next point…
3. Don’t Bury Information
Don’t bury information behind a bunch of links. 80% of your information should be accessable within one click. This means one click away from the homepage. Don’t make your customers/visitors click through 4-5 links to get to the information they are looking for.
4. Contact Information
Have your contact information in a location that is easily findable. At a minimum it should be in the footer of every page (Company name, address, phone number, etc), and you should also have a contact page which links to your homepage with all the relavant information there.
5. Simple is Better
It can be tempting to add all the cool new features you can find to your website, but for nearly all your visitors simple is better. They are there to get information about your product or service, not to wait 3 minutes for your flash intro to stop playing, or wait 5 minutes for your page to load becuase you have so many animated graphics. Unless the fancy stuff is what you are selling (your business does graphic design or something along those lines) it’s best to leave it out.
BONUS TIP!
Get your own domain name for your business. They are cheap, and make you look professional. Also try to keep your domain short and sweet…nobody likes to have to type in http://blog.syndication.com/qz12398/lawn-care.html to reach your lawn mowing business.
Have any tips for small business websites…share them with us in the comments section!
