Prevent The Typical Problems Observed On Small Business Web Sites
I constantly encounter small businesses who have taken the time to purchase a web design for the intention of selling their products, to find that they’ve made the common mistakes that are typical in small business web design.
For starters, I often find home pages which don’t have any key phrases in the page titles. Commonly they will have the business name included, but no keywords / phrases such as the business type or locations served. From a search engine ranking viewpoint, this is very weak. Page titles can make a significant difference to where a web page appears in the search engines, particularly if the market niche is very modest with few competitors. A good web developer should recognize that ‘buyer keywords’ have to be included in the page titles.
Then the heading on the home page is very generic and again devoid of key phrases. Just how frequently do you see ‘welcome to our site’ or ‘welcome to company name’. The headlines really should be used to prominently display the business’s USP (unique selling proposition) or perhaps incorporate some keywords just as before. In layman’s terms, the headline should explain to the visitor precisely why they ought to use that company rather than a competitor’s or be used to assist the site’s search engine ranking.
Usually the home-page is all about the company, it’s merchandise and the proprietors. What it needs to be about is precisely what is on offer to the potential customer. It needs to be written in terms of the benefits being offered to the website visitor and not in terms of features. Benefits will always outsell features.
Too often I find websites where the website designer has got overly enthusiastic and used lots of flash graphics to wow his client. The serious problem is that flash created graphics usually take an age to download, and by the time they do, the visitor has clicked the back button and is off and away to the next site. Flash graphics usually do not really impress anybody apart from the web designer, they undoubtedly do not sell products, which is the intent behind the web site.
Last but not least hardly ever do I discover small company websites which obtain contact information from their visitors. Building a subscriber list of prospects is a valuable component of online marketing for companies of all sizes. Typically a very small percentage of web site visitors purchase on their first visit to a website, and frequently they do not ever go back again. A primary goal of any business site should be to capture the contact information of site visitors for them to be sold to in the future by email marketing.
So if you are having a site made for your business, you should choose a business that is comfortable with the factors above and who is able to develop you a web site that delivers!