Planning a new website build can be a daunting experience, especially if it is your business’ first time. While most mistakes can be fixed after your website goes live, if you are well prepared, you can avoid them altogether.
We have put together this list of 5 common website mistakes which can hinder the success of a new website’s performance. Keeping these in mind before they become mistakes will make your new website launch easier and more effective for your business.
Mistake #1: Not Knowing the Competition
Building a new website when your competitors have a solid digital marketing strategy is like opening a new restaurant next to the most popular one in town. People are going to see your business listed right next to your competitors, so you will need to know what they are doing so you can compete for the consumers’ precious attention.
The easiest way to see what you might be up against is to search Google for a term people might use to find your business.
For example, if you are going to open a new steakhouse, try searching ‘steak near me’ to see what you’ll be up against.
Mistake #2: Not knowing your target audience
You wouldn’t open a steakhouse for vegans, and you shouldn’t make a website for the wrong users.
If your target audience is short on time and wants information fast, but your website is all text, then they won’t read it. It is critical to know and understand the people who will be using your website.
Understanding your target audience allows you to deliver the content they want to see, how they want to see it.
If you don’t understand how your audience wants to consume content, then you might as well be saying it to a brick wall.
When you know your target audience, you will know how to solve their problems, which means they are going to click where you want them to click, and hopefully, buy what you want them to buy. It might be possible to get a lot of people to visit your site without really knowing them, but to get conversions; you need to understand who they are.
Mistake #3: Not having a content strategy
Good website content underpins the search engine optimisation and user behaviour of every site. To rank effectively on Google, your site needs to use all the right keywords, repeated just enough over the site for those mysterious algorithms to notice.
If your website is done right, then it won’t just be robots and algorithms reading it, so it needs to be optimised for people too.
Balancing the best words for Google and the best words for your customers can get difficult, which is why having a content strategy is essential.
A content strategy gives you a place to start when you are preparing the content for your website. You should outline the keywords you want to use, what your competitors are doing, and what your target audience wants to see.
Mistake #4: Not having a marketing plan
We know it sounds scary, but a marketing plan doesn’t always mean a 20 page document full of big words and TLAs (Three letter acronyms).
A marketing plan just has to set out what you want to do, how you want to do it, and the things you might need to consider.
Having a marketing plan allows you to set the course for what you want to get out of your website.
While the marketing plan may not specifically address the goals of your website, it should address the goals your business wants to accomplish from its marketing strategy. Marketing strategy goals should be SMART goals, meaning they are Specific, Measureable, Achievable, Realistic and Timely.
Having SMART goals allows you to directly track their progress and determine the effectiveness of your marketing strategy in the areas it counts the most.
For example, if you goal was to increase the revenue generated by your business, the SMART goal might be: Increase revenue by 20% in the next 12 months.
Mistake#5: Not having conversion goals
Setting goals is a key part of your marketing plan, and the goals you develop in your plan must be adapted into conversion goals. Having conversion goals is an essential part of any website strategy.
Conversion goals set out the purpose of your website – why it exists, and what you want it to do for you.
Conversion goals are a type of goal set up in the analytics of your website which track the key customer actions you want people to be taking on your website. Depending on your business, these conversion goals could include email clicks from the website, bookings, phone calls, eBook downloads, or a range of other relevant website actions for your business.
Considering conversion goals before you build your website is critical to the design of the website. If you have conversion goals in mind, then the website can be optimised for those goals, so that visitors to the website will be pushed towards them. Pushing users towards goals involves the use of CTAs (call to actions) which are often implemented as buttons on a website which encourage visitors to click and perform a specific action.
Planning on building a new website?
If you are planning on building a new website, or updating at existing one, at+m marketing can help to make sure you don’t make any of these mistakes! Our web design team has extensive experience developing websites which look great and deliver results. Contact us today to book your coffee and catch-up and we will see what we can do for you.
