Setting Up a Business Website
In today’s age of internet and technology, you can’t underestimate the significance of e-commerce. In fact, according to a new study from Pew Research, about 8 in 10 Americans are online shoppers.
If you want to take your business to the next level, you need to start focusing on your online presence more than what you are used to. And the key to that is creating a responsive, attractive, and useful business website.
If you are yet to create your website or are planning for a complete overhaul of an existing one, then perhaps you might want to look out for these top 5 mistakes:
1. Ignoring “Mobile-Friendliness”
For a long time, desktops were the only devices that were our gateway to the Internet. However, with smartphones becoming ubiquitous today, the way we access the internet is changing. In fact, there is a reverse in the trend- Internet usage on mobile phones is increasing as fast as that on desktops is decreasing. So, what does it tell you?
You can’t create a business website and forget about the mobile platform. Your customers will find your business more often on their mobiles and tablets instead of laptops or desktops. Thus, your website should be mobile-friendly.
It’s important that you find the best mobile web design tools and tweak your website until it’s as responsive on a mobile as it’s on a computer. It’s also important that it looks good on different screen sizes and mobile OSs.
2. Responsiveness and Loading Times
Processing power has become affordable today. We have mobiles that are more powerful than the computers we had in the 90s. This is the reason why your customers don’t want any lags or freezes when accessing your website.
Generally speaking, you have just about 2 seconds for your website to load before you start losing customers. So, if you are thinking about loading all kinds of widgets and super HD images that are super heavy on your website, it may be a bad idea.
While an appealing website is important, you can’t go for it at the cost of loading time and responsiveness. The most important thing is that your website is easy to navigate and able to open new pages in microseconds.
3. No Branding
Before you get started with setting up your website, it’s really important that you read some branding guides and tutorials. This is because, without branding, your website is no different than hundreds of thousands of other websites that are merely taking up the web space.
You want your business website to stand out for your customers to care about your business. And for this, you need to align it with your brand. So, create a unique company logo, a tagline that’s catchy and sends out a clear message, etc. and find a strategic place for these on your website.
4. Low-Quality Content
An excellent business website is made of two things:
- Excellent Design
- Excellent Content
You can’t create a highly appealing website, with an impressive response time, creative design, excellent spacing, etc. and expect it to start converting traffic into customers when the content slapped on it is dry, uninteresting and simply below-par.
If your budget is tight, then take some of it out from the designing end and put it in the content creation. In fact, even a simple design would work if the content, which includes a blog, copy, newsletters, eBooks, etc. is informative and interesting.
5. Lack of Strategy
You can’t expect to hunt a game when you have a blindfold on and use a gun that’s rusty and works half the time. This analogy applies to the business environment too.
You need strategy and goals if you want your business website to get results. This makes even more sense today because online business is becoming extremely competitive.
What you need to do is just ask yourself some basic questions:
- What’s the purpose of my business website?
- Why should my customers care for it?
- Does my business website reflect my brand?
- How can I convert leads into customers with my business website?
- What are my goals for my business website? What are the timelines for these goals?
A lot goes into creating a business website that works. So, take your time and don’t settle for less. With a good plan and proper execution of the same, you can expect impressive results.