I’ve been in the business of building websites for about 15 years now, I started back when monitors ranged from 640×480 pixels to 800×600 and we had only 256 colors to work with, so it’s been a long time for me and I can tell you that in those 15 years I’ve seen a lot of mistakes, I’ve made even more mistakes and I’ve broken a lot of rules but there are a few mistakes I keep seeing website owners and marketers make that really bewilder me, hopefully you’ve never made them:
Content Coming Soon
Many website owners put up websites before their content is ready. This really irritates me because if a prospect has taken the time to come to your website, you should have enough respect for their time to have your content ready. If you don’t have it ready, don’t advertise it.
Stale Content
I’m going to let you all in on a secret here, fresh content makes the world go round. When I got started as a graphic designer back in 1990, there was easy money to be made in designing newsletters for companies (this was before the Internet). Businesses knew that sending out a monthly mailer was a sure fire way to generate business at a low cost.
The average monthly newsletter cost:
- $250 Design & Layout
- $250 Writing & Edting
- $100 Photography
- $500 Printing (x5,500)
- $500 Distribution (x5,000)
$1,100 to send 5,000 pieces out to other local business owners and professionals in the community (the other 500 we always held back for walk ins and trade shows).
Today, an average website is updated possibly once in three months with most becoming stale within six months. This, in spite of the fact that a website has unlimited distribution, no recurring costs and instant access to statistics and call to action capacities. For the same cost of printing a news letter in the early 1990’s, a modern website could be updated with fresh content and quality photographs every week.
Failing to Visit Your Own Web Site
The first thing I recommend to every business I work with is to reset the home page of every computer in their office to the home page of their website. It was a trick I invented as the Web Master at Corel Corporation, be forcing over 1,200 employees to visit the home page of the company website we received an endless stream of comments and feedback from our own team. Actually it was a trick I picked up from the makes of the Palm, I don’t know if the story is true or not but I’d heard it like this … when the inventors of the first Palm Pilot started thinking about what to put onto the PalmOS, they cut a few dozen pieces of wood to the size of the device and forced staff to carry it around. Every time the staff did something in the office they pretended to use this piece of wood … that’s how the knew what to put into the software. Frankly, I don’t know if it’s true or not but I love that story so my advice? Reset your home page to force your staff to visit your website every day.
Failing to Visit the Web Site of your Competitors
When I ask my clients to name their top five competitors I hope they’ll ask me if I’d like to know the company name, the legal name, the name of the owner, her husband or their three kids. Sadly, many companies struggle to even name four competitors, let alone know anything about them. If you’re going to compete with somebody, know them and use the power of RSS feeds to keep track of them.
Designing for Themselves
The design of my website here at thisismyurl.com is mine, I love it and I did it but that’s OK because it’s my personal blog. You’ll notice that my design work at tinkerpriestmedia.com or getawaygraphics.com is completely different, that’s because the websites are not designed to look good for me, they’re designed to look good for my target audiences. My friend Chris Bavota keeps telling me he wants to redesign bavotasan.com but I think he’s crazy, it’s a great design … for his audience. Keep in mind that if you sell shoes, your website should appeal to people who want to buy shoes, not people who want to sell shoes. It sounds like a silly statement but it’s a hard one to overcome.
