Don’t Make Your Customers Run For The Hills With These Small Businesses Website Mistakes
Does this sound familiar?
You just got some superb information today....people are visiting your small business website. Exceptional! perhaps they may purchase your product or determine to fill out your form...but wait...oh NO! they may be leaving once more. “What?” you cry, “They only stayed for five seconds”.
You heard right, they stayed long enough to be appalled about your website after which made a fast escape to one of your competitors. in case your web page is not converting traffic to income, then you might be committing this sort of lethal mistakes:
-
Flash Driven Design
-
The Annoying “Welcome to our website”
-
We.... We... We... We... We...zzzzzzzz
-
Techic Talk
-
No Clear Call to Action
1. Flash Driven Design
Search engines hate Flash-driven website design. In fact, they hate them so much that they will completely ignore your site no matter how pretty you think that it looks.
So what if it's smart and it contains a stunning design layout? No one is ever going to experience it. Google is simply going to pass right past your website as if you are the invisible woman. And thousands and thousands of iPhone and iPad visitors who use their tablet and mobile devices in preference to their computers certainly won't see it because they couldn't see Flash on their phones.
Google gets annoyed and chooses to disregard you. It’s YOU that won't get any traffic. Just because you could add whistles and bells doesn’t mean that you have to.
You invest a LOT of time and money encouraging people to visit your small business website. So why scare them off by making one of these 5 fatal mistakes?
2. The Annoying “Welcome to our website”
How long do you think you have to grab your visitor’s attention? Here’s a hint: It isn’t 2 minutes, 1 minute or even 30 seconds. It is more like 10 seconds. That is all the time you have, so don’t waste it with such a boring introduction.
Most people don’t like to read much on the online, so when they first visit your website they are probably just going to quickly scan it to see if anything catches their eye. Why would you want to squander an already tiny attention span by reminding people which site they are visiting? Instead, use an attention-grabbing headline?
People should already know where they are just from glancing at the top of your site, where they should see your logo and a snappy tagline, or a short description of your site, so there is absolutely no need for stating the obvious with a banal “welcome to our website” message. Yawn!
3. “We.... We... We... We... We...zzzzzzzz”
“We have a team of....”
“We plan to....”
“We have been in business for.....”
Sorry to sound blunt but. . . NOBODY CARES!
Visitors to your website are only interested in one thing: What is in it for ME?”
If your site doesn’t answer this question pretty quickly they will leave.
Instead of just talking about you and your site or your business, imagine that you are talking one to one with one of your typical customers and ‘speak’ to them as an individual. Tell them how your product or service is going to benefit them.
4. Tech Speak
Every industry and business sector has its own tech speak and industry only words that nobody else understands.
Try talking to friends and family about Autoresponders, SEO and long tail keywords and you’ll see their eyes glaze over as they slip into a coma.
If you use words, terms, and phrases that mean something to you but go straight over your visitor’s heads, then you are going to lose them. We’ve already said visitors are going to scan over much of the content on your website anyway, so it makes sense to make it as easy as possible for them to be able to pick out and understand the main points from the bits that they do read.
5. No Clear Call to Action
As well as telling your visitors “what is in it for them”, your next job is to tell them what they need to do now.
It is absolutely pointless giving them great reasons why they should use your products and services, and then not tell them what they need to do next to get it.
You need to have a clear call to action AND make it blatantly obvious what you want them to do.
Do you want them to call you up for a free quotation? Then tell them!
However, telling them to call you and then hiding your number somewhere on your website is another big fail. If your call to action is telling them ‘CALL US RIGHT NOW’, then make sure you put your telephone number right next to it.
Do you want them to click on the ‘Buy Now’ button? Again, you have to tell them, and then show them clearly where that Buy button is.
And don’t try to cleverly disguise the button or link. Make sure that it is bold and clear enough for them to see what they need to press.
Never assume that your visitors will know what to do next…
S-P-E-L-L I-T O-U-T for them!
Tell them what you want them to do. If you make it difficult for them, then they will leave. Yes, they probably could figure it out....but they won’t! They will move on to the next site in the blink of an eye.
