A business website is one of your few chances to appeal to your audience. When potential customers first see your site, you only have a couple of seconds to impress them and give them the information that they’re looking for. Fail this and it’s unlikely that they’ll return. So where exactly do business websites go wrong? What are some of the biggest mistakes and what can you do to overcome them?
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Talking too much about your business and not enough about what you can provide your customers
Customers don’t want to read a page-long backstory of your business and why it’s great. Instead, they want to read about the services you provide and how they can help them. This is a key consideration that many businesses get wrong, but marketers fully understand. This is why when you’re working with an SEO company like https://tessa.tech/northern-virginia-seo/, it’s usually not a factor that you need to worry about. However, if you’re focused on optimizing your business website and making it appealing to your audience, then you have to think about how you present your information.
Here are a few considerations when writing about your business and the value it provides:
- Focus on what your customers want to see.
- List your services and how they can help your customers.
- Explain how your business provides a better service than your competitors
- Talk about your customer service and how it can give customers peace of mind.
When explaining the value that you offer, it’s important to condense it as much as possible to help you get your message across as quickly as possible. Don’t focus too much on comparing yourself to other businesses either. Instead, make a brief mention of how you do things differently and leave it at that.
Making your website too flashy with graphics and transitions and not focusing on the content
Another common mistake that business websites tend to make is focusing on graphics, transitions, and other design elements that don’t actually help the user experience. Think of it this way; when someone visits your website, they’re looking for something in particular. Perhaps they’re interested in buying a specific product or maybe they’re eager to learn about some technology that you’ve developed. In these kinds of cases, they know exactly what they’re searching for and it’s your job to direct them to that content or product as quickly as possible.
This is one of the biggest considerations when optimizing your business website. It’s not about how great it looks or how flashy you can make your menus; it’s about giving your audience what they’re looking for as soon as possible. This is why more business websites need to start switching away from a design-focused mentality and instead, start thinking about how they can provide a seamless experience in terms of content delivery and product visibility.
So here are some tips to keep in mind:
- Focus on content first, design second.
- Make use of website templates to help streamline the design process.
- void injecting your personal design tastes into the website.
- Make things look as pleasing as possible without overdoing them with colors.
- Keep your website free of clutter by removing unnecessary menus and widgets.
The more you focus on the content of your website, the easier it’ll be to assist your customers in finding what they’re looking for. A simple and uncomplicated design does wonders for business websites, especially if they’re fairly new companies that are looking to grow their presence on the internet and social media.
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Paying for cheap website and content creation services instead of working closely with specialists
When it comes to creating content for your website, there are two common options for a relatively new business; to write it themselves or to hire a professional. Both of these options have their pros and cons, but there are more variables to consider when you hire someone else to help write your content.
Producing content yourself is generally the best option because you have a much more intimate understanding of your products, your brand message, and your strengths. However, it’s completely understandable that you might be uncomfortable with your own writing and you might not have an experienced writer on your team. Ideally, you’ll want to have a writer on your team in the future, but it’s perfectly fine to use a content writing service or even hire a freelancer. This is a great idea for companies that are still growing.
But problems can arise when you choose a cheap service.
It’s fairly cheap to get content written for your website these days, but you need to start thinking about how you can optimize your content over a long period of time. When working with a writing service or a freelancer to create content, it’s a good idea to try and find people that you can work with over a longer period of time. Even if you have to pay them a higher rate, this usually creates better content because your writer has a chance to learn more about your brand. When you only work together for one or two projects every week, that writer will probably forget about your brand and what makes it appealing to customers.
Thankfully, it’s not too difficult to find a writer that is willing to learn more about your brand and adjust their writing style to fit your preferences. The key here is offering a consistent stream of work and competitive rates. When you offer to pay well and also provide a lot of work on a regular basis, you’ll attract many writers who are more than willing to work for you long-term. Just make sure you focus on communicating effectively and ironing out issues as you work together. No partnership is perfect, so expect there to be a few delays with the first few projects. As time goes on, you’ll not only produce content faster but there will be more opportunities for growth and your content creators will have more unique ideas to suggest.