Planning Your New Website - How To Avoid The Most Common Mistakes
By Jeremy Flight
Successful websites don’t happen accidentally. A business that runs an effective website thinks carefully about the website’s role, plans the website’s design and content, and closely monitors the website’s activity.
Conversely, those businesses that fail to undertake any planning are, inevitably, planning to fail.
Don’t let your new website become a disappointment to your business. Some careful planning will ensure that you:
know what you want your website to achieve and who it is for
can undertake appropriate actions to generate visitors to your site
have reliable, regular methods of measuring your website’s performance
Mistake 1 - Most Website Owners Don’t Know What They Want Their Website To Achieve
Producing a successful website starts with understanding what you want your website to achieve and, as the business owner, you know your business best. Despite this, having decided to start work on a new website, many business owners immediately phone their website designer.
When you can define clearly the overall aim of your website, you are ready to present your thoughts to your website designer. Their role is to develop a website that achieves your aim; your role is to decide what that aim is.
Do not feel that you need to develop an aim that is radical or unique. Many business websites exist to generate sales enquiries from prospective customers. Just because this is the most common raison d’etre, it can be your aim too. As long as you have thought through your objectives and understand what you want your website to achieve, you have made the first step towards a successful business website.
Mistake 2 - Most Website Owners Don’t Know Who Their Website Is For
You have given your new website some thought and developed an insight into its purpose. Closely allied to this is the matter of who your website is for: who is your website’s target audience?
The usual answer is "customers" but this is too vague. Is your website aimed at existing customers, with whom you already have a relationship, or prospective customers who don’t know your business?
If your website is focused on prospective customers, is its role to attract their initial attention or is the website involved at a later point in the sales process?
Many businesses use their websites successfully to generate initial interest from prospective customers. This is particularly evident in industries where customers use the Internet as part of their research into sourcing a supplier. Other businesses will generate initial interest through different means and will then refer prospective customers to their website, either to demonstrate credibility or to provide more detailed information.
In both instances, the target audience is "potential customers" but the approaches are different.
Mistake 3 - Most Business Websites Have A Poorly Defined "Call-To-Action"
The most beautifully-designed website is, in itself, entirely useless unless it encourages visitors to take some specific action. That action will vary with the nature of the website but common examples are to:
complete an online enquiry form
register on the website
purchase a product
sign up for a newsletter
progress deeper into the website to read more about products and services
Each of these is a measurable action which should correlate with the website objectives you defined earlier.
Once you understand the particular call-to-action that you want visitors to follow, you can address your website’s content, design and navigation. Without a well-defined call-to-action, your new website is only going to produce disappointing results.
Mistake 4 - Most Business Owners Don’t Work Hard Enough To Generate Visitors To Their Website
Generating visitors is an important aspect of running a successful business websiteThe "build it and they will come" philosophy rarely works for websites, especially for business websites. All businesses exist alongside competitors that offer broadly the same products or services. The notion that you can launch your new website on the Internet and wait for a stampede of visitors is optimistic, at best.
Instead, owners of successful business websites work hard to attract visitors.
The specific way you approach this will depend on the nature of your website. The most common visitor-generating initiatives involve:
search engine optimisation - encourages search engines such as Google to
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