With small businesses one fact is true today, your business website should be a central hub for your business.
Your business website should effectively represent your brand while providing ways for your leads to easily engage you. All roads in your business should lead back to your website, making it the pivot point for all your marketing. And you want to treat your website that way.
Furthermore, having a website opens the possibility to not just market to your leads, but to create a powerful touch point for engaging your audience in conversation and building relationships with your prospects and clients.
So if you want a successful business, and I believe you do, it only make sense to create a website that fuels the growth of your business.
Yet, as a small business owner, it can be easy – or tempting – to get in the way of your own marketing. You may take shortcuts with your business website. These shortcuts can become mistakes that undermine your business goals and turn your website from golden egg to fried omelet.
The sad thing is that you may not know your making these mistakes and undermining your business website.
So let’s look at 8 common, and often critical, mistakes I see everyday with small business websites:
Mistake #1: No Clear Objectives for Your Business Website
The very first thing you should do when you plan your business website is define its purpose. What objectives do you want your website to achieve? In other words, what do you want our visitors to see, to read and to do. To do is the most important set of objectives so you want your website objectives to be action oriented. Do you want them to sign up on your list, get your RSS feed, buy a product or take a survey? Any of these can be objectives. Just make sure your objectives are clearly defined.
One more thing on objectives: if you have more than one objective for your website, you want to put them in order of importance. Then, make sure you primary objective is the most visible and easy to find on your site. Your secondary objective should take its appropriate place behind the primary…and so on.
Mistake #2: No Strategies For Reaching Your Business Objectives
Once you know the objectives of your website you want to create strategies around how you’re going to accomplish these objectives. Strategy gets into how you’re going to do what you’re setting out to do with our business website. The more thought out and researched your strategies, the more likely your marketing and your website, overall, will be successful. From a strategy comes our plan of action, which gets us into tactics.
Mistake #3: No Tactics to Achieve Your Business Objectives
If you’re like most people, you’re pretty good at thinking about what you want to do with your business website. Often, where the trouble begins is when you have go from thought to action. That’s where tactics come in.
Tactics are the actionable steps you’ll be taking to achieve your business objectives. Your tactics are, flat out, a task list of what you’re going to do and when you’re going to do it. Think of your tactics as being the implementation of your strategy. It’s how you’re going to do what you think.
Mistake #4: No Targeted Metrics to Measure Your Progress
One great thing about the internet is that if it happens on your business website, you can measure it. Which means, you can find out amazing detail about how your visitors as seeing, reading and using your website. So the only question is are you recording that information?
What’s sad is that I see so many small business owners who aren’t even looking at their most basic website statistics. Yet, it’s so much easier to know how effectively your building your list, for instance, if you know how much traffic you’re getting. And from knowing that, you can make a plan for increasing you list signups.
There’s no way else to put it, it’s a mistake if you’re not recording your website statistics and looking at them with some regularity (not daily). And it’s a further mistake if you don’t take the time to learn how to interpret your website statistics because they will tell you what’s working and what’s not working on your website.
Yet, it’s important to go one step beyond just your basic traffic stats. You want to also consider how you’re going to measure the effectiveness of your strategy and tactics so you can see how well you’re achieving your objectives. In other words, you want a solid system of metrics – even a simple one – so you can evaluate your marketing and make it work better.
Mistake #5: No Integrated Marketing Plan
So often I see small business owners thinking of their website as one part of their marketing and their offline marketing as being another part. Don’t make this mistake. Integrate the two. Communicate your offline promotions online. And even more effective, use your offline marketing to drive people to your business website. This works great when you can make an offer on your website that your offline audience wants. As I said above, your business website should be the hub of you marketing – not just online, but all your marketing.
Mistake #6: No Focus on the Value of Your Offer
I’m asked to evaluate a lot of websites for whether they’re business ready. One of the most common mistakes I see is small business owners not focusing on or effectively communicating the value of their service. Too often, the focus is on either the cost of service or the ‘unique approach we use that makes us different than everyone else.’ Yet, this just confuses the prospect because either they don’t care about the approach or they have to consider what they’re getting for the cost. In other words, they have to figure out the value themselves.
Don’t make your prospects figure out for themselves the value of the services you provide. Tell them about it. Show them what they get, what they can expect and how you will help them solve their problems. And offer testimonials of people who you’ve helped so that they can see the social proof in your offer.
Mistake #7: No Action Plan for Your Visitors
We said earlier that your website should have clearly defined objectives. Once you’ve identified what your objectives are, it’s likely they require an action by your visitors for you to achieve. So tell them to take the action. Make it exceptionally clear that if they’ve gotten this far in your website, that ‘this is the action step you want to take next.’ Could be a list signup, a free report, a set of articles – doesn’t matter (as long as it’s toward your business objectives). Just be sure you’re hyper-clear about what action steps you want your visitors to take.
Mistake #8: No Balance Between Design & Marketing Message
Having been a website designer for well over a decade, I’ve dealt with this one a lot. Often, business owners become too concerned over the visual look of their website and it gets out of balance with the purpose of their site – which is a marketing tool to promote and sell their products and services.
That’s not to say that a website shouldn’t be visually appealing – it should. For instance, I’ve had dozens of people contact me just to let me know how much they like the design of my site. Yet your website design shouldn’t get in the way of your marketing message and business objectives. It should provide a professional, attractive frame for your all-important content.
Ideally, your design will be something people see initially and get a good impression of you from. Then, as they begin to read your copy, it should fade into the background. So think of your website design not as a paramount piece of the marketing puzzle but as a frame for your marketing message. And remember, that you want to consider your business objectives in any website design.
So these are the 8 most critical mistake I see everyday in working with clients on growing their business and on developing their web presence. There are more, of course. But I’ve found these to be the biggest and most important 8 to correct.
Does your website make any of these mistakes? If so, which ones? And what will you do about it?
Let’s talk about it.
If you’re uncertain where to turn for help or if you’d like to discuss any of these in more detail as to how they relate to your business website, signup for a free 20-minute advisory session with me. Let me solve your problems for you.
(note: image from iampeas on Flickr, 
some rights reserved)
My name is Dawud Miracle and I'm a 
70 responses so far ↓
Well thought out approach to constructing a business site. Your steps address virtually all aspects of the process … planning, design, implementation, monitoring, and benchmarking. A well thought out plan, with concerted effort given to formulating an effective strategy, is critical to the process.
There is a distinct difference between planning and forming strategy, though. Strategy requires paths of action and distinct methods. Planning is thinking in broader terms.
Agreed, the website is now the central hub of business with many pitfalls that can result in subpar sales and performance. Mission > Objectives > Strategies > Tactics should all be measured by defined metrics (analytics) and reinforced with marketing efforts to present potential customers with the ultimate value when visiting your website.
wow, your 8 common mistakes are really great! I have found these kinds of errors in s many websites
Dawud, This is clear and practical internet marketing advice. Thanks for sharing your insight. Ryan
The Plan and the Strategies always comes together for a successful business and
monitoring it regularly would be a very good and effective way. There are possibilities that a certain business would fall if you commit so many mistakes and without following any guideline.
So often I see small business owners thinking of their website as one part of their marketing and their offline marketing as being another part. Don’t make this mistake. Integrate the two. Communicate your offline promotions online. And even more effective, use your offline marketing to drive people to your business website. This works great when you can make an offer on your website that your offline audience wants. As I said above, your business website should be the hub of you marketing – not just online, but all your marketing.
Dawud, without the clear vision, strategy and goal, our business won’t go far but will mostly end up in the middle of journey!
Hence, the well-planned strategies are necessary for every businessperson.
Hi Dawud,
There’s certainly a lot more I could be doing, and just one is to make better use of my web stats. It’s only now and again when I read Google Analytics for my sites, and when I do, it’s really just out of curiosity. What I should be doing is setting goals.
I hope everything’s great with you buddy.
Really nice article. Most of the time people start out a blog with no definite plan on turning it to a business in the future. They have this mindset that they are going to make money online just by serving advertisements such as adsense.
In the long run, some will be frustrated with the time it really takes to build a massive amount of traffic. Two ways you can really make money online is by selling your product or service and affiliate marketing.
Thanks for this article.
Dawud,
Excellent advice, I would add one important item you’ve stressed in some of your earlier posts – “Do you own your website?” When someone hires a webmaster to build the website it’s important to understand how the domain name was purchased and in whose name the ownership is registered, where it’s hosted, how to log into the website and how to make simple changes. Even if the business never intends to design, write for or update the website it’s critical to know how. Just like having money in the bank, you would never just hand over your money to a charming individual to “put someplace” and then be dependant upon them to “keep it safe.” Yet I’ve run into many companies that have no idea about the ownership details of their website. On two occasions the companies wanted to change webmasters and were told they didn’t own their website and they had to start over from scratch when they made a change, including starting with a brand new domain name! On one occasion the webmaster disappeared and the company had now idea how to log into their website to make any changes. On sevearal occasions I’ve seen businesses that could only make changes to their websites by emailing a request to the webmaster, who would then not respond….. So if I could add a step to your list it would be step “0″ – go no further until you “own” your website!
http://twitter.com/pennygo
Very well said. If we only follow those steps then definitely we will be successful on our online business. Thanks for those excellent guidelines.
Great advice and information. I made 5 – 6 mistakes that you had described above. I think I have to evaluate my site.
What a great article!
I am currently considering expanding my brand further online and this post has definately given me some guidelines!
Thanks again
Excellent list. I see many infractions daily.
i think too many people stay away from getting their business online because they’re daunted by the geek talk. it’s not that hard anymore – dive in..
Great article!
I find that so many websites miss the point that your messaging should be all about how you can help your clients, as opposed to your goals, your accomplishments. LIke good ad copy, it should be all about ‘them.’
Your site needs a promotional plan to reach its goals. In order to formulate a strong promotional plan, you need to know what those goals are for you, and your website.
Hey Dawud
This blog is great, you have highlighted some clear information which is really good for people out there. I especially liked your piece on “No Balance Between Design & Marketing Message”; really informal and has helped me. Thanks a lot
Excellent tips Dawud. Thanks. Definitely right on for the Mistake 7. Don’t assume your visitors will know what to do if you don’t give them clear options. And less options is better than too many whereby your visitors will get confused and won’t take any action but simply leave your website. Clear call to actions are so crucial.
I’ll add no “call to action” so many put the information out there but never direct the visitors to take the final step.
I’m currently in the process of starting up a new business and I’m building a site to pitch the service. I thought this was just going to be another article full of regurgitated information, however this article is anything but that. As a designer/programmer trying to connect the pitch and design, I’m glad I stumled across this article before I was too far down the line.
Wow! I must say. This a very helpful tips you have here. Very clear and easy to understand Specially for those who are just starting to start a business website. And for people who doesn’t know what they are doing.
Be back to read more of you articles.
It’s great clarity to find one’s own thoughts so well organized and presented by someone else. Reviewing small business websites almost always reveals repair work that needs to be done and so many are clearly neglected stepchildren of an overall business effort as if the intention is to get this ‘chore’ out of the way.
You make some very good points here. As Web designers, we should review this list before each project. The points especially good for me is to focus on service too! and balance visual appeal with content.
Thanks for sharing this stuff, just what i was looking for.
yup, i think that’s way i get stuck on my bussiness in the past 2 years. maybe just revamping with your ideas can finally solved my online business problems. thanks man ..
Thanks for those awesomes tips. Some of them will help me in my website
I highly agree with you on mistake no 6. But sometimes it’s hard to differ value from the uniqueness, don’t you think?
Customer wants value, that’s right. But most of the time unique value that makes you stand out from other competitors is what sought after.
This is an excellent article Dawud!
This should be required reading for all small business owners.
In fact, I think I need to sketch out something similar for my new clients.
Well done!
You don’t include a clear overall objective for your website. What good is your site if people don’t even understand what the goal of your site actually is?
Thanks for sharing this content
Can’t agree more with #8! Look at google or craigslist…pretty bland, if not plain ugly, but they serve a purpose without the fluff. Great article!
your article seems to touched my thoughts … you said all the things which i was thinking from long time.. buy thanks otherwise..
First of all… great 8 points.
One important key I think could use a little further clarification is whether or not you should do this yourself. The design part is definitely something you will want to hire help for but I also think that the marketing/testing should be something that you hire help to do. After all more small businesses core skill is not making high converting websites. Better to save the time and find someone that has that aspect as their core skill (IMO).
Mikael
Can’t agree more with #8! Look at google or craigslist…pretty bland, if not plain ugly, but they serve a purpose without the fluff. Great article!
Something to add to #1 is to consider the type of content o the website. It doesn’t have to be about promoting the product or service itself but can otherwise give back to the community. For example, one of the most successful online solar panel / installation business has a forum that discusses solar, wind, and renewable energy and even allows posts about their competitors. In the end, they capture a lot more business because they have real community.
No Clear Objectives for Your Business Website is the most important point to considered to make a business successful. If you are not clear about the objective of your business them your business cannot survive.
In my oppinion it’s more inspirational than tips, but that’s great. Stuff to think through.
Thank you.
Well, you’re right. I have acquired new information to your tips. I hope to apply it on my small business.
About Mistake #4…
I actually met that mistake in a different form, when webmasters are obsessed with statistics and are checking them a couple of times a day, getting alarmed over small traffic variations and losing precious times with such trivial matters.
In my opinion, as you said too, it’s best to check them on a regular basis, but only to see if something is going wrong, because a drop in traffic stats could mean an search engine penalization or, as it happened to me, a redirect hack in your site (it stole all my visits from the search engines) and so on.
When we built up our company from scratch, we realised, unlike the majority of businesses in our industry, that the internet is an important part of peoples daily life – with the younger generation now using it for more or less everything.
These are 8 really great things to think about! Thanks for the Info!
Thanks for the useful info. It’s interesting , may help in avoiding accidents.
Great tips for our future success. I have to admit that I started to make site but I did not know all these rules. You helped me a lot and I am grateful.
Thanks for the great tips. There is a lot of web content that has typos and punctuation errors. Makes you wonder if people bother to proofread before they post.
In practice, business website is a lot more than just e-commerce. And business website has strategic emphasis with a focus on the functions that come about when using electronic opportunities, e-commerce is the subset of a general e-business strategy. E-commerce wants to add revenue streams through the cyberspace or the World Wide Web to build and improve relationships with partners and clients and to enhance efficiency using the so-called Empty Vessel strategy
Good points, as a designer / developer, I have to argue these points with my clients on a daily basis. And since some of my clients are lawyers, these arguments sometimes get very long and intense, lol
That’s a good summary of mistakes small business websites commonly make. As for website design, isn’t it better to go for simplicity and from there, work on adding more to the design? Making the site too colorful or filled with banners can be a turn off.
One thing that annoys me is when people make websites where the content is solely for search engines. I think that it is important to make quality content for users. From a marketing perspective It makes you look more professional.
Well written and thought out article. I never understood the allure of Twitter but you’ve given me something to think about. Maybe I’ll have to do some prototyping and test it out. Thanks!
So, I made all mistakes presented by you. I hope to learn somethink from your post and also learn from my mistakes because it’s somethink natural to learn from our mistakes not to repeat it.
Nice article. Thoughts are well expressed. Mistake#8 is also one of the common mistakes that I noticed to small business websites. They give much importance to the design of their websites which isn’t really a good idea at all. They forgot that the marketing message is important too.
Nice article.To develop the business, building a business websites is a powerful way to reach the clients . while developing a business website we have to avoid these mistakes . Very useful tips …
Sometimes I get lost with all the links that are posted in a website. Your suggestion which says “All roads in your business should lead back to your website” will be helpful. Sometimes I visit a page and then I am stuck on the links and ends up buying the products on the links instead of the original webpage I visited. So, as what you’ve said, there has to be a clear action plan for visitors.
Rational target and actionable steps are a must and you right about it. Nice approach and understandable information.
Now, I see why my website don’t have as much visitors as the last month.
I’m going to try your tips,
Thanks a lot!
The targeting metrics a mostly hard to describe for me. If you cann say that you want to have 1000 visitors each day or a special ranking it’s easy. But what’s with the worth of your brand or such things, how can you measure that ?
I think once you have traffic down #7 is the key mistake on every site. It seems that conventional sales tactics are overshadowed by SEO.
No SEO plans should have its own #
Thanks for identifying these critical mistakes, it’s clear to see if you start off on the wrong foot by not having a clear objective then it can have a trickle down effect with the rest of your site and create problems with the rest of your site.
“Too often, the focus is on either the cost of service or the ‘unique approach we use that makes us different than everyone else.’”
As an online consumer, this is the most frustrating advertising bit any company can give. Consumers want clear-cut and detailed statements on what you can offer that others cannot. It is that simple.
SEO is probably the most important element since the two alternatives to it are…
1 – No traffic, no sales
2 – A lot of money spent on PPC
Very good article. . .how do I know? I’VE DONE ALL EIGHT! So I can say. .its very true. . .nailed it. . .I’d like to hear more about accurately translating backend data. That would be very helpful.
Great post. Lots of great tips. On #5 No Integrated Marketing Plan I would add… give customers a reason to visit your site.
For example, if you provide quotes for services or products as part of your business, deliver the quotes via email when possible. Provide a link in the email back to a page on your site that displays the quote.
Get creative. Think of other similar ways to integrate your site in your day-to-day business.
And of course, take advantage of search engine optimization (SEO) when creating your site to maximize the amount of free traffic and business leads you can get via the search engines.
Nice and helpful tips Dude thanks for sharing I run a small business website in print media market. Day by day I announce new offers on my website its hardly 1 year before lunched and after i year i have 1 thousand above users in website and almost 50% of client there. your tips may help me to save my small business common mistakes. thanks
Hi
Once again the experience is shown by Dawud,
Great post once again these mistakes must have to be ignored to improve the quality of your website business work.I will definitely now work more to improve my website’s business quality.
Regards !
Smith
Excellent tips on using website to fuel business growth. This tips can help me a lot. Thanks.