Comments on: How Not To Make The 3 Mistakes I Consistently See on Small Business Websites

By: Morten Pedersen

Morten Pedersen — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 20:27:35 +0000

You have a lot of good and simple advices here and I will study them all.

By: Kids portable dvd players

Kids portable dvd players — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 06:50:30 +0000

I think you’re quite right about not being clear on the site’s objectives, and I reckon in many cases this stems from a general lack of focus in the venture. Someone may have a goal to “earn a living from my goat cheese business”, but how to actually go about implementing that is all pretty vague. Once this fuzziness is resolved though, it should become pretty clear what changes to make to the website to support the business.

By: jina

jina — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 05:40:47 +0000

Grea Post, For those who work with internet, like me, this is good because it generate a lot of business oportunities and new clients!

By: Jessica

Jessica — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 02:49:36 +0000

Thank you for the tips. I am actually using some of them for our new version of our site that we hope to have completed in 3-5 days.

By: Massachusetts Business Directory

Massachusetts Business Directory — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 18:54:14 +0000

How about “Not measuring marketing and social media efforts.”

I work with many SMBs who run their own PPC, SEO or social media marketing campagins, yet don’t have measurement tools installed on their websites, like Google Analytics. As a result, they have no idea if these campaigns are delivering any ROI if the form of measured traffic, leads or sales. Bottom line, if you can’t measure the effectiveness of your marketing efforts, you should be running them.

Cheers!
Ken

By: Flying in Four

Flying in Four — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 10:56:57 +0000

You must have seen some of my websites on vertical jump training! haha. I’ll have to update my objectives clearly like you recommended. Thanks.

By: The Hopkins Company

The Hopkins Company — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 20:09:39 +0000

Great post! I manage around 15 small business websites and Ive noticed that some of them could function better. Thanks for the great advice.

By: Steve

Steve — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 23:20:33 +0000

Nice post.

The page title is probably a bit of a technical thing and I wouldn’t expect everyone to know about it’s impact in search engines and other places.

Totally agree with (2) and (3) though.

I’d add another: Webpages that are too busy. So many people feel that they need to fill their webpage’s entire space with text and graphics. Often this results in a bunch of buzzwordy filler content that is no use to anyone. >> Keep it simple! <<

By: swiz

swiz — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 22:40:02 +0000

You hit the nail on the head…too much of an effort to optimize a poorly designed site is worthless

By: sudip

sudip — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 13:31:47 +0000

the post is informative and as far as the SEO point of view is concern, use of proper title tag with keywords regarding the content of that page only, use of alt text in images, use of H1 and H2 tags for content heading, user friendly navigation with keywords.html as page name is most important.

But above all what should be kept mind that your content is the one that speaks about your services. So let it to be informative, and useful for viewers. Try to make it as interesting as you can. I am sure you will be benifited

By: Fernvale Real Estate

Fernvale Real Estate — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 20:03:19 +0000

Excellent post. Couldn’t agree with you more. I visit a lot of small business websites and can’t believe the amount that I see which have Google ads on their main business site! Why on earth would you put adwords on your business site? Not only does it entice visitors to click away from your site while only earning you a few pennies but also makes the whole site look cheap and unprofessional.

By: Marla Tabaka

Marla Tabaka — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 14:43:41 +0000

Thank you for such a clear, concise resource Dawud! These things may seem “no brainer” but when you’re not an SEO expert, they’re not! Your insights about defining your purpose and conversion are right on and simply put. Thank you!

By: Web Design Bristol

Web Design Bristol — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 11:11:05 +0000

Wow very informative post which has surely woken me up and realised I need to do more! I think if you’re busy with client work, it’s very easy to forget about the objectives of the business and the website, so thanks again for this.

By: Squishy

Squishy — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 11:14:15 +0000

I think the biggest mistake is to choose inappropriate domain name. If you have wrong title tags, you can edit them and when google re-index your site, all will be ok. But if you have a wrong domain name, it may costs you too much to fix the problem

By: bestgiftsfor

bestgiftsfor — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 07:27:05 +0000

I especially like your discussion of “No Clear Business Objectives”. I am a blogger and I try to monetize my blogs. However, not one of my blogs has a really clear business objective. I’ve got to start getting that done I believe if I want to really connect with my target audience.

By: hydroponic system

hydroponic system — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 20:57:26 +0000

Great article that every business owner should take into account when building a website. I’ll definitely be bookmarking your site for future reading.

By: Derleit

Derleit — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 15:43:53 +0000

“What’s great to here is that after two weeks she’s gotten 6 more inquiries than she usually had.”
These are very good results.
I hope to achieve good results so site.

By: Jeremy Ashburn

Jeremy Ashburn — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 16:16:48 +0000

I really like point #2. About 4 months ago I formed my website. Since then I’ve been steadily the site so with my objectives. My main objective is to target the customer who’s scouting for a new laptop or desktop and show them the best PC for their needs. In the middle and end of my articles I’ve placed the links where customers can directly see the product for sale. Hopefully my articles are motivating the customer to action. Take a look and give me your thoughts.

By: Gry winx

Gry winx — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 00:22:46 +0000

I just start small business too and theres so many useful information, I hope it will help me!!

By: Virtual Assistant

Virtual Assistant — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 14:50:08 +0000

It’s a shame that so many small business owners do not know this ahead of time. More often than not the web designer is hired and the site is built and launched with very little attention to the items mentioned on this list. Then when the small business owner finally gets the site launched they wonder why they are not getting any leads from it. Google Maps is another must. Good post D!