Your website is the face of your business. Often, customers and potential customers will check your business website before visiting an in-person storefront, and often if they can make their transaction online, they are likely to complete their transaction entirely online. This means that your website is probably the most important tool that your business has for growth and success in the modern global marketplace. But not all websites are created equally. You need to avoid common mistakes that businesses make with their websites for your website to stand out above the rest and make the largest impact on your business. Here are eight mistakes to avoid for your business website.

Not Updating Your Software

The first and biggest mistake that businesses make with their websites is not updating software frequently enough. Updates are available nearly constantly for websites, since developments and advancements in software and plug-ins is a never-ending progression. When you don’t update your software often enough, you can end up with a slow, clunky, buggy website that is vulnerable to cybersecurity attacks. Make sure that you are updating your website software at every opportunity to ensure that you have the latest technology and innovations powering your website and delivering a top-notch online experience to your customers.

Not Hiring a Professional

Most people are not qualified to design and build a truly outstanding website. While this has changed somewhat today with advancements in plug-and-play website builders, you can’t get a truly unique and hand-crafted website without hiring a professional or being a professional yourself. If you are a web design professional, then congratulations, this tip is not for you. But if you are like most people and you don’t have a background as a web designer, hiring a professional is the best thing that you can do for your website. When building a website, you are far more likely to make mistakes that have a negative impact on the aesthetics, design, and user experience. Just hire a professional, they will make your life easier.

Not Optimizing for Mobile

Today, almost every single person, and most certainly every person who is an active participant in the economy, has a smartphone. Mobile devices are the wave of the future and are a new frontier for websites that must be available on both traditional computer interfaces, and on mobile devices. The mobile set up is different than on a computer, since the screen size is vastly different, which means that you need a different layout for your mobile site versus your computer site. If you do not have a separately optimized website layout for mobile devices, then you are on the backfoot. When mobile users have trouble interacting with your mobile site, they will find another business whose website has been optimized for mobile users. Be at the forefront.

Letting Your Cybersecurity Guard Down

Cybersecurity is the most important factor of your business website, hands down. When your website suffers a data leak or hack of any sort, you are putting your customers’ sensitive information at risk, and that leads to terrible press for your business. More than 80% of IT breaches happen at small to medium-sized companies. If you think your small business is too small to worry about cybercriminals, you are wrong. It takes a long time to build your customers trust, and one security breach can ruin years of work. Make sure that you are hiring cybersecurity professionals and installing security plug-ins for your website to ensure that your website is safe and secure.

Forgetting About User Experience

When you operate a physical storefront for your business, what do you consider the most important aspect? Some business owners may say cleanliness, or location, but the real answer is the customer experience. When you curate a great customer experience, catering to their needs and helping them with their experience, that is the true mark of a great business that will have customers returning. So why then do many business owners not consider the user experience of their website? With so many customers never stepping foot into a physical location, you need to put just as much emphasis on the user experience of your website as you would the customer experience online. Make sure that your website is easy to use, makes sense, has helpful FAQs, and capture what it is like to do business with you.

Hiding Business Information

Too many business websites lack basic information, like store hours, and contact information. While many users will come to your website to complete their entire transaction, plenty of your customers are going to come to your website just to find the information they need to come to your store in person or to get in contact with you. You should be proudly and clearly displaying this information on your website where it is easy and logical for customers to find this information. When this information is hidden, it gives customers an uneasy feeling, like you are perhaps hiding something. Just do them a favor and let them know where you are located, when you are open, and how they can get in contact with you.

Not Proofreading Content

There are few things that can make your business appear less professional than typos and grammatical errors in your marketing copy. You may think that simply running your copy and content through a spelling and grammar check is enough, but the AI that runs these programs is often not strong enough to notice complicated errors that are harder to make sense of. Make sure to read and reread anything you are going to put on your website to make sure that you don’t post embarrassing typos and grammatical errors.

Not Monitoring Analytics

Your website is only as effective as you can make it, and in order to make it more effective you must know how it is performing. Many business owners never bother to check in on their analytics from their business website to see how the website is performing, and whether the website is doing better than it has in the past. Conversely, you would never expect a business owner not to know information like monthly sales, or the conversion rate at their physical storefront. Check your analytics and adjust your website accordingly.

Having a website is an essential piece of operating a business in the 21st century. And yet, many business owners make the same silly mistakes time and again on their business websites. Be sure to follow these eight tips to ensure that your website stands out from the crowd for all the right reasons.

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