Many business owners try to save themselves a little money by building their own website or having a friend who is “good with computers” do it for them. While some do a great job, others not so much. The difficult truth is that an effective and efficient website cannot be created in a few minutes with a few simple clicks of a mouse. Tons of thought and planning need to go into it or there are bound to be some issues going on somewhere. Today, let’s talk about five of the most common issues we see and why they need to be addressed if you want your website to shine as bright as it should.

1) No mobile optimization

60% of business owners do not have a mobile website or even know if their site is mobile friendly. We keep saying it, but it is so true: everything you do these days should be mobile friendly. In fact, it even makes sense to start out with the idea that your site will be a mobile one and work on one for desktop users from there. Desktop users are a dying breed and soon, just about everyone will be accessing the Internet through a tablet or smartphone.

A good mobile site will be easy to navigate with as few clicks or swipes as possible. It will also make it simple for visitors to know where the action points are and what they’re supposed to do next. Starting with mobile in mind will also keep your content down to an easily digestible amount.

2) Too much talk-y, not enough show-y

Another common mistake we see is that there’s way too much for people to read. Have you ever encountered a site that had large chunks of content?  Have you read it?  Your customers aren’t reading yours either, fascinating and informative as it may be, they just don’t have the time or patience to read it all. Remember that the Internet has a very short attention span and giant bits of text get ignored. In fact, they might overwhelm folks and make them go elsewhere.

If you think about mobile first, your choice of what and how much text to put on your site will be naturally limited by less screen real estate. Instead of lots of text, you can use visuals like videos, diagrams and infographics to help you get your point across. You still need some solid text, but it needs to be concise.

3) Finger clicking good, y’all

Many websites make customers click through too many layers to find what they want. People aren’t really willing to do that and frustrate or get bored fast, so you’ve got to make it as easy as possible to find things very quickly. A good design is the best way to make sure your calls to action are really obvious so you can lead your customer right to what you want them to do. They’ll thank you for making it fast and easy!

4) Say what?

You know your business like the back of your hand, but your customers might be new to it. Unless your target audience is someone in your own industry, your copy needs to be written in language that a layperson will understand. If you use lots of fancy schmancy jargon that nobody gets, you’ll lose people instead of impress them.

5) No SEO

Without search engine optimization (aka SEO), search engines won’t be able to find you. SEO provides you with keyword data, meta descriptions and page titles that will attract the attention of search engines, therefore making your page more visible in search results. You need to come up in searches or your website will be useless.

Keeping these things in mind will help guide you if you decide to create your own website, however there are many professionally done, budget friendly options out there that will give you all the fabulous and none of the issues. Check out next week’s post about custom vs. template websites to learn more about your choices!