3 costly website mistakes to avoid before building it (1/3)

Mistake 1: Not knowing the purpose of your website

• Your website is not an online presentation of your business card – your website is a marketing tool.

It’s so much more than a presentation! Your website is where you can:

• • Connect and interact with visitors and clients
  • Establish trust and credibility
  • Build up your group of fans and followers

You want to make it a place your visitors want to keep coming back to, and not just for a one-time visit.

Mistake 2: Not planning the content before creating your website.

Which results in:

• Choosing the wrong WordPress theme
  • …finding out later that your content doesn’t fit nicely with the structure of the theme, and you end up…
    • Feeling frustrated and overwhelmed by the technical limitations.
    • Trying to adapt your content to your theme instead of the other way around, affecting how your message comes through, possibly turning your visitors away instead of into paying clients.

• Going through many more failed attempts than necessary before getting the outcome you want, including:
  • Wasting precious time.
  • Spending lots more money than planned if you work with a designer and have to pay for each extra little change.
  • Having to start all over again (worst case).

Mistake 3: Choosing the wrong person to help you build the website

Who’s the “wrong” person?

• The helpful relative, AKA Uncle Malcolm
  • You can read here why he might totally mess it up in spite of good intentions.
• The web designer friend doing you a favour
  • There is a limit to a favour, and how much you can squeeze out of it. Eventually, when people are not getting paid, the motivation to get things done, and done in the way you want, is not that high.
• The service exchange
  • This may be a good option to save money, but are you really exchanging the value you’re getting or giving? You may be giving more than you are receiving, or the other way around, and things get messy… Or not really done according to your needs in the end… Or not really done at all…

And for all of these above points, remember that a website is a live thing. Attention and maintenance is needed to keep up the good quality, and also it has to be able to grow with you as your business grows.

Questions to ask yourself: Is the person who helps you build your website…

• Available and willing to help you when you need support in the future?
• Ready to fix things quickly when something goes wrong?
• Able to help you with maintenance and backups?

If you’re planning to hire a web designer, you want to check out this blog post: How to choose a web designer?