It’s commonly thought that with the rise of social media, websites are becoming less important. This is far from the truth. Websites have been the centrepiece of online businesses for three DECADES… that’s not changing anytime soon. 

Despite this, small business owners often make the same mistakes that, when corrected, can significantly impact their success and growth. Today I’ll tell you about 7 mistakes I see a lot and how you can change them…

1. Branding

Branding is the basis of a business; it’s the brand, after all. Logos, fonts, colour palettes – they all play such an important role. I’m about to ask you a question, and I want you to answer out loud.

What are your three main colours?

If you could answer without hesitation, congrats! Bonus points if you said the hex code. If you didn’t know, that’s ok! But it needs to change. Branding is what makes your business recognisable and memorable. When you think of a bitten apple, do you think of Apple? When you think of the golden arches, does your stomach rumble? Albeit, these brands have invested a hefty budget into their branding and have had years on the scene, but you can learn the same lesson.

So what can you do?

Make a document. Word, Google Docs, your notes app – anything! I’m sure that if you already have a business, you have a basic understanding of your branding. If not, now you get to have fun and play around with different ideas! Create some logos (or hire somebody to do it for you, like me ;)), find the colours you think fit your brand, and (this is often most overlooked) pick a font! For a female hairdresser, it may be more floaty and calligraphic like a Playfair Display, whereas for someone in the construction industry, it may be more robust like a Bebas Neue.

Once you have this, you can begin implementing it on your website. Use colours strategically, don’t just let the rainbow throw up over your Home page. Change the fonts to the ones you have chosen, and if you have a new logo, stick it up there!

Not only does refreshing your branding give your website a new, revived look and feel, but it also helps you feel motivated in your business. If you’d like to learn more about Branding & Identity, please get in touch.

2. Wording

It’s tricky, isn’t it? You don’t want to sound too professional, but you also don’t want to sound too informal and sloppy. It’s a fine line, I get it! But wording is really important. You should tell a story on your website and ensure it’s easy for visitors to read and follow.

Have you used ChatGPT for your website wording? It’s ok. This is a safe space; you can admit it. I won’t sit here and tell you that AI isn’t a great tool for wording, but you need to make sure it has a personal touch. This is even more important for small businesses, as your customers value personability and getting to know you as the owner. Yes, you may save time, but overusing AI for your wording may come back to bite you in the long term.

If you’re struggling with website wording, put yourself in your ideal customer’s shoes. You’ve been working on the business, so you know everything! For this exercise, though, you need to wipe your memory Men in Black style and act as though you have no idea what your business offers. What would that customer want to know? What is important to them? The price? Details? Reviews? Ethics? Make everything OBVIOUS; don’t hide important information amongst dreary passages and at the bottom of abandoned pages.

Whether you want to inspire, convince, or persuade, make sure that your intent goes into every word on your website. This is definitely something that you can do on your own, but if you don’t want to think about it, you can hire a copywriter (wink wink, nudge nudge). If you’d like to learn more, please get in touch.

3. Calls to Action

A Call to Action (or CTA) is something that stimulates a visitor to do something or carry out an action. This could be contacting you or purchasing a product, for example.

The two main issues I see in small businesses when it comes to CTA’s are either their lack of them or their poor placement. Please understand that Call to Actions are are vital part of all websites, no matter your industry or niche. Without them, you risk disengaging or confusing your visitors, and in turn, shooting yourself in the foot.

On the other hand, I have also seen too many Calls to Action. They are powerful tools, and shouldn’t be used erratically. You want to ensure that whenever you are asking a visitor to do something, they should be in the appropriate position to do so, meaning they have the following:

• Information
• Desire
• Ability

To tick these boxes, you use factors such as wording and branding. Are you seeing how this all links together?

Placement is a really important consideration for Calls to Action. For example, a Call to Action such as Contact Me shouldn’t be at the start of your Home Page, because your visitors don’t even know what to contact you about yet! On the other hand, a ‘View Shop’ or ‘View Services’ button is a better CTA to have on your Home Page, because this sends your web visitors to the start of their User Journey.

Also, ensure the colour contrast of your Calls to Action is correct. Black writing on a dark blue button, for example, won’t work. In this instance, change the text colour to white.

4. Image Quality

This is important for ALL businesses and websites, but particularly for E-Commerce websites trying to sell a product.

If you are an E-Commerce business, ensure your product photos tick the following boxes:

1. Clean background
2. Good quality camera
3. Shows all necessary angles (try to aim for at least 5 photos per item)
4. Good lighting

I’m sure you have previously gone to shop on a website and seen that they have bad product photos. It makes you feel unsettled, right? It’s the easiest way to turn customers away, so you MUST ensure your photos are high-quality and relevant.

Even if you’re not an E-Commerce website, all photos across your website should be high-resolution and reflect the brand identity and image you’re trying to convey. More often than not, the general rule of thumb is ensuring a clear background and good lighting. Before anything else, you must prioritise those.

Remember! Your photos are often seen outside your website, be it on Google Images, in screenshots, or, more recently, AI Overviews. The best way to rank externally is by having good quality photos, because if you don’t, you competitor definitely will. Sorry, someone had to tell you.

5. Mobile Performance

Different sources quote figures ranging from 60 to 80 percent of website traffic coming from mobile devices. Ensuring your website is optimised for mobile performance is vital to your website’s success.

Improving mobile performance is a bit easier said than done, and it’s a lot more technical. Some examples of methods to improve this are:

• Optimise your images (compress images, use lazy load)
• Enable browser caching
• Minify CSS and JavaScript files

Lazy load? CSS? Caching? Maybe this is confusing you. Don’t worry, there are plenty of resources out there to help you. The best practice is to first test your mobile responsiveness using PageSpeed Testers such as https://pagespeed.web.dev/.

With a seemingly ever-diminishing global attention span (did you know the average attention span is now less than a goldfish?), ensuring top website performance is even more important for retaining and engaging your visitors.

6. Cross-platform accessibility

There are hundreds of different devices from which your website can be accessed, from a smartphone to a smart fridge. Making sure your website is responsive across different browsers and devices is really important for your business. If not, you risk cutting off an entire section of your audience!

Most web builders let you switch views from desktop to tablet to mobile, making the process much easier. If you didn’t know that was a thing, please go change it NOW! It’s easy to focus only on the desktop view, but making sure your website looks good outside of it is important. Change text size, image positions and button locations to accommodate. Once you get the ball rolling, it’s not too grand a task, especially if you do it as you go along.

7. SEO

Ugh, the bedreaded 3 letters… SEO. After all these years, it’s still a bit of an enigma! How it works, what you can do to change it. Luckily, years of trial and error have taught us a few secrets.

SEO is really important to how people find your website, and how it is pushed out across search engines. There are three types of SEO: on-page, off-page and technical.

• On-page SEO: keywords, photos and videos, H1 & H2
• Off-page SEO: backlinks, mentions and features
• Technical SEO: internal linking, breadcrumbs

For a more in-depth discussion of SEO and what you can do to improve it on your website, click here.

Making sure your website is SEO-optimised is really important for browser ranking. Better SEO increases the likelihood that browsers such as Google promote your website, meaning more people see it, leading to more traffic and, if you do everything on this list, potentially more conversions!

You may think ignorance is bliss here, but unfortunately, it’s something you have to face sooner or later. If you’d like some help with your SEO, please get in touch.

Final Thoughts

So that’s it! 7 common mistakes in websites. Hopefully, after reading this article, you realise they’re not all that tricky to rectify! And once you do, you will reap the benefits, I promise.

All of my website builds prioritise the 7 factors above. If you would like to discuss building a new website or refreshing your current one, please contact me here. I look forward to helping you!