Most Common Website Marketing Mistakes

By Mark Barrett, Creative Image Marketing

Does your website look great but appears nowhere on search engines? Or does it rank really well but has poor lead conversion or sales? Whilst they are many issues to consider when creating the perfect site, these are the most common factors to consider:  

Lack of Credible Design

Too many images, colour or mixed fonts can distract from your main message. Your website should be pleasing to the eye and simple enough for anyone to understand what you are offering. Strike a balance between photos and graphics. The right sort of images and graphics help to promote your products and services and provide a real feeling to your brand.

Incorrect Coding

To optimise your site, make sure your developer is correctly using title tags, heading tags and do not code with frames or 100% flash.

Poor External and Internal Linking

Sites that have external linking (your URL promoted on another website) achieve better search engine ranking. Additionally, your internal linking strategy needs to be search engine friendly. Linking keywords from articles and content to other relevant pages on your site will assist.

Forgetting Key Words and Phrases

Not only does the content have to tell your customers what you do, it also needs to contain key rich words and phrases. Your content needs to contain all the words and phrases your customers could use on search engines. However just repeating this over and over is not effective either as Google will discount duplicate copy. Focusing on making sure your site has lots of fresh new content will increase your visibility in the search engine results.

Little Unique or Helpful Content

Provide your customers with what they want to know, not what you want to tell them. Your customers want to know what you can do for them, provide a solution or exchange information. Your site needs to be constantly updated. Outdated information, promotions, services will turn off a potential client. Adding pages such as testimonials, frequently asked questions and articles will provide credibility to potential customers and potentially solve their needs. This will also give you a vehicle to add key words and phrases and optimise your search engine ranking.

No Call to Action

Your contact details need to be prominent. Whilst online shopping is growing, there is still a strong market that wants to discuss or talk with your company. Often customers want to talk to you while they are referring to your site so providing both phone and email is important. Depending on your business, your email address should also offer an enquiry form or quote form on as many pages as possible.

Forgetting Customer Relationship Marketing

Start collecting email addresses as soon as your site is live. You can then start a relationship and find out what your customer’s wants and needs are. A subscribe form should be visible on every page. E-newsletters and articles that you send to your customers should be available on your site for further search engine optimisation.

Clunky Online Shopping

In order to encourage online shopping, make it as easy as possible for the consumer. Strike a balance between providing information on your products/service and avoiding too many steps to finalise the purchase. The more steps involved in purchasing products or services, the more likelihood of abandonment whilst checking out. Take the opportunity to generate more sales by offering complimentary products and services. Follow up with service/product reminders and instigate loyalty promotions to encourage repeat purchases.