The Top Mistakes Made on Business Websites

As a common saying goes, if you’re not online, you don’t exist. Businesses know this and make sure they have a website to represent them online. Many companies, however, unknowingly sabotage their websites. The weakest points can already be found on the homepage, but problems don’t stop there.

1. Start by asking WHY

The most basic problem is that the homepage doesn’t clearly say why the website was created and what it can offer its visitors. On one website we found the following:

“Welcome to our online store xxx. Our company is the exclusive importer of several outstanding products that are not represented on the local market. We hope that you’ll like our offer.”

The text continues in a similar manner. We literally had to search the entire website to find out what exactly are those outstanding products we could buy in their online store.

Simplify your life and show customers what’s most important for them right there on the homepage. What would you like to offer on your website? The following table lists examples of different types of websites and the ideal content for their homepages.

Website type	Goal	Homepage content
Online store	Sell products or services	Best sellers; banner with a picture of a product leading to an interesting category; discounted items
Blog	Bring in readers	Popular articles; newsletter sign-up
Business website, e.g., hotel	Get reservations	Photos inspiring a visit, online booking form

2. Ancient news?

Another problem that plagues many websites is the outdated news section. We randomly selected 200 websites created in Webnode to see if they publish any news and only 38% of these sites contained regularly updated articles. The rest either didn’t provide any news at all or they were all very old.

Ignoring this part of the website is not the best move. It leaves an unprofessional impression and makes visitors doubt your offer and correctness of the information on your website. To make matters even worse, lack of news doesn’t help with optimization for search engines and allows you to target only a narrow scope of keywords.

3. Like a business card without contact information

Imagine getting a business card with no address, e-mail or telephone number. You’d think it’s a bad joke. The same goes for websites. The address, phone number, e-mail address or a contact form are essential. Unfortunately, some companies are still reluctant to publish contact information on their sites and many others show outdated info. Clients trying to inquire about products might find this suspicious.

4. Grammatical errors can be scary

Grammatical errors give visitors the worst nightmares. Some people are particularly sensitive to mistakes and typos and may feel frustrated the whole time they’re browsing your website.

Avoiding mistakes isn’t that hard. Prepare the text in Word and most misspelled words will automatically jump out. You can also ask someone for proofreading. Since they will be looking at the text with fresh eyes, they can easily spot any errors.

5. No testimonials

Another very common mistake is not adding testimonials to your website. Studies show that consumers have difficulty focusing on a large amount of information, so everything they see is filtered according to its credibility. Every business, therefore, faces a difficult task – gaining clients’ trust. If they see that someone else is already happily enjoying your services or products, they’re more likely to buy them as well.

Now it’s your turn. Check your website for any of these errors, make the corrections and watch the changes reflect on your sales! If you just plan to create your own site don’t forget check our step by step guide.