As a small business owner, you know how important it is to have a strong online presence.
Your website can help you establish credibility, reach new customers, and generate sales. But it’s easy to neglect regular updates to your website in the midst of all your other responsibilities.
However, if you’re not careful, simple mistakes on your website can make the wrong impression on site visitors and cost you valuable customers.
In this article, we’ll explore some of the most common mistakes that small businesses make on their websites, and offer some tips on how to fix them.
Not showing an understanding of customer needs and pain points
Your website is your opportunity to connect with your customers, show them that you understand the challenges they are facing, and offer a solution that can help.
It’s your chance to speak directly to your target audience.
But so many small business websites focus more on talking about themselves, their own experiences and their credentials, rather than addressing the needs of their target audience.
As a quick exercise, count up how many times you say “we” or “our” on your website homepage. Then count up how many times you say “you” or your”.
If the first number is greater than the second, you’re probably talking about yourself too much! Try and rephrase things so that you’re speaking directly to your target audience and addressing their needs and pain points.
Confusing navigation and user experience
A lot of small business websites are built without much investment in testing the user experience and ease of navigation.
But simple navigation and the overall user experience on your website is important. It’s suggested that 94% of consumers believe that simple navigation is one of the most important aspects of a website.
A confusing navigation experience can cause frustration and lead customers to view your business less positively than they could have done.
The good news is that improving your navigation and user experience doesn’t need to be complicated.
First of all, try to keep things simple. Don’t overcrowd your pages with too much content or too many links. When it comes to effective navigation and user experience, there’s a lot of truth in the saying ‘less is more’.
You might also try to anticipate the type of content users would like to see next on each page, and make sure it’s carefully signposted. A great article by Wurkhouse has a line I need to borrow, that illustrates the importance of effective categorisation and signposting:
“Website users typically want to know 3 things during their visit to your site: ‘Where am I?’, ‘Where have I been?’ and ‘Where else can I go?’”
If your site has a large number of pages, consider adding search to make it easy for users to find what they are looking for.
And if you’re interested in some usability insights, UsabilityHub has a free tier which allows you to conduct some short experiments on your site
Not having clear calls to action
One of the most important parts of a successful website is having a clear and compelling calls to action (CTA) throughout.
A CTA is a button or instruction that encourages visitors to take a specific action. Depending on the nature of your business, a CTA could be anything from filling out a form, subscribing to your newsletter, or making a purchase.
One common mistake is to have too many CTA buttons, which can make it more confusing than it needs to be for customers, and may prevent them from taking the action you want them to take.
Another common mistake is not making your CTA button stand out enough, so that it’s easy for customers to miss.
A good tip for a CTA is that it should stand out visually from the rest of your content. One way to do this is to make sure there is sufficient contrast between your CTA and the rest of the content on your page.
In terms of messaging, your CTA should be clear and concise.
I’d personally recommend avoiding generic CTA wording like”click here” or “learn more”. Instead, consider trying action phrases that speak directly to what you want visitors to do, like “Get started today”, “Download your free guide”, or “Book now”.
Not having analytics correctly set up
Google Analytics can provide you with a wealth of information about the behaviour of your site visitors and the performance of your website.
But many small business owners either don’t feel confident enough with Google Analytics or simply don’t pay enough attention to it.
It’s quite common for me to log into the Google Analytics account of a small business and find that things like goals haven’t been set up correctly, or that enhanced e-commerce tracking isn’t set up for an online store. This means that businesses are often missing out on valuable insights that could help them improve their website and product or service offering.
One big change that is coming up is the switch from Google’s Universal Analytics to GA4. On 1st July 2023, all instances of Universal Analytics are going to stop processing data. Businesses need to make sure their GA4 instances are set up correctly before this date. But many businesses aren’t ready.
If you’re reading this and want to chat about a GA4 migration — please just get in touch.
Slow loading times
If your website takes too long to load, visitors may leave before even having the chance to see your content. It’s estimated that an additional second of page loading time can cause your bounce rate to triple!
One of the most common issues that can lead to slow loading times is using large image files. This is often easy to fix by compressing your images so you get the right balance between image quality and load time.
Another common issue for businesses with WordPress sites is having too many plugins or having outdated plugins. Every plugin you have installed adds a bit of extra load time to your site. So it’s worth having a full review and seeing if there are any plugins you can remove that are no longer in use or providing value.
Not being mobile-friendly
It’s estimated that more than 60% of all internet traffic now comes from mobile devices.
So it’s really important for your website to be optimised for mobile users.
Common issues that I come across on the mobile websites of small businesses is that the text is either too small to read, or the links and buttons are too difficult to easily tap with a finger.
In terms of best practice tips, it’s important to make sure your font size is large enough so it’s easy to read your content on phone screens. It’s also good advice to try to use clear buttons and links that are easy for users to select without accidentally clicking the wrong thing.
A lot of modern websites are responsive, which means their elements and layout adapt based on the device a visitor is using. So you can have a version of your website that is optimised for desktop devices, and another that looks great on mobiles.
If you haven’t updated your website in a little while, and you want to chat a bit more about the benefits of responsive design — just drop me a line!
As a bit of a bonus tip for mobile web design — try to break up long paragraphs of text. On a desktop a long paragraph might look fine. On a mobile, big blocks of text can look intimidating and overwhelming to users and might prevent them from reading further. So try and keep your paragraphs to 3–4 sentences.
Too many acronyms or industry terminology
Every industry has its own jargon, acronyms and lingo.
There are times when you might want to use specific industry terminology, for example if you’re addressing experts that you’re confident will understand the language you’re using.
But for the majority of small business websites, keeping things simple, straightforward and easy to understand is key.
The Centre For Plain Language actually suggests that in order to be accessible to the widest audience possible, your web content should be able to be read and understood by a 9 year old. From my perspective, this isn’t always viable or advisable, but the principle is something to bear in mind.
There are some great tools that can help you work towards more simplicity in your web copy.
Hemingway is a free web app that can help you grade the readability of your content. A more comprehensive tool is Readable, which is available for a small monthly fee.
Does your website need a refresh?
If you’ve read through this article and some of the points have felt a little close to home, be reassured that you’re not on your own!
Running a business is hard work, and with a million different plates to spin it can be easy to put things like website updates, user testing and analytics migrations to the bottom of the ‘to-do’ list.
But that’s where I can help. I’ve got years of experience supporting businesses as a virtual assistant, picking up the tasks that many busy business owners just don’t have the time to do.
So if you would like a chat about how I can help you avoid costly mistakes on your website, just drop me a line.
