Website mistakes that waste your hopeful money

Website mistakes waste your money. Your bad strategy is making your site useless. Avoid massive mistakes and make your website much better today.

It doesn’t have to be this way. But unfortunately, that’s the way it is all too often.

So, here are the seven ways website mistakes waste your money:

1. The king of the website mistakes: It’s all about you, not about your customers.

Some people think that everything is all about them. If you talk about yourself all the time at a party, people will put up with your self-involved jabber until they take the first excuse to politely get away from you. Online, they don’t have to be polite — they just leave your site.

People will listen to you as long as you interest them. And the thing that really interests people is what your product will do for them. On your website, show them the problem your product solves.

2. It’s not moving people closer to buying.

Notice I didn’t write, “It’s not making people buy.” Whoa, boy. Buying is like getting married. We’re not talking about a wedding here. We’re talking about a first date. Think instead about taking small steps to make a connection with someone.

For a moment, forget about selling to people. Sure, some visitors are probably ready to buy. But most aren’t. Instead, they’re visiting your site to find out more about what you can do for them. And visiting your website is a risk-free and anonymous way to do that.

So think about the small steps people can take to connect with you. Can they click a “Like” button? Can they download a free tip sheet? Subscribe to a blog? Not thinking about these things is one of the big website mistakes.

“You cannot sell a man who isn’t listening.” – Bill Bernbach

3. There’s nothing small for people to buy.

Finally we’re talking about buying.

Do you have an extra $5,000 sitting inside your purse right now? Probably not.

What about an extra $50? What can you offer for $50 — or better yet, $49.95 — that will scratch a potential client where they itch? How about a special report for $9.95? A “lite” version of your software? A 30-minute consultation? Having something relatively inexpensive for purchase steers you clear of one of the popular website mistakes and makes your site more successful as a result.

Startups call this “the minimum viable product.”

I don’t know about you, but getting me to open my wallet the first time is a real challenge for a sales rep. But once it’s open, it’s easier for me to spend money with that company again and again.

4. It’s not part of a cluster of messages.

It used to be that having a website was all you needed. Not anymore. Instead, websites today are the center of a cluster of messages by which you keep yourself in front of your customers and prospects through automated emails, tweets, tip sheets, and blog posts.

Consider how you spend your day. You probably pass the time in all kinds of places: the office, your car, the town plaza, the grocery store, restaurants and bars — as a result you and your brain are in different kinds of places for different parts of the day.

Your Internet day isn’t any different. At 10 a.m. you’re answering emails or you’re online hunting down some technical answer to a software problem. Then you eat lunch at your desk and watch some fun YouTube videos. While waiting for the subway, you visit Twitter and instant message some friends. Evenings are for Facebook and Pinterest.

Successful small- and medium-sized businesses put themselves in front of prospects through different media, at different times of the day. Not doing that increases the risk that your website is a waste of money.

5. It doesn’t look like your company: This is one of the website mistakes that makes your enterprise a visual orphan.

Again, here is the cluster of messages, only this time it’s visual. When your company shows up on any media, it has to have the same look and feel. If your business cards and company vehicles look cool — but your website doesn’t — well, you need a cool website. Prospective customers find it jarring when they don’t get the same vibe from all the parts of your company.

The lack of a consistent look makes your company look like a wannabe. And as a result it makes buying from you look like a waste of money.

6. There’s no reason to come back.

Websites used to be an online version of a company brochure and they changed as often as brochures change — not often. Modern websites still have that unchanging content, but also include:

• A way to connect with you through social media;
• A place to subscribe to updates to your site;
• A series of auto-responder emails for new subscribers;
• Recent blog posts — people are attracted to new, and Google will visit your site more often, too;
• A “reference library” of popular posts that makes visitors return; and
• Lastly, a place where visitors can leave comments (Did you ever notice how you come back to a site to see if anyone has responded to your comments? That’s an example of a “sticky” site.)

Find more ways to keep visitors coming back to your site here. (Explicit)

7. The most popular of the website mistakes: Your website visitor doesn’t know what to do next.

People don’t know what the next step is because your pages are too crowded. This is because you haven’t asked yourself what you want people to do as a result of visiting this page of your site.

Before people will pay you money, you need to get them to pay attention. As advertising genius Bill Bernbach said during the “Mad Men” era: “You cannot sell a man who isn’t listening.”

So finally, here is how to get someone to listen:

• Start a relationship with your customers by giving away a small thing, like a free tip sheet. Here’s a free post about little marketing steps that are very much worth your trouble.
• Fill your website with the answers to their problem.
• Be so relevant to their life that they want to give you something: Their email address.
• Become a welcome part of their email in–box. Develop into their go-to person when it comes to your business area.
• Find a frustration in their life and have an inexpensive, powerful solution ready to buy on your site.
• Make this inexpensive, powerful solution part of a collection of larger, deeper, valuable services that consequently has them buying more from you more often.