You know you need a website to promote your business , but do you know you should use it as an active and changing tool to really work for you? Here are some to the things to avoid to use your website to its full advantage.
Your website a very good promotion tool. If you never add any content to it and never try to get people to see it, it might as well be an online business card. In some cases this maybe OK.
A website needs great content that people want to see. If your website has very little content that never changes don’t expect your website sell your business for you on its own.
I’ve made some gorgeous websites that dont do anything. and I’ve also seen websites that haven’t been changed in 15 years that get great SEO (see above) both have the same problem.
I was pretty amiable to signing the whole foods/amazon prime app. You can train your audience to do something new, but….
Not respecting your visitors time.
They might not want to sit thru long videos or large amounts of text like they have nothing else to do. Get to the point quickly.
Hey I was reading that! For real? you want me to opt in that box that flew up in front of what I was reading?
Poorly thought out or confusing promotions.
Not being able to follow up, no being able to close the deal, I struggle with this all the time, what can I offer you that is easy for you to buy and is useful?
Not paying attention to current trends.
Im a web developer, I read stuff about websites all the time. I went to school. Nothing I say about websites I came up with on my own.
The old broadcast model of creating content to sell advertising around probably isnt gonna work for you. Be your own best promoter and use your content to advertise what you are selling.
Why should anyone sign up for your newsletter? You need a really good reason or they just wont.
When many people start out they say everyone is their client, and its almost true, because you don’t know yet what will happen. it may helpful to think about who is NOT your customer.
You will learn who you don’t want as a client. Probably after you’ve experienced a few of them.
Not connecting with social media.
If you hand me a business card at an event, I probably will look at your website. If there is not connection to social media I can not create a relationship with you. I’m likely to forget all about you, where I met you and vise versa.
Not clarifying what the website is about first thing.
This one of the biggest “sins” of the internet, even the biggest websites are guilty of it. The first thing seen on your website should be what the website is about.
Solution: Create an article, story or audio/video and push it to social media, and/or email. Add new content as your business changes, create exciting promotions and sales.
Solution: Tell google what you made with relevant key words and tags
Solution: Test your website to see if it answers questions, explains what your business does and has some interest.
Solution: Be careful before you start a new program, Deliver programs people still need. one mad customer is too many.
Solution: Make the highest quality content you are able. I like podcasts that are around 15 minutes, after that, you might just be repeating yourself.
Solution: Test it to see how it does.
Solution: If you MUST use a pop up have it come up as they are leaving
Solution: Keep working on it until it works
Solution: listen to advice, google information where you hear about it, admit when you are wrong, think out side the box
Solution: If you have the chance to monetize great! make it tasteful. Dont make it your first priority
Solution: Create a hard to resist offer and tell people what to expect from you
Solution: learn from your unique experience to find your niche
Solution: at the very least, do LinkedIn and put a link to it on your website. Automate other social media to promote your new website content.
Solution: Practice your “elevator speech” until it gets the point across, then try that on you home page above everything else.
Seriously? this violates all respect you have for the audience. If I cant read the story, If I have to sit thru the same 30 second video over and over, If I cant escape your looping .gif. I may just escape your website instead.