Website Mistakes and How to Avoid Them
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Ask your target demographic what it thinks about your website's usability, programming and design, and you're bound to receive a variety of responses. These can range from "looks good to me," to "I didn't find what I was looking for," or "I think it sucks." Everyone has an opinion.
A more likely scenario is that you've never taken the time to ask your customers what they think about your website. And that's a shame. If you're like most start-ups or SMBs, you probably figure you know what's best -- or you hire someone who convinces you that they know what's best for your business. Sadly, you allow that faulty thinking process to guide the programming and design of your company's No. 1 or No. 2 marketing tool.
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It's one thing to pump my own gas. But having to search through an endless database-driven online knowledge management system to find the answer to a common question is another. Whether it's to save money on live customer service or shield the company from a flurry of inbound phone calls, more businesses have chosen to make customer service self-service. From uber-FAQs to threaded online message boards and support forums, self-service is quite the trend.
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I know, I know, this has been beaten to death. Believe me when I say that I've been called a moron for taking such a hard stance against Flash-based website programming and design. But here's the deal
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Search engines pay attention to content in different areas of your website, including the URL. Different search engines give different weight to keywords in URLs, with Bing being the one that currently appears to give it the most weight. So if your website pages have addresses like http://www.YourDomain.com/displaypage.aspx?intPageID=7629, change them! You want something that's more intuitive. For instance, if the purpose of a page is to share customer testimonials, use the word "testimonials" in the URL. That makes much more sense than characters that mean absolutely nothing to the search engines and the end user.
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If what I'm about to describe hasn't happened to you, consider yourself lucky. For weeks -- maybe even months -- you've been focused on a new or redesigned website for your company. Finally, after making room on the design and engineering team's roadmap (or finding the funds to hire an independent website programming and design firm), you receive the first round of comps of the new website. Turns out it's nothing like what you imagined. But because of timing and budgetary pressures, you acquiesce and plow forward with a less than ideal concept or design.