Web Site Mistakes

With more and more businesses finally moving with the times and getting themselves a website, I’d like to take the opportunity to point out a few common pitfalls to owning and running a site.

All to often, people pay a fortune for a site, get it up and then leave it there either not knowing what to do with it or not bothering to use it to its maximum potential. Also, people kind of expect the site to do the work and bring home the bacon! The amount of outdated sites out there both in terms of look and feel and age-old copyright notices is amazing.

Theres three main things you need to do when you have a site:

1. Promote it – simply having a site doesn’t mean people will visit it, you have to tell people about it by printing the address on your business cards etc, and submitting the site to search engines, directories and the like.
2. Update it – if people see, over the course of a year or two, that your site hasn’t changed a bit then it will reflect badly on you. You need to post regular news items, blog or change colors and layout once in a while to keep things fresh and let people know the site hasn’t been neglected. The search engines love sites that constantly get updated too.
3. Humanize it – websites can be a bit impersonal so try to write friendly welcoming content and add your picture someone on the home page. Also make sure you answer all communication from the site, especially emails, as soon as possible. Things like Blogs and Discussion Forums also create interaction with your customers/potential clients. All of this helps to prove that theres real people behind the site!

Leon.