Avoid these five common mistakes on your website

Your website is your storefront to the world. It’s possible that thousands more people will see your online storefront than ever walk into your practice or onto your sales floor. Your website needs to represent you at your very best. Think of it as a silent salesperson, 24/7. No commissions. 

So take a fresh look at your website and ask yourself whether you’re making any of these common errors. If you set about fixing them, it won’t take long to see tangible improvements.  Here are five easy fixes for improving your website:

Clutter

Images, text, design elements, navigation and brightly colored, ALL-CAPS slogans can sometimes get thrown into a visual stew that will turn visitors off. And away. There are some glaring examples out there, (they make me shudder!) but you might not see your own clutter. Pay attention to blank space, the alignment of images and text and the zones of visual messaging on your site. Where is the eye asked to go? 

Got clutter problems? Choose the three most important elements on the page, and organize it around those elements only. Allow the others to diminish in size or to move further down the page. Or off it! Less is more. 

Analytics are missing

Without analytics, your website is a dingy in the ocean with no map. With analytics, you’ve got a map and a GPS, and, with a little effort, a motor. 

The good news? It’s free and it’s easy to add Google Analytics to your website … and to interpret what the metrics mean. 

Who’s your target audience?

It’s disheartening when we come across a well-designed site that lacks only one obvious element: a target audience. Every site should be built with a target audience’s profile in mind, and all the elements of the site should speak to him or her. If a website is designed and written without a target audience, it ends up appealing to no one. 

Calls to inaction

You need to make it effortless for the people visiting your site to engage with you. This moment of engagement is crucial and should be crafted with the utmost care. An effective call to action should be direct (say exactly what you’d like the reader to do next,) be supported with an appealing graphic and it should be brief. 

Secret contact info

If I must look for an email address or a telephone number to contact you and it isn’t ultra-easy to find, then I assume only one thing: you don’t want to hear from me! Make your contact info very easy to find — even better: make it impossible to miss. And don’t make me fill out a long form and promise you’ll get back to me. I want a phone number and/or email to contact you NOW!

These are just some of the most common mistakes we see while evaluating websites for clients. Can you identify any of these on your own site? 

Laurie Macomber, owner of Fort Collins-based Blue Skies Marketing, can be reached at 970-689-3000.

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