Hi, I’m Naomi Burgess and I’ve written quite a bit on online businesses. In my experience, no matter how good your product is, the only way you’d get enough clients to make a profit is if you market your product properly. This post is about the most common pitfalls of web marketing.
A good promising website is a must
While you might not meet people in person and hand out glossy business cards if you’re operating online, your business still has an image to maintain. Your website is your business card, and whether your e-commerce business is your primary source of income or just a way to make extra cash, clients won’t be visiting it again if they find it off-putting. Designing a website that’s both attractive and user-friendly is the key to customer retention in online business.
Website Developer is a game changer
It’s wonderful if you yourself have web development skills you can put to good use, but not many people do. For that reason, people hire web developers to help them set up. But even if you’re familiar with web development, chances are that you don’t have the experience professional web developers have. Unless you’re a player in the IT industry, it’s just as unlikely that you know its latest market trends. I highly recommend, therefore, that you invest in an experienced developer – they would cost you but they’re a worthy investment.
Initiate your creative juices
Developing a website, however, is just the first step towards creating an image and building a brand. An attractive web design is almost as important as user-friendliness of a website. Even if you have art skills, there’s a lot more to web design than just colour schemes. It has to go hand-in-hand with user-friendliness provided by web development, and has to correspond with the type of product you sell. Like with more conventional brands, web design plays a pivotal role in an online brand. Fortunately, there are many experienced web designers out there, and I recommend that you approach them, as well as web developers. Some professionals can even do both. Creating a good website is not an easy job, and as a business owner, you have enough things to work on – outsourcing is the answer here.
Make it user-friendly
Another frequent mistake new online businessmen and women make is irrelevant content on their website. Once you have a user-friendly website with a stunning design, the next step is to create a well-structured and relevant content and upload it for users to see. It’s important that your products are clearly visible and their description is easy to find.
Hire someone with CMS Expertise
Another important thing in building a website structure is CMS. In order to create a flexible content management system, a lot of technical knowledge is required. Fortunately, many web developers also offer CMS creation services in addition to web development and web design services. Debugging the errors and troubleshooting would cost you more in the long term than splurging on a web developer to create CMS that one time.
Be Smart on your Finances
All of the pitfalls that I’ve listed above are quite common and unfortunately occur because new business owners are short on funds and don’t believe that spending extra money on web development and web design would benefit their new company. 8 out of 10 online sellers don’t have the skills required to set up a decent, user-friendly website and miss out on many potential customers as a result. A truly successful entrepreneur knows not to put all his or her eggs in one basket – even if that one basket is him or her. They know that sometimes they need help, and there are many sources of web development help available today. Don’t hesitate to approach them because in the World Wide Web, you need the competitive edge a good website can give you.
