You’re a small business owner, and you’ve just decided to start a website. That’s great! Having a website is absolutely an essential part of any business, especially in 2018.
Of course, if you’re a beginner, creating a website can be a daunting process as there is a lot that you need to get done such as finding a reliable web host or buying a domain name.
One thing’s for sure, before you launch your website, you have to make sure that it provides the best user experience possible. Unfortunately, this is where a lot of web designers miss the mark, as they tend to focus too much on creativity instead of building a website that solves the user’s needs.
If you don’t want your website to end up as an unusable mess, then you have to avoid making these common mistakes when building a website.
Not optimizing your site
In 2018, there’s no excuse for you to have a website that looks unprofessional. First impressions are important for a website, and research shows that it only takes 0.5 seconds for a user to decide whether they like your website or not and whether to stay or leave.
Having a good-looking website is important, but it shouldn’t come at the cost of performance. A common mistake that most web designers make is to put too many images and media files that are large. When they do this, their website’s loading speed will take a hit, which can harm your user’s overall experience.
Sure, that huge landscape image might make your site look amazing, but what’s the point if it takes way too long to load.
Keep your website optimized by uploading images and media files that are already compressed. Doing so will reduce the strain on your bandwidth and let your website load faster to give your users a smoother experience.
There are cases where your website is still lagging even though you’ve optimized all that you can. When that happens, you might want to consider changing your web host and find one that’s much more reliable and offers better speed.
Ignoring a mobile version
Here’s a quick question: how many of you are reading this on your mobile device?
Odds are, a majority of you are currently using your mobile smart devices to read this article and visit websites. As a matter of fact, it’s much more likely that a user’s first experience of your website will be on a mobile device.
In 2018, the majority of the population consumes content and uses the internet via their mobile devices, so your website needs to look good and load fast on it. This is why having a mobile version or a mobile-optimized website is important.
When you’re building your website, remember to create a mobile version as well. Make sure that the mobile version is consistent with your main website in terms of color, theme, and overall design. Just make sure to not add too many things to it, such as having multiple popups.
If you’re not too comfortable coding, you can just use website builders such as Wix or Weebly to create your website. The great thing about website builders is that they often come with an option to create a mobile version of your website, which saves you the hassle of building one from scratch.
Overlooking the costs
Have you ever actually stopped and thought to yourself:
“How much will it cost to build a website?”
Most beginners or newbies will have a cursory idea of how much a website costs. But they don’t go deep enough to see how much it all really costs and end up going over their budget or don’t put in enough.
Before you start building your website, you should always do an estimation of the costs for all the things you need for your website.
You might be an accomplished coder, but if you’re not good at social media, then you’re going to have to hire a social media consultant or manager. Conversely, you might be great at writing and creating content but have no clue how to build a website, odds are you’re going to have to hire a web developer.
Knowing what you need and how much all of these will cost you can help in deciding whether you should build your website on your own or hire people to do it.
Nowadays, it’s easier than ever to hire freelancers on platforms such as Upwork for one-off projects or on a contract basis.
Lack of security and protection
For a business and its website, employing proper security and protection is not a luxury, it’s a necessity. You wouldn’t want your website, your ecommerce store, or your source of income to be susceptible to attacks or hacks and cause you unnecessary anxiety.
Even Google has taken steps to highlight websites that do not have SSL certificates by showing them as “unsecured”. When you have an “unsecure” website, you won’t rank high up in Google’s search results, which can affect your traffic and ultimately, your profit.
Always make sure that your website has an SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) certificate before you launch as it not only helps keep your website secure but also identifies your website as “secure” to Google.
You can either go for free SSL certificates at places such as Let’s Encrypt or go for reputable Certificate Authorities such as SSL.com or Comodo.
For online stores, it’s recommended that you go the extra mile in terms of security. Companies such as Sucuri offer comprehensive protections against security threats such as DDoS attacks and malware.
Conclusions
Starting a website for your business can be an exciting endeavor. If done right, you’ll could end with up a very profitable and valuable asset. However, if you want to make your website the best it can be, then you should definitely avoid making the mistakes that we’ve listed above.
Who knows, you could end up being the next Amazon or even Google!