You’re a savvy, switched on 21st century entrepreneur. You know that even if your business doesn’t make extensive use of ecommerce, most prospective business leads will get their first taste of your brand through your online presence. But you’re also a parent. You can’t afford to fork out a small fortune on a stop shelf web developer to completely overhaul your online presence, and you don’t have the time or energy to become a proficient coder in order to create a website that stands shoulder to shoulder with those of the multinational corporate titans. Thus, many nascent small business people do the best they can with the resources at hand, and while the results may look just fine to their eyes, a more experienced hand would be able to tell you that you’re making mistakes that could undermine the credibility of your business. Thus, while a tip top website may represent a modest overhead, it’s almost always one worth covering.
Fortunately, it needn’t be a costly or time consuming exercise to ensure that your online presence is saying all the right things and none of the wrong things about your business. It’s simply a matter of knowing the “tells” that could make for a potentially embarrassing website and acting on them quickly and decisively. Such as…
Default WordPress templates
There are lots of reasons people set up websites. Some are established by businesses, while others are built by amateurs who simply want a platform upon which to promote their blog, their photography or their worldview. While both have every right to an online presence, it could prove a black eye for your business if you use the default WordPress templates favoured by amateur webmasters. These templates could make your website look amateurish to more practiced eyes. Fortunately, WordPress website design is a fairly easy discipline to source. There are many free to use templates that look much more professional than the defaults. Even if you need to subcontract a freelancer to create one from scratch this can usually be accomplished with a minimum of cost.
Cheaply sourced content
You probably know enough about SEO to know that one of the surest ways to climb to the top of search engine queries organically is by posting regular content. But this can lead thrifty entrepreneurs to outsource their content to low cost, low quality overseas “farms”. This content tends to be poorly written, factually inaccurate or lacking in substance. Make sure that you dedicate sufficient time to contribute your own content, entrust it to a member of your staff or outsource it to a more reputable provider that uses a pool of talented writers.
Non responsive
If users complain that your website is “non responsive” it could mean one of two things. Firstly, it may mean that when customers try to click on a call to action or navigation button it either doesn’t work or results in an unexpected response. This is likely a symptom of poor development or misleading UX (user experience) copy but is fairly easy to fix once isolated.
Secondly, it may mean that your website is not well optimized for mobile consumption. It may become distorted or rendered unusable when viewed through a mobile device like a smartphone or tablet. In an era where mobile usage has overtaken desktop usage, making your website more responsive should be among your highest priorities. Fortunately, most templates designed these days are build with mobile use in mind.