10 Ways Companies Screw Up Their Websites
Building a website is like building a house. When built properly, they both combine interdependent components into a functional and attractive whole. In a house, the components are things like plumbing and ventilation; in a website, they’re things like search engine optimization (SEO) and navigational structure.
Both are enormous projects with thousands of variables, and although there may be 10 right answers to every question, there are also 50 wrong answers, which may explain why so many houses and websites turn into money pits. To keep this from happening to your site, avoid these 10 common traps.
1. Imprecise or Improper Purpose
Why am I building this website? Until you answer that question with the eloquence of an orator, do not start grabbing any tools. Many firms have only a vague idea of what they want their site to do. Others ask their site to do too much, not enough, or the wrong thing altogether. Behind every great business site is a crystal clear, sensible vision.
2. Inadequate Budget
Having a vision is a must, but without the proper budget, your project will be a bust. Firms tend to grossly underestimate the time and expense of building or upgrading a site, which forces them to make ruinous compromises down the line.
3. Incomplete Team
Without a plumber, your house will leak water. Without SEO and conversion optimization specialists, your site will leak leads. All too often, companies focus entirely too much on finding a cool designer and forget about the many other disciplines involved in building a fully functional site.
4. Porous Process
Because building a site has so many moving parts – site mapping, wireframing, copywriting, design, programming, etc. –a detailed schedule is essential so everyone on the team knows who’s responsible for doing what when. Even for modest projects, chaos reigns when planning abdicates.
5. Political Infighting
As the project proceeds, every vested interest in the firm wants a mention. Every manager has a strong opinion about how to phrase every idea. This is how a 20-page site balloons into an encyclopedia, and how crisp sales copy turns into verbal sludge.
6. No Wireframe
A wireframe is comparable to a house blueprint, laying out the basic navigational structure and functionality of a site. Over time I’ve come to appreciate its immense value. Fixing issues in a wireframe is a fraction of the cost to fix them after a site has been designed. A wireframe is the best site project tool companies don’t use.
7. No Writers
Lack of content is the biggest bottleneck in 99 out of 100 site projects. It’s easy to say, “We want a 50-page site,” but it’s another thing altogether to actually write those 50 pages, especially when your options are an in-house expert with no writing skills or an agency copywriter with no industry experience. To fix this problem, see #3.
8. No Calls to Action
A great website allows users to interact with your firm. When a site simply talks at users, telling them in excruciating detail how great you are, they leave unimpressed and unengaged. Although it’s obvious that a site should coax users into subscribing to a newsletter, asking for a quote, placing an order – for the most part, these calls to action are conspicuously absent.
9. Perfectionism
“Ready, fire, aim” is a bad way to launch a site. Perhaps worse is “Ready, aim, aim, aim.” If you don’t want the project blowing up in your face, accept the fact that your company site will never be perfect. So rather than killing your budget with expensive delays over minor revisions, launch the site, start collecting leads and orders, and gradually improve it over time. Most users don’t even notice the imperfections that keep you tossing and turning at night.
10. Horrific Hosting
It’s so sad it’s almost funny that after spending tens of thousands on a site and brilliantly avoiding traps #1-#9, a firm chooses the wrong site-hosting option to save a few pennies and sees all its work negated by tortuously slow page loading, excessive downtime, and inability to make updates efficiently. It’s like building the house of your dreams on quicksand; in other words, a nightmare.
