The most popular mistakes of entrepreneurs when developing websites
It so happened in our open spaces that many entrepreneurs underestimate the importance of the process of creating a website for their business. During the 7 years that I have been engaged in digital marketing, I have deduced a certain set of “requests” that are being applied for development:
- we need to be able to find us on the Internet;
- to make the site beautiful and sell;
- we have some kind of website, I do not know what is going on there, but there is no result – do better.
Oh, yeah. Recently, the TOP has been replenished with the sacramental: “make me a landing page.” At the same time, each entrepreneur puts his own understanding into the concept of “landing”, which, as a rule, has nothing to do with the landing page. But since experts broadcast from all the speakers that “landing pages sell”, I definitely need it.
Of course, if initially there is no understanding of what the site is for, what functions it will perform, how to use it most effectively, then there can be no question of creating a cool tool.
With the right approach, the site will become the main source of your profit. And how you make it will depend on how cool it will be able to sell.
Creating a website is a very responsible process that requires serious immersion in your project, conducting a lot of analytical work, searching and building a business model, and most importantly, implementing all this in development.
As you know, there are a lot of details and nuances there. You can safely prepare a series of longrides to reveal this topic.
But today I want to tell you about just three main mistakes that entrepreneurs make during the development of their website.
The most “terry” site errors that can really kill your sales.
Tested on the experience of our agency.
So, the first fatal mistake:
Make a website at random (without analytics, preparation and planning)
Before you start developing, you need to carefully carry out all the preparatory work.
To begin with, you have to answer yourself such questions:
- Why do I need a website?
- What tasks should the site solve?
- How are my business processes built and how can I transfer them online?
- What tools will I use to promote the site and will I be able to implement them?
- What is unique in my business that others don’t have?
There are a lot of such questions. There are more than a hundred of them in our questionnaire.
Also, it is critically necessary to analyze your main competitors and study the behavioral factors of your audience. The first one will help you understand the weaknesses and strengths of other players in order to be able to create your own brand platform, properly niche and come up with your own unique offers. The second will allow you to correctly understand the needs of the target audience, where and how to look for it, what to offer it.
If you can do it yourself — cool. In this case, you know exactly what your product is, you know what you want and how to achieve it. It remains to find a contractor who can make you a sensible website. If you don’t understand how to do it yourself, call an experienced marketer for help. Those who know how to create brand platforms, do site and audience analysis, who will help you create a strong foundation for building effective online sales.
Read more about creating a brand platform here
Without these preparatory works, all actions to create a website will be implemented “blindly”, “at random”. You will get some kind of average product at the output, with a standard text and basic functionality, with which you will definitely not be able to set up marketing so that it brings the best result.
And in the end, there is a high probability of getting into the situation again: “There is something, but it somehow doesn’t work very well”
Making a website for yourself and evaluating the result “like — dislike”
is a popular story.
To be honest, an entrepreneur can be understood. He had been hatching the idea of creating a new website for a long time. He already has a bitter experience with a cheap website. He is ready to invest a couple thousand dollars to make sure everything is cool now. So that everything was beautiful, convenient, worked correctly, well, and increased sales. And here comes the moment when I want to do “the way I like it.”
Sometimes there are other types of job evaluation: how does my wife, mistress, friend who fumbles, etc. like it? 🙂
This is a bad idea! Throw it away!!!
It is very important to understand that you are not making a website for yourself and your friends. After all, in the end, you can do as they all like, but it will not go at all for your audience.
Therefore, ALWAYS put the needs and behavioral factors of your audience at the forefront. It’s not for nothing that you did all the preparatory work. And if you didn’t, reread point #1.
You’ll say, “Well, how will I understand what my audience needs? After all, these are just hypotheses. Under these abstract definitions, you can sum up a lot of visual and semantic solutions on the site and say that my audience likes it.”
All right.
And here you can not do without assistants.
You’re not going to develop a website yourself, are you?
Come on?
Seriously?!
…………….
Phew.
Scared me.
Of course, you understand that you need to find a contractor who has extensive experience in developing and building effective online sales. How to do this, what criteria to pay attention to when choosing, how not to get caught by charlatans and much more, I will tell you in one of the following posts.
Now let’s imagine that you have found such a contractor.
He has passed all your qualifying stages and you have some confidence in him.
This is a key parameter. It will be difficult without trust.
The ideal option is when you can fix the responsibility for the result in the contract.
For example, if our agency is being approached for a comprehensive Internet marketing service, which includes building a strategy and developing a website (or landing pages) and further setting up advertising campaigns with lead generation… We prescribe our responsibility for the result. As a rule, this is the minimum number of applications in the first month of launch. If we do not fulfill our promises, we return the money.
Yes, such a format of cooperation is expensive. But you get a real guarantee of the result.
But, even if there is no such clause in the contract. The agency you applied to should have experience building websites. Trust them.
Make a product that will be tailored to your customers and solve their needs.
And not just like you, or your loved ones.
Trying to cram everything into the site at once
Treat the future site as something static, unchangeable. All the ideas and ideas that the entrepreneur has been hatching for years must be implemented on the site in full. I don’t care that most of them won’t come in handy, or will be a useless load… We’ll do it — then we’ll see. It’s better to do it and then remove it than to regret that you didn’t.
You know, there is such a bearded joke.
— Good afternoon. We are glad to welcome you on board our airliner.
For your convenience, we have everything you need for each of you.
There is a sauna, a gym, a swimming pool, a massage room, a tennis court, 7 restaurants with various cuisines, a nightclub, a casino, a cinema, a dolphinarium and a golf course.
And now, please fasten your seat belts and we’ll try to take off with all this crap. :)))
Don’t do that! You are welcome!
Cut off dubious ideas and hypotheses, consult with experts.
I strongly recommend always starting a startup with an MVP (minimum viable product).
This is a minimally viable product. That is, the basic functionality that is able to solve the basic needs of the audience — to give them the most necessary things so that they already start buying your product.
In the process, you can always increase the functionality.
Thus, you will be able to launch and get the first sales much earlier than if you were launching your unaffordable spaceship. Moreover, during this time, you will conduct a series of tests, analyze the site in practice and will be able to understand exactly what your customers are missing, what you can refine, improve, optimize. And this will not be a hypothesis, but a real picture.
A nice bonus will be that your customers will definitely check out the convenient innovations and become even more loyal.
Launch the website functionality in stages!
If you have several services and you plan to prepare a separate landing page for each one (which is very reasonable), run them in turn, you do not need to make up everything together. If you have an online store, launch the most necessary things to start selling, and refine calculators, calculators, comparators, chatbots, etc. after launch.
But there is one important nuance.
Ideally, try to plan in advance all the stages of the launch. So that you can think through all the functionality in advance and provide for its rapid implementation in the future. So that it doesn’t happen that you start, and then it turns out that to implement some tool, you need to rewrite half of the code.
Therefore, planning is our everything.
Conclusion
So, I have sorted out only three main errors. Of course there are a lot more of them. But these three, in my experience, are fundamental and are most often found in the minds of customers.
Avoid these mistakes and you will have a real chance to make a cool website that will work effectively and bring constant profit.