by Rosa Lee

Created on: December 09, 2009   Last Updated: December 18, 2009

A good website can help a company's creditably.  A poorly designed website can ruin a reputation.  Here are some harmful website mistakes:

Spelling Mistakes:  It’s one thing to offer a different spelling on a word such as behavior/behaviour.  It’s another thing completely to spell something wrong.  We live in a world where spell-checking comes automatically with our computer programs, so a business with spelling mistakes on their website not only look bad, they look incompetent or lazy.  It takes hardly any effort to type up the text of a website in a word document (or some equivalent) and run a spell check on it before copy/pasting into the HTML code.  If the spell checking program doesn’t know the word and a dictionary isn’t handy, visit one of the many free dictionary sites <www.dictionary.com> online to look it up.

Too Many Pages:  Less is more.  A website that has too many pages to navigate is bound to lose their visitors in the complicated maze.  A website needs to tell the viewer what the business is about, what services or products are offered, and how to contact the company.  Period.  If it’s concise and well-written, a company can get away with including a brief history and bios on their website.  Separate pages for each board member, a detailed journal of the company’s history and links that lead to links will frustrate a visitor to the site faster than a cat can wink.  Keep it Simple, Smarty.

Being Vague:  Whether looking for company data for an informational interview or shopping around for a company that may suit their business needs, a visitor will bail on a website that is vague about what they do or what services they offer.  Unlike the allure of a mysterious man, a mysterious business site is not considered attractive.  A busy visitor wants to know what the company does in plain and simple terms.  Using evasive language, convoluted descriptions, complex terminology or doublespeak of any kind will drive visitors to the competition in hordes.

Fancy Fonts & Colours:  Reading text on a screen is difficult enough without encountering white size 6 Bordeaux Roman font on a scarlet page.  A website must be profession and reader-friendly.  The text needs to be kept clean and easy to read.  Colour can be added as through borders, dividers and images.

Outdated Information:  It is incredibly frustrating to a visitor looking for information about an upcoming event on a company’s website that hasn’t been updated recently.  Out-of-date contact information, policies or services/products are business cripplers.  It is important to make sure all information is updated at least once a month.

Multiple Sites:  When a company changes hosting sites, it is very important to make sure that the old site is removed from the web or at least has re-direction information.  A recent Small Business Seminar Event suffered in attendance because business owners looking for information ended up at the host company’s old website that had been abandoned nearly 2 years earlier.  A search of the web brought up the old site, but not not the new one.  Just like a company has to re-direct mail and foot-traffic when it changes street addresses, so does a company who changes URL addresses.  Don’t leave your clients behind!

While there are other mistakes to avoid, these are a good start to keeping your website visitors.

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