Three Mistakes Stores Make with their Websites

Building a website for the first time?

Many times local stores know they need to have a website, and are unsure how to go about it.  Sometimes they do it themselves using a platform they find, other times they get the hard sale from a local web designer selling his platform of choice.  Whether you do it yourself, hire us, or hire someone else, don’t make these three mistakes

Have your own domain name.

• Nothing marks you as an amateur than having a website on a sub-domain.  You have seen these sites, yourstorename.xyzhostingcompany.com .
• Having a domain name is cheap, less than $15 a year.
• Hosting is cheap, sometimes as little as $10 a month.
• Any webhost will walk you through setting up your domain name on their platform
• You build the hosts business, not your own.
• Hurting your business in the eyes of search engines.

Using the wrong webhost or platform

• Using Flash – Google does not like flash sites and it will not work on an iphone
• Using Frames – Google does not like frames since it looks blank to them
• For non commerce sites we always suggest wordpress.
  • Google loves the platform
  • Easy to customize
  • Great platform to communicate with your customers (i.e. blogs)
  • Tons of free plugins to make your site do different things
  • For commerce sites we work with a few hosted shopping carts
    • Big Commerce
    • Shopify
    • Designed to for online commerce
    • Fully Functional
    • Easy to use.

Poorly Designed

• Too cluttered
• Hard to Navigate/Poor Menu Layout
• No way to collect email addresses
• Slow loading home page
  • Flash
  • Graphics heavy

Remember many times your website is the first thing a potential customer sees about you and your company.  Make sure you do it right or it can actually hurt you.  Buy a domain name today.  Go to this link GoDaddy.com to get a domain name for $7.99 for the first year.

Seek second opinions on what your sales person is selling you.  Want a second opinion, give us a call, we will tell you the truth even if you don’t do business with us.  When you get sold something that is not right for you, it hurts all of us in this industry and makes our job that much harder.