If you answered yes, be sure to follow these five tips:
1. Senseless navigation. Your website navigation should immediately let you know:
Where you are,
Where you have been,
Where you can go next and
Where the home page is.
Navigation, in fact, must be so easy that visitors to your site should not even have to think about it. Some mistakes include dissimilar types of navigation on the same site, poorly worded links so your visitor has no clue about where he or she will end up and confusing links or no links back to the home page.
2. Confusing your website with your marketing strategy. Your website is part of your marketing strategy; it is not your entire marketing strategy. The right balance is in defining exactly how your website fits into your overall marketing program, then sticking with the whole program, making your site an integral and complementary part of it.
3. Believing people care about your website. In the final analysis, nobody truly cares about your site (sorry). What visitors do care about is getting their problems solved.
People visit websites to:
Get information,
Buy (or in some cases sell) something or
Be entertained.
4. Putting existing print on your website. PLEASE do not take your brochure, product catalog, employee manual, whatever and simply put it on-line. Printed materials do not work online; these are two totally different species. Knowledgeable web content writers create text that helps users find key words and concepts quickly.
They:
Write shorter sentences and fewer lines, paragraphs and pages.
Use heads and subheads instead of introductory paragraphs.
Use white space to keep the page looking open and inviting.
Use hypertext links to give added information to readers who want more.
5. Acting like you own the company, even if you do. Website readers have come to expect copy that is personal and upbeat, so copy that smacks of bureaucracy tends to stand out like a sore thumb. Whether you are writing your own copy or having someone do it for you, formal language and turn the tone down a notch. Also make sure to avoid technical terms and, by all means, make your verbs active and less boring, removed and passive.
