Your website can fail even before you start writing a single line of code - in fact 95% of websites will never achieve a page 1 or page 2 listing in search engines for their desired terms. Planning your website correctly is actually more important that writing it. Here are the top 10 planning mistakes to avoid:
(Please see: Top 60 Web Design Mistakes of 2009 for further information & resources)
1 - Poor Keyword Research - There are many tools available to web designers where keyword research is concerned - not using these is the single worst mistake a web designer can make. Other than confirming what you suspected, keyword research usually reveals many niche terms that visitors use when looking for your kind of business/service. The niche terms (long tail keywords) with less traffic may in fact be more desirable to you as visitors are usually much more specific just before they make a buying decision.
2 - Lack of Competitor Research - without competitor research you won't know whether your page 1 competitors have 30 or 30,000 backlinks, and you won't know if their websites have 3 or 300 pages. The term 'mortgage' has 189 million pages listed in Google - moneysupermarket.com who are usually number 1 has 306,000 backlinks - hence it would be unrealistic for anyone other than a team of professional SEMs to compete. Simple research takes minutes and could save months of wasted effort and wasted cash.
3 - Same as the Next Guy - By making your website the same as everyone else you are not telling your visitor what's different, hence you are setting your website for failure. Plan to be different and insure you convey your differences quickly - think about improving your: content, visitor experience, site navigation & any special offers you might have when planning your website - making this effort in the planning stage really pays dividend later
4 - Lack of Quality Content - many people believe that just writing a website with a dozen or so pages is the recipe for website success - this simply is not true for most websites. If you have done your competitor research then you will know how many pages containing keyword relevant content your competitor's website has. Lack of planning for high quality keyword rich content will result in poor visitor experience, lower ranking & poor conversion rates.
5 - No Page Planning - lack of page planning will inevitably result in lower search engine ranking. Insure that you use well researched keywords in: page names, directory names, titles, descriptions, headings, footers, menu text, link text & your paragraphs. Your menus should be easy to follow and your important headings should be high up the page. Keep your page layouts consistent and if you are writing a large website use scripting language such as ASP or PHP. Wherever possible build CMS so pages can be added or removed easily.
6 - No Marketing Plan - you can create the greatest website in the world & still fail through failing to plan your marketing - you must decide weather to do this yourself or pay for this be done. This decision should be based on the mountain or molehill of link building that you will have to do, your marketing skill level & the amount of time you have to spare - competitor research will give you all the information you need to make this decision. If you don't plan for website marketing then it likely that you won't do any and still fail
7 - Poor Choice of Hosting - cheap hosting deals overseas may not necessarily be good for your website as many search engines today use 'Geo Targeting' in some manner in their ranking algorithms and you visitors may find your website slower than your competitors. Where possible use host with servers located in your home country & look at live review sites before making a decision. If your site is geared for high traffic and/or overseas trade then use a dedicated server and insure you host has good peering agreements with the countries that you are likely to do business with. Always check your host's IP address to insure the servers really are based where the host claims they are.
8 - Poor use of Colours - you have approximately 3 seconds to make your first impression hence insure your colour scheme is perfect for your website & is unlikely to offend your visitors. Avoid luminous colour schemes & take care when designing websites geared for other countries as certain colours have major cultural significance. Avoid using any more than 3 colours in your scheme & insure these are web safe & matched well. Poor planning in this area is likely to make your website look amateur.
9 - Choosing Strange Fonts - could make your site hard to read especially for people with poor vision. Wherever possible use basic fonts such as Arial & Helvetica. If you must use alternative fonts insure the text is large enough, clear & it matches your website theme.
10 - Poor use of Domain & Suffix - Wherever possible register a domain which incorporates your keywords, whilst this is not essential, every little helps. Many of us still make mistakes in registering the wrong suffix, whilst getting this a little bit wrong is neither here or there, however you might have trouble ranking a .pl (polish TLD) in the UK searches. Below are common UK TLDs
.com - ecommerce or commercial website (UK &/or International)
.co.uk - uk corporate website
.net - larger network website - typically used by web hosts
.biz - for business-to-business websites
.org.uk - group, charity or organisation
.info - informational sites - non e-commerce
.name - For identity purposes of an individual or organization
.ltd - requests only accepted from ltd companies - 15254
(Please see: Top 60 Web Design Mistakes of 2009 for further information & resources)
1 - Poor Keyword Research - There are many tools available to web designers where keyword research is concerned - not using these is the single worst mistake a web designer can make. Other than confirming what you suspected, keyword research usually reveals many niche terms that visitors use when looking for your kind of business/service. The niche terms (long tail keywords) with less traffic may in fact be more desirable to you as visitors are usually much more specific just before they make a buying decision.
2 - Lack of Competitor Research - without competitor research you won't know whether your page 1 competitors have 30 or 30,000 backlinks, and you won't know if their websites have 3 or 300 pages. The term 'mortgage' has 189 million pages listed in Google - moneysupermarket.com who are usually number 1 has 306,000 backlinks - hence it would be unrealistic for anyone other than a team of professional SEMs to compete. Simple research takes minutes and could save months of wasted effort and wasted cash.
3 - Same as the Next Guy - By making your website the same as everyone else you are not telling your visitor what's different, hence you are setting your website for failure. Plan to be different and insure you convey your differences quickly - think about improving your: content, visitor experience, site navigation & any special offers you might have when planning your website - making this effort in the planning stage really pays dividend later
4 - Lack of Quality Content - many people believe that just writing a website with a dozen or so pages is the recipe for website success - this simply is not true for most websites. If you have done your competitor research then you will know how many pages containing keyword relevant content your competitor's website has. Lack of planning for high quality keyword rich content will result in poor visitor experience, lower ranking & poor conversion rates.
5 - No Page Planning - lack of page planning will inevitably result in lower search engine ranking. Insure that you use well researched keywords in: page names, directory names, titles, descriptions, headings, footers, menu text, link text & your paragraphs. Your menus should be easy to follow and your important headings should be high up the page. Keep your page layouts consistent and if you are writing a large website use scripting language such as ASP or PHP. Wherever possible build CMS so pages can be added or removed easily.
6 - No Marketing Plan - you can create the greatest website in the world & still fail through failing to plan your marketing - you must decide weather to do this yourself or pay for this be done. This decision should be based on the mountain or molehill of link building that you will have to do, your marketing skill level & the amount of time you have to spare - competitor research will give you all the information you need to make this decision. If you don't plan for website marketing then it likely that you won't do any and still fail
7 - Poor Choice of Hosting - cheap hosting deals overseas may not necessarily be good for your website as many search engines today use 'Geo Targeting' in some manner in their ranking algorithms and you visitors may find your website slower than your competitors. Where possible use host with servers located in your home country & look at live review sites before making a decision. If your site is geared for high traffic and/or overseas trade then use a dedicated server and insure you host has good peering agreements with the countries that you are likely to do business with. Always check your host's IP address to insure the servers really are based where the host claims they are.
8 - Poor use of Colours - you have approximately 3 seconds to make your first impression hence insure your colour scheme is perfect for your website & is unlikely to offend your visitors. Avoid luminous colour schemes & take care when designing websites geared for other countries as certain colours have major cultural significance. Avoid using any more than 3 colours in your scheme & insure these are web safe & matched well. Poor planning in this area is likely to make your website look amateur.
9 - Choosing Strange Fonts - could make your site hard to read especially for people with poor vision. Wherever possible use basic fonts such as Arial & Helvetica. If you must use alternative fonts insure the text is large enough, clear & it matches your website theme.
10 - Poor use of Domain & Suffix - Wherever possible register a domain which incorporates your keywords, whilst this is not essential, every little helps. Many of us still make mistakes in registering the wrong suffix, whilst getting this a little bit wrong is neither here or there, however you might have trouble ranking a .pl (polish TLD) in the UK searches. Below are common UK TLDs
.com - ecommerce or commercial website (UK &/or International)
.co.uk - uk corporate website
.net - larger network website - typically used by web hosts
.biz - for business-to-business websites
.org.uk - group, charity or organisation
.info - informational sites - non e-commerce
.name - For identity purposes of an individual or organization
.ltd - requests only accepted from ltd companies - 15254
About the Author:
The author is an Ecommerce/Web Design Consultant with 12 years experience in the Web/IT Industries. He works with designers for many large PLC's such as: Vodafone, Coca Cola & Npower - see web development for more information.
