I love working with small companies. These are the small companies who maybe are a tad too big (or not technical enough) to build their own website, but they need a web presence, and it should be an amazingly simple task.
These sites often enlist the support of a child, brother-in-law or neighbor create a website for them. There is nothing wrong with this! Most web companies do not even want to touch your site unless you are willing to pay thousands of dollars, so I get it.
However, with so much business being done these days via the internet, I come across these “build it yourself” sites all the time that have some basic things missing, even if you just have a Facebook page! Here are my top complaints.
- No Contact information: Have your contact information (all of it, phone, email, physical address, hours) where everyone can find it on the front page. Do not hide it, do not make people go look for it.
- If people send you faxes, have your fax number on your site – amazing but this is a quite common complaint, especially with Doctor’s offices.
- Yes, if you put your email, you might get spam, but wouldn’t you rather have people be able to reach you?
- I HATE forms on websites. Again, it helps with spam but it is hard to get people to fill them out. However, if you have one, please respond to inquiries! I have filled out a lot of them and NEVER gotten an answer. This is just horrible customer service.
- Bad or Non-existent Social Media Links Social media is contact information these days – again, have it on the front page and check all your links! I recently clicked on a Facebook logo on someone’s site only to have it go to a broken page or a promotional page.
- Make sure your site is mobile friendly! There is nothing that says outdated like your site running off the side of the “page” on a phone or tablet.
- Google will bury you in search results if this is true as well.
- Most website companies have a mobile solution – there is not a great excuse to not fix this.
- Check your spelling and grammar! Grammarly is fabulous and free online and will catch almost all basic misspellings and grammar issues.
- If your information is outdated on your website, get it changed! Especially during covid, make sure your hours are correct and you list any issues with being open (like wearing masks or curbside service).
- Update your events – again, with COVID if you have all old events people may assume you are out of business or not working right now.
On a side note, please update your Google listing. Most people who are looking for you use google and rely on hours, phone numbers and website for contact information. Again, make sure there are no broken links. If you have never accessed it before, you will need to create a google account and verify you are the owner, but I promise, it will be worth it!