As a new B2B company, you’ve likely considered creating a website to promote your brand. It’s an exciting project, right? It’s easy to get starry-eyed dreaming of all the new business your website is going to generate for your company. Before you dive in, though, make sure you avoid these three very common and costly website creation mistakes.
Focusing All Your Efforts On Design
This is one of the most common mistakes people make when creating a website. Yes, the design aspect is important and needs to be given consideration, but it shouldn’t be a top priority. Obsessing about drop shadows, button shapes, and parallax effects aren’t the most critical part of your site.
Creating compelling copy, landing page layouts, targeted sales funnels, and email list opt-ins should be your first concern. Your website’s design should be playing a supporting role, not the lead role, as it doesn’t have as much of an impact on your bottom line. Until you have all the critical components in place, don’t start thinking about the design of your new site. Great design, alone, is not the end-all be-all, and for many B2B companies, can end up just being a shiny distraction. Save the design elements as the last step before actually building your website.
Blowing Your Entire Budget On Website Creation
You have probably given great thought to how much money you have in your budget to create your website. But, chances are, the funds you’re thinking of are all earmarked for the design. You probably haven’t given much thought to how much it costs to maintain a website, provide security, make changes for functionality, and promote the site to your target audience.
B2B owners generally underestimate what it takes to keep their website up and running. Not just for things like bandwidth, but also to make sure it is performing properly to generate leads, bring in more customers, and create revenue. In fact, most business owners find that the ongoing maintenance and optimization of their website costs much more than their initial website creation. Your website is just as important to your business as your brick-and-mortar location and needs to be optimized to support your business. Paying regular attention to the ongoing maintenance and optimization will help you avoid paying an arm and a leg to fix it later.
Most B2B consultants recommend that entrepreneurs allocate 75-80 percent of their online marketing budget for site marketing, ongoing maintenance, and optimization of your website. That leaves approximately 20-25 percent of your online marketing budget for your initial website creation. You can see now why spending too much time or money on fussy design details from the beginning can throw your budget off.
Not Getting Target Audience Feedback Before Launching
After having spent thousands of dollars and many months creating your new website, it’s tempting to rush into getting it launched. After all, the sooner you launch it, the sooner the customers will be rolling in, right? But then, all you hear is crickets. You panic and wonder what you did wrong. Launching a site too soon is a common mistake.
In order to find out if your new website is really going to connect, you need to have people in your target audience who have never heard of your company check it out first. They’ll give you feedback on what parts of your site work or don’t work, and whether your site effectively connects and communicates with its intended audience. Sending your new site through a website testing company (UserTesting.com is a popular one) before launching will allow you to get all the bugs out of your site before you launch. Unfiltered feedback from multiple testers can hurt, but it can pinpoint problems with your site or message, and in the long run, it will pay off when your new site brings in the results you dreamed of.
