Common Website Marketing Mistakes

Most website marketing mistakes are mistakes of omission. The most limiting mistakes are also mostly strategic. Websites are often not made part of a larger strategic marketing plan. As a result, they often don't accomplish one tenth of what they could.

Here are a few simple audit questions to help you think through whether your website is anywhere near its potential:

• Do you have a website for your small business?
• Is it search engine optimized and structured to generate and convert traffic?
• Is it tightly focused on a content theme and market segment?
• Is it relatively easy to update, customize and maintain?
• Is it just a credibility builder that you have to refer people to?
• Does it funnel down to a "Most Wanted Response"?

If you answered no to any of these questions, you might want to take a look at a sample web site marketing action plan to give you some ideas.

Top 5 Website marketing mistakes

1. Ignoring Content: A website is an excellent vehicle for lead generation, prospect conversion and client contact. Any website without a content management system is just not worth having in today's world.
2. Elevating Form Over Function: As long as a website meets some basic design and usability conventions, its function is far more important than design. Having a website that is purposefully designed to attract and capture visitors is much more important than having a pretty website that disregards those factors.
3. Ignoring direct marketing principlesWhether in ignoring implementation of two-step marketing, or ignoring personalization (or personality) in web copy, or "burying the lead" of the site, many web sites pay little attention to direct response principles. This is a huge mistakes.

Having said all that, the single biggest mistake made with websites is that they are not preceded by detailed market research and deployed in the context of a strategic marketing plan.

If you're just getting started with your website, do your leg work in advance so that you can harness all the power of this amazing platform.

The Biggest website software mistake

Yes, they are usually dirt cheap, and come with seemingly "complete" packages, but the truth is that the absolute lack of customizability, and the recycled content they provide client websites virtually guarantee that they'll be useless as traffic generators, and almost useless as the center of an online marketing system.