Problems When You Get a New Website, and How to Prevent Them
Getting a new website is arguably the most exciting part of launching any new venture. You have had an idea for a new business, your mission statement and goals are written, and you’ve even bought the domain name!
Now, all you need to do is find a freelancer and pay them $200 to create a website in WordPress, and the prospects will come flooding in.
Right?
Um, not so fast…
People make many mistakes when they get a new website, which can cost them time and money (and they often come to us to clean up the mess and get everything running smoothly).
We would like to help you avoid these problems so that when you get a new website, you’re set up for success and profit.
Table of Contents
The New Website Looks Different to the Example.
When looking for inspiration for a new website, it’s natural to look at the competitors in your niche and want what they have – but better.
If you send example sites to your designer and they make a mock-up that looks like what you want, then you wait weeks or months for them to come back with a design that looks nothing like what you wanted, it can be heartbreaking.
We even saw one case where the developer quoted thousands of dollars on a design and then delivered a site with a bootleg WordPress theme. They even left the demo phone number on the live version. Ouch!
When you get to this point, it’s often too late to go back and start again, as you want to keep your project moving.
Then, you’re stuck with a website you don’t like looking at, and your enthusiasm for the whole project starts to die slowly.
The good news is, it doesn’t have to be that way!
We ensure you’re involved in the project throughout, so if anything goes wrong, we can quickly steady the ship and ensure smooth sailing all the way to delivery.
You Can’t Update the Website.
When you get a new website, one of the first things you’ll want to do is add content to it.
If you don’t have access, you’re stuck…
And we get it.
Not every busy business owner wants to get into the weeds, burning hours of time working out how to add a blog post or update a menu when they could be focusing on dollar-producing activities.
However, you should still have access so your team can make updates or so you can organise website support for important things like plugin updates and regular maintenance jobs that make your website really hum.
We use WordPress for all the websites we build. It is the most popular content management system (CMS) on the planet, powering over 43% of the internet, and the easiest CMS for users to update.
Once your new site is live, we set you up with your administrator login so you can sign in and work on your dream.
Your Site Gets No Traffic.
Your website is live.
You shared it on Facebook, and all your friends loved it, but after the Day 1 fanfare, nothing happened…
Where are all the leads?
One of the most common misconceptions about websites is that “if you build it, they will come”.
In reality, those days are long passed, so when you build it, you need a strategy for getting it seen by your target market.
Before we start building your site, we review your website strategy to ensure that you can generate new business immediately – not months later.
In this process, we start at the top and work our way down.
What is your business strategy?
What problem do your clients face, and how does your solution solve it?
Armed with this information, we can help you avoid pitfalls and determine the best direction for your website.
Your Website Is Too Slow.
If your website’s pages take too long to load, people won’t hang around to wait. Google recommends a loading page time of fewer than two seconds to create a good user experience.
If your site is slow and people leave quickly, Google will see this and stop ranking your website at the top of search results.
From there, it is a slippery slide into Page 2 obscurity and beyond.
We build your website lean and mean to ensure this doesn’t happen to you.
Every part of the code is optimised for speed, we ensure images won’t slow things down, and we only add the plugins you will use and need.
Not Tracking the Numbers.
You may have heard the saying by the late William Edwards Deming:
In God we trust; all others must bring data.
Whether you’re religious or not, most companies claim to be ‘data-driven,’ but are they?
We speak to so many business owners who don’t have any form of data analytics set up, which means they don’t have access to information such as:
- How many people visit their website each day
- Where do they come from
- What pages do they look at
- How long they stay on their site
And sadly, so much more…
This is the minimum data you need to help you make decisions, so we set this up for you from Day 1.
This means we can work with you to monitor your site’s performance, look at user behaviour, and uncover new trends, which means you can take the guesswork out of your efforts.
In summary
When you get a new website, you should be excited about the opportunities that will come your way. Learn how to build trust and credibility with your new website while you focus on what you do best: delivering your product or service and giving your customers an incredible experience.
Contact Chillybin today so we can help you get your venture off on the right foot.
