Don't Make These Small Business Website Mistakes

Small businesses can reach people in a variety of ways--through print and/or radio ads, through television commercials, through phone books, Groupons or other social media sites, and through their very own website.

A business website should reinforce the notion of professionalism, but, unfortunately, some small businesses' websites leave much to be desired and can actual turn away customers. If you own a small business, make sure you are not making these mistakes:

1. Navigation is difficult. Your business website should be easy to navigate through. If it is not, you are likely to cause frustrated consumers to leave your site and take their money with them. As you are designing the site, have several people try it out and give their feedback. While the site might make perfect sense to you or the designer, if others can't make sense of the site's design, you'll lose potential customers.

2. Hosting service is inadequate. Of course, you want to be concerned about price when selecting a hosting company, but that shouldn't be your only consideration. You also want to know what type of volume your hosting service can handle. As your business grows, you will expect increased volume and need a hosting service like Intechnology that can handle the demand.

3. Site is slow. Your site should be fairly fast. Remember, many people will be using older computers to access your site, and they don't want to wait a long time to just load the homepage.

4. Site is too busy. Nothing turns off a potential customer faster than a site that is too busy. Keep the side bars and multiple pitches to a minimum. Focus on a clean website that is welcoming and engaging, not overwhelming.

5. Difficult check out process. Lastly, make the check out process as simple as possible. I recently spent 30 minutes picking out products on a website when I was called away from my computer. When I returned two hours later and tried to check out, all of my products disappeared from my cart. I left the site and don't plan to buy from the company.

As a small business owner, take the steps needed to have an engaging, easy to navigate website to retain and grow your customer base.