7 Website Marketing Mistakes to Avoid in 2017

You can’t have a business in the current atmosphere without also having a website, and you need that page at its best to convert visitors into customers. Here are seven tips that can help you keep your site out of the realm of failure.

Are you finding that you have plenty of traffic on your site, but not so many customers? The problem may lie in your landing page. First impressions can be everything, and Internet marketing is no exception.

Here at Edgy Labs, we offer services designed to keep businesses at peak performance. We turn cutting edge technological solutions from concepts to marketing campaigns. We love startups. Sometimes companies hit a snag at the front lines, and that’s where a little marketing help can work wonders.

The first step to successful marketing is controlling the first impression. Here are seven tips for making your landing page a place that people want to stay.

1. Keep Your Mind on Mobile

Always consider your audience. If your website is accessed by a million people a day, make sure you pay attention to how they are accessing that site.

Now more than ever, people access the Internet and do their online shopping via mobile tech. The trend will only grow. If you’re looking to appeal to the greatest number of users (and honestly, why wouldn’t you be?) then you will have to optimize your landing page for mobile users.

If your website isn’t mobile-friendly, you aren’t giving your customers a good experience. That leads to you taking a hit right at the bottom line. There are a few ways to address mobile optimization:

First, use a responsive design. This look remains the same no matter what device displays the page. Keep the layout simple, with large buttons and a style that suits your business philosophy and product.

Second, do lots of a/b testing. The greatest test of style is how it can adapt. By setting up two potential sites and splitting your traffic between them, you can find out just which adaptation is best.

2. Too Long; Didn’t Convert

You may be an expert selling your expertise, but that doesn’t mean that your customer is interested in anything but the final product. Many sites are filled with technical jargon that is better left unsaid. Keep it short and sweet. Aim for the average customer, not the geek.

On the same note, having too much flashy clutter on your site can turn people away.

Gaudiness isn’t professional, and if your site looks like a bedazzled Geocities page with video ads customers will turn up their nose faster than they would at an Amazon Knight.

Be brief. Go for the sleek, professional look.

3. People Stay for the Content

Good products satisfy a need, and customers are coming to your site to see if your product fills that void in their life. If you don’t have quality, up-to-date content on your site, no one will trust your ethos.

People stick around for good content. Engineer a blog that discusses issues related to your product. Keep filling that blog with excellent writing content, and you’ll find returning traffic that turns to you when they need technical expertise.

Starting a blog has the added benefit of helping you with your SEO. This brings more visitors to your site when they have searched for related content.

4. Make Your Marketing Intentions Clear

You are on the Internet to provide for potential customers. Ensure that all relevant information is easy for them to find. If you have a brick and mortar business, make sure you include a map link, address, and contact information. Also make sure that you include your store’s hours, pricing, and a page that tells visitors a little more about the business.

Yet, don’t just give them contact info and call it a day! That’s only half of what you want from them, after all. Any good site has multiple calls to action, such as a button where clients can sign up for e-mail updates or free trials. It’s basic psychology: leave a trail of breadcrumbs to sales and you will see them flow.

5. Lag Kills, Speed Saves

If your site takes more than two seconds to load, it’s taking too long. Think of the loading time of a website as a first impression to your first impression. If it’s swift, you look sharp, but if it is slow, well, nobody wants to buy a dull knife.

Take us for example: Our loading times are tested at an average of 1.758s on both mobile and desktop devices, and we make it a priority to keep it that way.

6. Update, and Update Often

Your website needs to change with the times (sometimes daily) or get left behind. If your site looks like it came from 2015, you are going to lose customers that work off of a knee-jerk reaction.

Repeat after me: There is no perfect style. What works today could be gauche tomorrow, so don’t go thinking that your beautiful landing page has a ‘timeless’ style or you’ll have a bunch of bored users on your hands. Bored people never become enthusiastic customers.

7. Don’t Send Everyone to the Same Site

If your business is multi-faceted, the right customers must end up in the right place. For example, if you have an all-in-one home repair service and someone is looking for plumbing help, you want them to land on your plumbing solutions hub instead of your foundation repair area.

You may have an incredible home page that is often updated and mobile-friendly, but if it isn’t what the customer needs then they might just turn away and look for someone who does show them what they want when they walk through the door.

Service pages are often put into a site as an afterthought, but those are the pages where conversion happens. Funnel people there first!