Web Design Louth | Website Design Development | Web Company Dundalk Drogheda

Common Mistakes with Website Projects

Save yourself hassle, money and a lot of heartache by reading the points below. If you avoid all the mistakes listed, you are well on the way to having a website that works for your business.

The website is dealt with it as a standalone project. The effect of this mistake is that the website often ends up not being consistent with the offline messages being communicated by the business.
The cheapest provider is selected. As is the case in many areas of business, you usually get what you pay for. Having no website is nearly always better than having a poor website. You should only select web design companies that have a portfolio of completed websites that show that they are appropriate for your project. Also note that the cheapest website usually ends up being a false economy as it needs to be replaced within a short space of time.
The brief given to the web design company is poorly drafted. As the business owner, you will know more about your business (it’s products, the competition, the market etc) than anyone else and significantly more than the person employed to design your website. Your task is to get this knowledge out of your head and on to paper in a way that the web designer can understand so that they in turn can develop a website that actually delivers value for your business.
An insufficient budget is allocated to the project. Often businesses will set aside a budget that is the equivalent to the cost of the design and print of a corporate brochure on paper. This is a mistake and here is why:
- The corporate brochure will have a much shorter shelf life than the website
- The website is very flexible and can be changed at short notice to reflect changes to products or services or to suit market conditions
- Usually, the website will attract significantly more ‘eyeballs’ than any corporate brochure
- The website is much more customer-friendly in that it is interactive. Customers can choose the information that they want in the order that they want as opposed to the paper brochure where it is presented in the format and order that the business owner wants.
- We have not as yet encountered a business that claims to have spent too much on their website. This should illustrate the importance of getting the budget right from the outset.
- The website is too focused on providing information. The basic brochure website approach can work for some businesses. This means providing the bare minimum information that a customer might want to find out about your company e.g. opening hours, brief history, location map, list of products. However, most businesses can and should be more aggressive than this when it comes to promoting their business. Think of it this way; a visitor to your website is likely to be interested in becoming a customer. However, if they are surfing the web, they may also be looking at your competitors’ website. You need to make sure that as many of these ‘prospects’ become customers. To do this you need to offer a little more. This might include some or all of the following:
  - appropriate biographies of key personnel in the case of service providers
  - compelling reasons why they should deal with your business
  - simple online enquiry forms
  - special features to help them access information more easily/quickly
Finally, no follow up budget is allocated to marketing the website. As part of the website project there needs to be a clear plan showing how traffic will be driven to the new website and a budget needs to be allocated for same. See search engine marketing.

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