12 major mistakes that companies have made to redesign their websites or develop new sites

Absrtact: Building a commercial web site can be a mistake in many places. To find out the biggest mistake the company made in redesigning the site or developing a new site, the CIO surveyed web developers, designers, and customer experience experts, and we cited 12 of the most common questions and

Building a business site can be a mistake in many places. To find out the biggest mistake the company made in redesigning the site or developing a new site, the CIO surveyed web developers, designers, and customer experience experts, and we cited 12 of the most common questions and told you how to fix or avoid them.

Error 1. Forget who your client is. Your senior management team is not your client, your customer is. But businesses too often forget, so they create things that are not customers like, but they like. "The customer needs to feel connected to you," said Charlie Clarkston, head of Creative Planning and vice chairman of PRODUXS (Customer experience and design company). So businesses need to "know as much as possible ' about their ' consumers and customers ... And to give customers an accurate and appropriate to communicate with the site. "Remember, although you may feel that your site is about you--your product and/or your service is actually about your customer."

Error 2. Non-Mobile. "About 20% of the network traffic is carried out through mobile devices," said e-commerce provider Web Linc. Co-founder and CEO Darren Hill said. "If your site forces customers to fumble through a non mobile interface, you're likely to lose your customers," he said. Solution: Make sure your site is optimized for mobile devices. If the platform you are using does not support this, there are a variety of inexpensive tools and services to help you create a mobile version of the Web site.

Error 3. Change your URL but do not re-import them. When asked about the biggest web site error that was encountered, the question was most often mentioned by respondents. "During a site rename or rebuild, the enterprise forgets the 301 redirect all the original interface to the correct new interface." This results in a bad experience for the user and bad for search engine (SEO) optimization Because the value of these links is not uploaded to the new URL structure, "said Michael Frieman, senior manager of ShoreTel Sky, a research unit focused on cloud-based telephony systems."

Workaround: "Work with the IT department before converting to ensure that all URLs are correctly redirected to the new page." Using Xenu's link detective tools can be easily solved. Back up the old XML sitemap and grab all the links. Record those that cannot be returned to 301. ”

Error 4. Use jargon, empty marketing jargon, or clichés to make your visitors not understand what you are doing or selling. "Tell your client what you're doing ... In simple language, "said Ekcetera, chairman and creative director of marketing and design," Kelly Gallette. And, "Don't think everyone knows who you are and what you're doing." ”

Error 5. Stale or static content. "In today's search society, these organizations want and need to be found," Burns Consulting, chairman of Michael. That's what Burns said. "The search engine arranges the website with the information as the biggest factor." "So you have to constantly add new, relevant, descriptive (ie search engine first) content to your site."

Error 6. Do not merge with social media sites. To drive the world's success in modern social media, businesses need to provide links to social media outlets (such as Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter) to their home page and product landing pages, if they can. Peter Friedman, Chairman and CEO of Liveworld (User Content Management), argues that "whether or not it is as simple as Twitter feeds with features that are hidden in content pages, if a business wants its site to be watched, You have to add social elements. ”

ERROR 7. Use Flash. "It's hard to imagine that corporate websites are still using flash," says David Milliry, CEO of Pagasus FX, a website developer. "Using Flash on a retail site will have a detrimental effect on your sales," he said. First, this is not possible on mobile devices, including any Apple products. Second, the contents of flash can not be crawled by search engines, meaning that you can not be as easy as a Java-created web site so that the search engine priority to select the Flash site.

Error 8. There is no email marketing registration form on the home page. "Think of all those disappointing prospects, just because someone hasn't pressed the ' buy ' button but likes what you're selling and is actively registering for your sales funnel (ie your email promotion), you don't have a registration key or a form," says Lize Rockard, Lize Rockard Marketing consulting firm owner. "E-mail promotion is one of the best marketing channels for ROI-the Direct Marketing Association has set the return on investment in 2011 to $40.56 for 1 dollars per investment." "If your home page (or related landing page) can not be confirmed by a single email/have promotion registration, then you will lose potential customers and sales." (Companies seeking email promotion service providers, Rockard recommend Aweber or MailChimp)

Error 9. Do not do UX (or usability/user experience) testing. "It's a huge mistake not to do UX testing," says Michael, senior marketing expert at Opticsplanet. "Most businesses care about costs, but just letting a few of the tasks at the same time be able to make other problems stand out but [cost-consuming] is highlighted." ”

Error 10. Do not test your Web site in multiple browsers and formative factors (that is, mobile devices) before you put it into use. One of the biggest mistakes we know, and a mistake we made early on, is not to test our site on all browsers and different screen sizes, "said Sandip Singh, founder and CEO of the Cloud fundraising website go funding." "Sometimes the site doesn't work on some browsers, or the layout of the site crashes." "That's why Mr Singh advises all companies to view their sites in multiple browsers (IE9, FireFox, Chrome, Safari) and different mobile devices (IPad, IPhone, Android) before the site runs."

Error 11. Think of network security as a matter of course. "Protection software will only do so much," said Alex Belly, vice chairman and general manager of Enterprise Services, Neustar, who provides network security advice to customers. He added: "Distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks--using targeted malicious network traffic to attack Web sites--are not only growing, they can also paralyze your sales, potential customer discovery, and customer service." "Indeed," according to our recent IT career survey, 67% of retailers who have experienced distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks have said that a site outage has resulted in at least 100,000 dollars a loss per hour, about 2 million dollars a day. ”

Solution: Make sure that your operations and protection software is up-to-date, constantly monitoring your site and having a backup/disaster recovery plan.

Error 12. does not monitor/track visitor behavior. The best way to find out where your site is running--what your customers like and dislike--is to use an analytical program to measure your site. "Measurement and monitoring analysis is the best way to master user behavior," says Tim Grey, a content strategist at Blue Fountain Media. "But too much business deals even ignores the creation of basic testing tools, even though Google has an excellent and powerful analysis tool that is free, easy to use and install. ”