The good news is that it is not some random lottery – a website’s chance of success is directly linked to how well it is built, maintained and promoted.

Often the best way to learn what works is to first look at what doesn’t. So, here is a list of major mistakes that I have observed (and made) over the years.

Mistake 1:  Skip The Planning

A website without a clearly defined marketing goal will deliver mediocre results (at best).

Before you even start work on your site you should be considering questions such as:

• Who is your target audience?
• What is the primary goal of your site? What are your secondary goals?
• How will your website help generate money for your business?
• What action(s) do you want your visitors to take once on the site?

Each page on your site should have a clearly defined purpose, and be designed to guide the visitor to take the desired action.

Mistake 2: Take Advice From The Wrong People

You wouldn’t take investing advice from the homeless guy begging on the street corner. Obviously his strategy is not working.

Yet most people will happily take a website recommendation from anyone, without even stopping to ask the advice giver whether their site is generating business or not.

Ideally, before acting on any advice you should be asking questions like:

• How easy was it to set up your site?
• How easy is it to make changes?
• How well does it convert visitors into customers?

And this goes for dealing for web developers as well – in most cases, they are technologically savvy individuals with little or no marketing experience. Beware of what they are trying to sell you and make sure it is going to deliver results for your business.

Mistake 3:  Hire The Cheapest Possible Developer

We have all heard the saying “you get what you pay for“. Whilst not always 100% true, it is a pretty good rule of thumb.

If a developer is cheap, there is generally a good reason – their skills are probably limited. At the very least they are unlikely to dedicate a lot of attention to meeting your specific needs.

And whilst on the topic of cheap, don’t be fooled into signing up with some cheap (or free) “website builder” platform. It might seem like an attractive option, but it will hurt you in the end in terms of flexibility and functionality (that’s a topic for a whole new post!).

Mistake 4:  Lock Yourself Into A Custom Platform

If you have a proposal for a website that doesn’t use a Content Management System (CMS), forget it! – you will be forever dependent on your web developer to make updates. That means you are at the mercy of their schedule, even if you only want a few words changed. Not to mention how much this will end up costing you over time.

And if you are looking at a custom developed CMS (and this includes those cheap “website builder” platforms) then think carefully. They may look good now, but how actively are new features being developed? How responsive are the developers with bug fixes? How much control do you really have over the look and feel of your site? Who will be available to help you when you have questions?

What you really need is a WordPress based site. WordPress is always being updated with new features and bugfixes. There are hundreds, if not thousands of amazing features that can be plugged in to your WordPress website. WordPress also has a very active user community that can help you with any issues you may face. Best of all, it’s free to use and perfect for customising to your specific needs.

Mistake 5:  Focus On Bling

Yes, it’s true that an ugly site will drive visitors away faster than a startled gazelle. So it is important that your site looks good.

But adding too many trimmings (the “bling”) to your site can be just as deadly – it distracts visitors from your site’s content and key messages. And a distracted visitor will rarely take the action you want them to.

Just as importantly, focusing on the bling will distract you from your site’s content. A site without much quality content won’t convince anyone that you know what you are talking about. Bling won’t convince a visitor to become a customer, substance will.

And whilst on the subject of bling, forget about Flash content. Apart from the fact that it is hard to maintain, and the search engines can’t read it, it is not visible to visitors on iPhones or iPads (which are now a significant portion of the market).

Mistake 6:  Forget About Integration

No website is an island. Or at least it shouldn’t be.

If you are serious about using the internet to generate more business then you will likely have a Facebook page, a Twitter account, an email newsletter provider, and probably a LinkedIn account (at a minimum).

The real power comes when you link all of these together and encourage visitors from one source to connect with you on another.

Mistake 7:  Use An Inferior Theme

A classic beginners mistake I see time and time again is people picking the nicest looking theme they can find (or at least one that suits their business niche).

Why is this a mistake? Because not all themes are created equally!

The better themes have loads of additional functionality built in that is not immediately obvious from looking at a picture of each theme. And let me tell you, it is generally a lot easier to change the look of a theme than it is to build in all of that functionality once you realise you actually need it.

So when selecting a theme, don’t just consider what it looks like, check out what it can do for you. Don’t be afraid to spend a few dollars on a them either – it will be worth it in the long run.

Mistake 8:  Forget About Custom Branding

No matter how good the theme you choose looks, you should never use it “out of the box”.

There are thousands of themes for WordPress, but there are millions of sites running on WordPresss. That makes the chances of someone else using the same theme pretty high. Do you really want to have the same looking site as someone else if you are trying to build a business that stands out?

It is worth spending a little extra time (or a few dollars) to at least update the theme with your logo and colours. Make your site uniquely yours.

Mistake 9:  Treat your Site As Static

This is probably the biggest killer.

Gone are the days where you could throw up a static “online brochure” website for your business and expect it to generate customers for you.

These days, people need to know, like and trust you before they buy from you.

The best way to achieve that is to engage them, both with fresh content that shows you are keeping your knowledge up to date, and with comments on your posts (shows that you care about your visitors, and therefore about your customers).

Not to mention that Google will give you a bump in the search rankings if you are constantly posting fresh content and engaging with your visitors.

Mistake 10:  Expect Traffic To Magically Appear

Even a great site doesn’t automatically guarantee you an income stream.

You need to promote your website to continually bring in new visitors, and actively engage with them to make sure they keep coming back.

But don’t worry, this doesn’t have to be an expensive exercise. You can even get started for free by leveraging your existing social networks. Consider for a second how many people you are already connected to, and how many they are connected to, and how many they might be connected to – think about what you can do with that sort of exposure!

So What Can You Do Better?

Check your site to see how many of these mistakes you may be making. Fix them and I will guarantee your website will start bringing you more customers.

And if you are just starting out, now you know what you need to do to make your business website as effective as it can be.

If you need more help , be sure to check out the other articles on this site. Or just leave your questions below in the comments section and I will point you in the right direction.

But after the initial cloud of confusion cleared, and with a bit of probing from my wife, things started to become very clear.

I originally created this site because I have a passion for WordPress, and I wanted to share the knowledge I had collected over the years. But I was never clear about who I wanted to share that knowledge with, or what I was trying to help them achieve.

The unfortunate side effect of this lack of focus was that I never knew exactly what to write. And when confusion reigns, the easiest option for me is to avoid writing anything at all. So for the last 6 months, I allowed this site to effectively lay dormant.

By not being clear about who I was trying to help, I ended up helping no-one.

So I have decided that the new year will mark a new beginning for this site, complete with a new focus:

I help solo practitioners and small business owners build, manage and promote their own website that grows their business.

I know that most solo practitioners and small business owners instinctively know they need a website. But how do you ensure you get an effective website – one that actually builds your business?

For many of you, working with a talented web developer may be outside your budget. Or you may just be interested in this area of your business and would prefer to do it yourself.

DIY Website Coach will focus on providing affordable options for you to learn how to create your own website the right way – a website that will attract visitors and convert them into customers.

And to complement this new focus, I have decided that a new look is in order. Gone is the old “cutesy” look, replaced by a cleaner, more professional, modern look. I have also gone with a homepage that better showcases what this site is all about.

The new look is mostly settled now, but you may still see a few changes over the coming weeks (or possibly months) as the final design tweaks are implemented and the content is fleshed out. Once all is settled, I will write a case study on the redesign to show you how it all came together – from concept to realisation.

I would love to hear your thoughts on the new look and/or focus in the comments area below.

Recently, an Australian hosting provider, Distribute.IT managed to lose over 4,800 client websites after a cyber-attack. Apparently, they were the target of a focused and significant attack on the night of Saturday June 11, 2011. It was a highly sophisticated attack which effectively wiped out their hard disks. In addition the hackers then went about destroying the company’s backups. It took the hackers just half an hour to destroy thousands of hours and potentially millions of dollars’ worth of work.

All their client’s data, websites and email hosted on four out of their eight servers were totally destroyed and unrecoverable. Unfortunately, it also looks like Distribute.IT did not have any offsite backup.

The end result is that Distribute.IT is no longer and has been assimilated into the Netregistry Group.

Why did this happen?

Well, let’s leave aside what prompted the hackers to target this company and just look at the major factors that enabled them to be successful:

So before you trust your valuable business assets to just any host, make sure you check out how seriously they take security of your data. After all, is shopping locally really worth the risk you take?

If you want a good value host that takes security very seriously, I suggest you check out Hostgator.

But inevitably, there is a price to pay for this simplicity – most commonly:

• Limitations on your ability to extend the functionality to your site. You are generally restricted to only the function modules provided.
• Limitations on your ability to customise the look of your site. You may get the ability to change some aspects of your site (like the header and background), but normally you will not have full access.

When you are just starting out, you may not even notice these limitations. But as you get more confident with managing your site, and want to try out new things, you will start to become frustrated by them.

So, what do you do when you outgrow your current website platform?

I recommend moving your site to a self-hosted WordPress installation, because:

• WordPress is a fully functional content management system, which makes it as easy for you to maintain the content on your site as it is to use a word processor (eg Microsoft Word).
• It is easy to extend the core functionality of WordPress – with more than 13,000 plugins available there is sure to be one that meets your needs.
• With your own self-hosted WordPress installation you have full control over the look of your site. Not only can you install one of the more than 1,400 existing themes, you can then customise any aspect of the theme that you want, or you can even build your own theme.
• Even if you pay for a premium theme and a few premium plugins, it is still a lot cheaper than most of the website builder platforms available.
• Probably most importantly – you own the domain and are in control of the hosting account. You are not at the mercy of some service provider who may or may not be in business next year.

Despite what you may think, it is actually very easy to setup your own WordPress site. And with a few well selected plugins, you can create a professional looking site in no time at all.Even copying all of your content from your current site to your new site is pretty easy – for the most part it is just a matter of copy and paste.

But if the thought of moving still scares you, check out my free Site Transition Guide. Although this particular guide has been written specifically for people using the UIBC platform, the concepts are applicable to moving from any other site builder platform as well.

Happy migrating

Marketing changes minds, promotion changes behaviours. Which are you doing on your business website?

It seems that this tweet caused a bit of confusion. Some people didn’t know there was a difference. Some weren’t sure which they should be doing.

According to businessdictionary.com, marketing is defined as

… a tightly integrated effort to discover, create, arouse, and satisfy customer needs.

whilst promotion is defined as

Advancement of a product, idea, or point of view through publicity and/or advertising.

Put in plain english, marketing is about convincing a prospective customer that your product or service satisfies their need better than any other product/service available. Promotion, on the other hand, is about convincing that prospective customer to pull out their wallet and purchase your product or service.

Marketing is great if you want to build brand recognition or build yourself up as an expert, but promotion will put the money in your pocket.

So how does this relate to what you do on your website?

Most business websites I see are great at telling visitors what the business offers (the features). This is a misguided attempt at marketing. Because the site is all about the business, the prospective customer generally does not even get a sense of how their needs will be satisfied.

A lot of sites at least get the marketing right and provide the visitor with the benefits of their products and services. Now the customer has a concept of how their needs are met by the products and service on offer. When done well, they may even believe that you have the best product or service for them. But even if they are convinced you are the best, they may not buy.

This is where promotion comes in. Once you have convinced a visitor you have what they need, you need to convince them to buy. Tell them what they need to do next (“simply fill out the form below…”) and create some urgency for them to do it now (“special bonus only for the next 20 to purchase”). Very few business sites I’ve seen get this part right.

I know many business owners don’t feel good about asking for the sale, let alone creating some pressure for the visitor to buy now. But if you know that you have a product that is going to benefit them, isn’t it worth pushing a bit to ensure that they get the solution they need. Sometimes we all need a little push to do the things that will benefit us the most.

So, are you going to update your website to promote your business (and its products/services), or are you going to limit yourself to just marketing? Will your business finally fulfil its potential, or will your comfort zone keep you playing a smaller game?

I’d love to hear your thoughts on marketing vs promotion – leave me a comment below…