Run your own site. Easily.

Let's talk about some of the all-too-common CRUCIAL mistakes I see on websites while I'm browsing around on the 'net. If you're making these mistakes, I suggest you fix them as soon as you can and as best you can.

Is Your Website Slow?
People lose interest quickly online. The last thing you need is to lose customers to your competitors just because your website is slower than theirs. Go to your website now and if you wait more than 10 seconds to see the top half of your website, it's too slow. If you think it's your internet connection, then try again in 5 minutes or so.
  
What do you do if your website is too slow? 
  
A couple of things. 
  
If you host your website in the US, move it to a South African server. (We can host it for you - R99 p/m for unlimited everything)
  
If you have large images that are unnecessary - remove them. If they're necessary, crunch 'em. Crunching them means they will still look the same but they'll download faster onto your computer when you visit your website. We can also help with this.
  
There are at least 10 more things you can do. If you like, we can do an analysis of your site speed for you and give you an action plan to use. We'll do this for R500. You can then take that action plan to your designer and ask them to implement it or just get us to do it for you.
  
Once everything has been implemented, you can request a follow-up analysis (for just R250 this time) and see the improvement."

Time-Wasting Welcome Page
If your first page is just a picture that asks people to "click" to enter your website, you're wasting time and wasting clicks. Let people see what you offer as soon as they land on your website. Don't make them click again just to see what you're all about. If you have a welcome page and your competitors don't, and you're getting the same amount of traffic, and equally good websites, I guarantee your competitor is getting more internet leads than you. It's just one of those tried and tested, proven, things about websites - welcome page suck. They suck time, they suck clicks and they such bandwidth. You don't want any of that. Ditch it.

Stale Content
If your website isn't updated frequently, you're losing visitors to websites that ARE updated frequently. Google loves new content. Websites with lots of content that keeps growing get indexed more often and generally get better search rankings. How do you fix this? Add a blog to your website and write something once a week. Take this article, for example. I write articles like these to keep people coming to my website, to improve my rankings and, of course, to establish myself as an expert on the topics of successful internet marketing.
  
But here's a secret you probably didn't know. You don't have to write the content yourself. I wrote this article myself but sometimes I outsource my newsletters and it costs me a fraction of what I charge per hour, so I end up making a profit.
  
If you'd like to outsource your writing, we can have 4 articles written for you every month for just R640 p/m. You can then just add these to your blog and you're done. Google will love you.
  
If you can't easily edit your website, isn't it time to get a website you can edit? Contact us to set one up for you.

Messy URLs
Search-engine friendly URLs look like this: http://www.maxiware.co.za/article-title-goes-here
Search-engine UN-friendly URLs look like this: http://www.maxiware.co.za/?article=24
The former tells Google what the page is about so Google understands its relevance to a user's search. All of these little things add together to a website that gets better ranked than other websites so you need to pay attention to this stuff. Most content management systems have search engine friendly URLs so if your website doesn't, then you're falling far behind. The sites we sell all have this set up from the get-go. You can use us or you can use anyone else you prefer but do this. It really will help.

No Way to Grab Emails
Some people who visit your website won't buy and they won't contact you for a quote. If you leave it at that, you've lost that visitor for good - but they were on your website! You had their attention for a while. Don't waste that opportunity! Offer them something of value for free in return for their email address. Once they sign up for your free offer, make sure you deliver on your promise and then keep in touch with them (by way of articles like this one) on a weekly basis. This keeps you at the top of their minds and, if you haven't noticed yet, you can drop in a few hints here and there that you can help them solve some problem they're experiencing - they just need to email you for a quote.
  
The best way I've found to grab emails is to have a popup that shows just before people leave your website. Hey, they were leaving anyway, why not ask them for their email now? We can help with this by the way :)

Too Much Clutter and Confusion
Learn this acronym and learn it well: MWR
  
It stands for "Most Wanted Response" and it refers to the ONE thing you most want your website visitor(s) to do. For some websites, it's sign up for an email course, for others it's make a purchase, for others it may be clicking on an ad, and for others it might be commenting on the blog or subscribing via RSS. Whatever your MWR is, focus on that!
  
Don't let your website do a million things badly. Make it do one thing very well and you'll quickly find, over time, that you'll get better results.

Beating Around the Bush
If you're a plumber in Centurion who travels to Midrand, Pretoria and Roodepoort, come out and say it immediately on your website. Don't make people click through to "About Us" to find that out! 
  
Whatever it is that you do, and whoever it is that you do it for, make sure you get that out in the open as quickly as possible. This will do 2 things for you:
  
1. It gets rid of people who don't qualify for your service because they live in a different area or require a different service. Remember, you don't lose them forever if you capture their email. If they move in future, they could still use you but, for now, it's best to let them know immediately that they're not in the right place.
2. It attracts the people who need exactly what you offer. Okay it doesn't "attract" them in some weird "The Secret" kind of way but it DOES tell them that they're in the right place at the right time. This means that they stick around long enough to read more about your website and make a decision. That's good because now you can show them testimonials and do all sorts of cool things.