What small businesses get wrong about their website

Last week I saw a billboard—one big, bold logo, deep blue colors, sharp and memorable. A few days later I spotted a small SUV with the same logo. By that point I was curious, so I looked them up.

The website was a different story. The logo was small. The deep blues were gone. The boldness that made the billboard and the truck so striking hadn't made it onto the screen. It didn't even look like the same company.

But it was.

This is one of the most common mistakes I see small business owners make. The care and intention that goes into their physical branding—their signage, their vehicles, their business cards—never makes it onto their website. And it costs them.

Here are a few others I see regularly.

No clear next step

A visitor lands on your site and reads your copy. They're interested. Now what? If your website doesn't tell them what to do next — call, book, buy, fill out a form — many of them will just leave. Not because they weren't interested, but because you made them work too hard to figure out what you wanted them to do.

Every page on your site should have one clear action you want the visitor to take. Just one.

Built once, forgotten forever

I've seen small business websites that haven't been touched in three or four years. Outdated photos, old hours, a promotion that ended in 2021. A neglected website tells visitors one thing: nobody's home.

Your website is often the first impression a potential customer gets of your business. Make sure it reflects who you are right now, not who you were when you first launched.

Looks great on a desktop, broken on a phone

Most of your customers are finding you on their phone. If your website is hard to read, slow to load, or difficult to navigate on mobile, you're losing them before they've read a single word.

Pull up your own website on your phone right now. What do you see?

Too much about you, not enough about them

"We are proud to offer the finest..." "Our company was founded in..." "We believe in quality and service..."

Your customers don't visit your website to learn about you. They visit because they have a problem and they want to know if you can solve it. Lead with what they get, not with who you are.

Trying to do everything at once

A website with five goals has no goal. I've worked with small businesses who wanted their site to sell products, book appointments, collect email subscribers, share their blog, and tell their story — all on the homepage. The result is a page that does none of those things well.

Pick the one thing you most want a visitor to do and design your site around that.