Customized Software Development

Any of us who have run a business or been involved in running a business have probably had to do some advertising. Most of us are able to call up the local newspaper and say we want to run an ad. We give them the basic information, tell them what size we want and our job is done. It's not quite that easy with a web site. There are a lot of decisions to be made and therefore a lot of places where we can make poor decisions. Here are some of the mistakes I see the most often.

• Choosing a domain name – the name you choose can have a bearing on your rankings in searches.
  
  
• Paying too much for registering a domain name – you do not have to pay more than $10 per year.
  
  
• Choosing a company to host your site – space, features, reliability and customer service should all have a bearing on your choice, but you can still get everything you need for a reasonable price. I only pay $60 per year, but I have seen places that charge $300-400 per year and offer less than what I am getting.
  
  
• Not thinking about who your targeted audience is and what the purpose of your site is before creating the site. It seems obvious to think about these things, but unfortunately for a lot of businesses they don't.
  
  
• Choosing the wrong person to create the site for you. Make sure they know about design, marketing and search engine optimization. Also make sure they are willing to listen to your wants and needs and advise you correctly on decisions you need to make.
  
  
• Having confusing navigation on the site. Sometimes this is because they give the user too many choices, which causes confusion and sometimes it's because the navigation is not consistent throughout the site.
  
  
• Not having quality content on their site.
  
  
• Paying people a lot of money to submit their site to 65,000 search engines (yes, I really did see this advertised). There aren't that many search engines out there, but there are still companies that would have you believe that there are.