One Coach

In the last six years I have analyzed over 500 websites. It is incredible how the exact same mistakes keep appearing time and time again.

The main reason for this problem is that a great percentage of web designers forget that a website is a way of communicating and growing a business. They feel they need to shock their clients with animations and cool graphics.

Don’t get me wrong. Clean and professional graphics are a very important component of a successful website. But they are not everything.

I’ve put together a list of the seven most common mistakes that website designers make and how you can avoid them.

Overlooking the goal of the website
Every website has a goal. You probably sell products online. You probably offer professional services and want your visitors to fill out a contact form or find your phone number. You probably sell software and want your visitors to download a trial version.

No matter what your goal is, you have to make it easy for your visitors to take the action that you expect them to take. As a rule of thumb, you need to use contrast to emphasize the element that you want your visitors to see (add to cart button, download now button, contact us link, etc.)

Make it obvious for your visitors and you will convert many more of them into actual leads or customers.

Not writing excellent copy
A clean, professional, and easy to navigate design is very important. But it is not enough.

When people visit your website you have less than 3 seconds to give them a good reason to stay or they will leave. You have to be able to communicate why your business is better than the competition and why should your prospects give their business to you and not to someone else.

You know your industry better than anybody else. Think about the major motivation that moves people into buying the product you sell. Is it product quality, price, reliability, duration, company’s reputation? Find out what prospects are looking for and give it to them.

Having too much clutter
This one drives me nuts. It seems like some website designers try to put as much stuff as they can fit on a page. There are two main problems with that. It makes everything hard to read and it is difficult for the important elements to stand out.

When it comes to website design, less is more. Use blank spaces. It makes the text easier to read and the information easier to find. Don’t clutter your pages. Please don’t.

Not understanding the basic design principles
These are the four most important design principles.

Alignment: every element has to be aligned with other elements. Don’t just place elements randomly on your websites.

Repetition: use the same fonts, colors, and elements across your website. If you use red Times New Roman text for your headline on your About Us page, don’t use a different color or type on the Contact Us page. (And please never use Times New Roman for a headline!)

Contrast: I’ve seen so much black text on dark blue background that it has made me sick. Make the text contrast with the background and the most important element of the page stand out.

Proximity: put together similar elements. Let’s say you have 6 sections on your website: cars, trucks, RVs, Home, Contact Us, and About Us. You don’t want to put cars between About Us and Contact Us. You want to group cars, trucks, and RVs. Maybe even put them under a new menu item called Our Products.

Not making the website intuitive
How many times have you been browsing a website looking for something and couldn’t find it even though you knew it had to be there somewhere?

You have to make things easy to find. If most of the people who go to your website contact you by phone, put your phone number right in front of them, big and above the fold.

Not testing the website on different browsers
If you are not a web designer, you might not know this, but almost all the websites look different on different browsers. Maybe your website looks great on Firefox but not on Internet Explorer. Or maybe most PC browsers display it well but some Mac browsers show it all broken.

A professional website designer will run a cross-browser compatibility test to make sure that every visitor can see your website correctly.

Avoid these key mistakes and you’ll be on your way to marketing a more powerful website!

It’s my job to review and optimize websites, and I find that the mistakes are almost always the same. Here are the 5 most common usability flaws and how to avoid them.

1. Lack of Funnel Planning

It’s a fact: people won’t do anything unless you ask them to, which means that you need to use “calls to action” on your site. But you also need to plan the process your visitors will go through to complete the desired action.

Let’s say that you sell t-shirts and your desired action is for your visitors to place an order. Let’s assume that you sell red and blue t-shirts. You should use the home page to get people’s attention and tell them why your t-shirts are so great. Then, at the end of the home page, invite them to visit you red t-shirts page or your blue t-shirts page. They will click on either one and then tell them about your red t-shirts and their benefits. At the end of that page, invite them to add the item to the shopping cart. In the shopping cart page invite them to start the checkout process.

Always take your visitors to the next step, don’t just have the information on your site and hope that people will find it. Plan the process and have appropriate calls to action.

2. Less is More

The first thing I do when I review a website is looking for elements that I can remove. The more I get rid of, the better the website looks. If you have a feature that 0.01% of your visitors use, get rid of it; it’s likely confusing the other 99.99% of your visitors.

Start taking things away until you only have the essentials. Resist the temptation of having a lot of stuff in your pages.

3. Group Similar Sections Together

Organize the information on your site in a way that you only have a few sections and several sub-sections. This is called vertical architecture and it’s the opposite of horizontal architecture (which allows you to access pretty much every page on the site from the home page).

This relates back to the previous point on how less is more. If you have too many sections it may end up confusing your website visitors instead of helping them.

4. Make Text Easy to Read

Use every-day words for your website. Impress your visitors with your content, not with fancy words. Use short sentences and short paragraphs. Get your point across with as few words as you can.

Use bullet-points, bold text and subheads to make the text easier to read.

Easy-to-read text is the difference between a successful website and a failure.

5. Say What You Offer Right Away

Every day I see websites that fail at telling their visitors what they are about in less than 30 seconds. Why are these companies putting their visitors through this kind of torture? If you are McDonalds, you don’t really need to explain that you sell burgers. But if your brand isn’t that popular, use your Unique Selling Proposition to easily and quickly let your visitors know what they can find on your website and the benefit to them.

Follow these simple rules and you’ll avoid the pitfalls that affect most other websites on the internet, and you’ll be another step ahead of your competition!

There is one thing that every visitor of your website has in common: they have objections. They have a very good reason — real or fictitious — not to buy your product. And, it doesn’t really matter if the reasons are good or not; as long as you don’t handle their objections, they won’t buy.

In order to get a product sold, you need to sell it to the right and left sides of the brain (people make emotional decisions and they justify them with logic). What this means to you is that you have to overcome the logical and emotional reasons that people have not to buy your stuff.

** What Are the Two Most Common Objections and What Do They Really Mean? **

It’s too expensive.

With this objection they are saying one of these things:

I don’t have enough money to pay for your stuff (this is a valid reason but it doesn’t happen often. Can you offer monthly installments or bill them later?

Your stuff costs more than I’m willing to pay for it. If this is the case, you need to understand that people aren’t objecting to your price, they’re objecting to your value. They feel like what they’re getting is not worth the price you’re selling it for. In this case you need to do a better job at showing the value of your product. Remember, if you can convince people that your product is worth 10 times more than its price, selling it will be really easy.

Your stuff costs more than what your competition sells similar items for. You shouldn’t allow people to compare your stuff with your competitors’. Make it unique so comparisons simply aren’t possible. Make sure that what makes your product unique is something of value; having a red box instead of a blue one won’t do the trick.

I don’t trust you.

They might use different words, but this is what they really mean:

What are you doing to show how credible you are? Use testimonials, media mentions of your company, trust logos (BBB, HackerSafe, 2008 Business of the year, etc.) If you can show people that others just like them trusted you… took the leap of faith… and everything worked out great, your chances of getting the sale will be much greater.

What if it doesn’t work? This is the main concern people have. And it’s completely genuine. After all, how many times have you bought something to discover later that it didn’t deliver as promised? What you need to do in this case is to have a risk-reversal tactic (or several) so people come out on top even if your product doesn’t work.

Offering a 100% money back guarantee is not enough. If your product doesn’t work, they face a major hassle in their life. They know they will have to go to the post office to ship your product back to you, and then it will take them at least 10 days to get their refund, if then. In this case, people feel that they have lost their precious time and possibly their precious money.

Go beyond the standard 100% money back guarantee. If you have total and complete confidence in your product or service, then offer 200% of their money back to compensate them for their time and trouble… or offer them 100% but let them keep your product (or part of it if it’s a set of some kind). You can offer same-day pick up of your product and an immediate refund of their money… or get it now and pay for it in 30 days… ONLY if you decide to keep it.

Try these… you’ll be amazed at the results you get.

** How to Overcome Objections **

Just acknowledge them. If you try to hide them, people will still have these unresolved objections on their minds. Bringing up objections doesn’t give people reasons to not buy. You need to understand that they already have those objections… you’re just being forthright, honest and ethical by admitting things happen and explaining why things are that way. This also opens the door to a major opportunity for you. It allows you to position your business as the one who not only admits the things that normally frustrates them, but to explain how you have innovated your business to overcome those frustrations so they will never again have to deal with them.

If your product is more expensive than your competitors, explain why and make it a benefit, not a disadvantage. If you don’t have testimonials, explain that your product is new and that you’re offering them a discounted price in exchange for their testimonial so you can gather some as fast as possible. Come up with a list of possible reasons why prospects won’t buy your product or services and then innovate your business to overcome them.

For the ultimate experience in overcoming objections, use testimonials from prospects that were in the same exact situation as your current prospects, and show how they took the leap and that leap changed their lives forever. This often works like a charm:

“At first I was very skeptical about this product’s claim, and the price looked really expensive as well. But I was so sick of having acne I decided that it was worth a try. I’m so glad I did! My skin is much clearer now and I don’t feel self-conscious about my appearance anymore.”

Try these suggestions for overcoming objections. You will see an immediate improvement in your sales and revenue.

We recently hosted two group business coaching calls on a topic that is often considered controversial. That topic is outsourcing. First, there are many different variations to outsourcing, including using interns from your local college or university where they intern in your business for little or no pay in exchange to learn your business.

The point of contention always comes down to outsourcing overseas. Is this really an ethical way to do business, especially in the recessionary economy we’re experiencing in the U.S.? Isn’t this unpatriotic to be sending work to the Philippines… or to India… or Singapore when so many Americans are struggling?

Our strategic partner at ReplaceMyself.com has listed all the options available to small business owners for possible outsourcing. Many of them are U.S. based, so you can use U.S. based contractors if you so choose. Naturally the biggest difference will be the pay. In the U.S. you will pay $15 to $20 per hour instead of $1 to $3 per hour, and possibly risk getting lower quality with the U.S. worker.

Please remember that it’s our job to help “small business owners.” Small business owners have two strikes against them from the start. Unlike a bigger company that has access to personnel and departments to carry forth their mission, the solo-professional is wearing 5,000 hats all at the same time.

Is it any wonder that over half of all small businesses fail within the first four years? And yet, no one denies the simple fact that it’s the small business owner that creates the most opportunity for Americans. It’s the small business owner that hires the workers once they get their business up and going.

It’s the small business owner who pays the taxes and is our only future hope for paying off our unbelievably high national debt. It’s my belief that outsourcing helps the U.S. economy… rather than hurt it.

Let me give you a few excellent reasons why outsourcing is good for our U.S. economy and why I believe every small business owner should be doing it right now.

First, as a start up entrepreneur or business owner, outsourcing allows you to focus on your highest income-producing activities while leaving the income-draining activities to others better suited to performing these functions.

This frees you up to create new products, establish new services and spend more time marketing those products and services.

Second, outsourcing allows your company to grow so that you can hire internally. When you first start out, you are practically forced to do everything yourself. How can a start up business running everything on a shoestring budget afford to pay someone $20 an hour for menial labor?

And yet, nearly 80% of everything small business owners do daily is menial labor. I call them income-draining activities, since sales and marketing are the only two areas that produce revenue for your business.

However, if a start up business could afford to outsource these menial tasks at affordable rates such as those in the Philippines, that allows the small business to grow quickly and reach a point where it can then hire qualified U.S. workers at a higher wage.

Third, outsourcing doesn’t just apply to overseas outsourcing. You will indeed outsource to Americans as well. At OneCoach, we outsource our conference call service to a U.S. provider. We use a U.S. based communication company as well as a U.S. provider for our customer service and sales automation platforms.

But here’s the key to all of this. To me what is REALLY unpatriotic is to provide work… ANY WORK… to unqualified contractors… whether they’re U.S. based or overseas.

Find the people who can do the best job, whether they are American or not. NEVER reward inferior service providers just because they are American. You can’t afford to.

Fourth, our great country was founded on the basic principles of competition and innovation. Bill Gates and Steve Jobs started out in their garages. And I guarantee you that when Bill Gates got started, IBM wasn’t there to ask him how they could help him get started.

That’s what makes America great. Outsourcing generates competition and competition causes innovation and innovation produces new “in demand” products and services and new “in demand” products and services are what fuel our economy.

And finally, outsourcing allows small business owners to compete with big business owners. It gives them an opportunity to get started… to get going… to get ahead… and do so without breaking the bank. It allows the little guy to achieve their dreams of working from home or starting a business.

So if you question your motives for outsourcing… or if someone else brings this up to you in discussion, keep these points in mind so you keep the discussion in the proper context. My job is to help all of you as small business owners build successful businesses and enjoy and extraordinary life. So I say… thank goodness for outsourcing!