Setting up a website is an easy way to enhance the success of your business, as it gives you a chance to connect with a global audience which, in turn, can increase your revenue significantly. However, if you’ve never set up a website before, it’s easy to fall into common mistakes that will hurt your brand instead of growing it.

With that in mind, here are five common website mistakes made by small businesses – and how you can avoid them.

Mistake #1: Your Website Is Too Cluttered

When setting up a website for the first time, you may be keen to provide your viewers/customers with as much information and content as possible. However, while varied content is key to securing an online following, you need to ensure that your website design borders on simplicity. If there is too much clutter on your site – viewers may struggle to find what they are looking for and turn to another brand instead. To avoid this mistake, choose a clean and simple web design.

Mistake #2: You Are Using Double Content

Double content, sometimes referred to as duplicate content, is content on your website that is similar to other content that is already available online. While this may not seem like much of an issue – as brands that work within your industry will likely produce similar content to you, duplicate content could affect your search engine ranking – meaning that you will appear less frequently in searches. Avoid this mistake by ensuring that your work is 100% unique.

Mistake #3: Your Website Is Not Very Accessible

Accessibility is a key issue that many businesses need to assess when putting together a website – as you don’t want to turn away customers due to poor web design and lack of forward-thinking. Thankfully, there are various ways in which you can avoid making this mistake and make your website more accessible. For example, you could include descriptions of images underneath the photograph to make your website easier to use for those who may be blind or visually impaired.

Mistake #4: You Aren’t Encouraging Customers to Make a Purchase

How to avoid it: Developing a relationship with your customers is one of the easiest ways to grow your business – but this doesn’t mean that you can stop putting the work in when it comes to encouraging them to make a purchase. For example, you should ensure that your website showcases your products in their best possible light and that you use effective CTAs (Call To Actions) that encourage them to make a purchase right away. While you shouldn’t appear overly pushy, a  product description that does not feature a CTA is instantly less effective.

Mistake #5: Your Website Is Too Text-Heavy

When surfing the web, we are often more drawn to websites that feature a variety of content – and don’t appear to be text-heavy. Large blocks of texts – though the content may be interesting – simply take too much time to read and will turn customers away as a result. Try to find a way to keep your text as concise and straight to the point as possible and break up large chunks of text with images or videos.