Building a business website that's user friendly and appealing to customers is tricky. Whether you're using a web designer or building your own, you should avoid common mistakes that turn visitors off or cause unwanted technical difficulties. The infamous mistakes are:

1. A Weird Domain Name

Large companies can afford to make the mistake of using a weird domain name, but you can't as a home business owner. Examples of weird domain names include:

• A name that has nothing to do with the business, it's just quirky
• An extra long domain name that makes it hard for everyone to remember
• Too many hyphens in the name
  
  

One risk you take when buying a weird domain name is that customers won't remember it. Another risk is that they'll remember it, but it can undermine your brand identity. Choose your business name, or a name that highlights your brand. Save the creativity for other aspects of your website.

2. Takes Forever to Load

Most web visitors have little patience to wait for a website that takes forever to load. You have to offer a too-good-to-miss online marketing promotion to get them to wait. Build a business website that's easy to load. For example, give visitors the option to skip the intro if you're compelled to include a video introduction or other feature that would slow the loading process down. Consider other places on your website for video and audio clips to make the process of loading your home page faster. Update your web hosting plans to make the website more efficient, or switch to a new web hosting service if necessary.

3. Dissertations about You

Visitors are not interested in lengthy written content on web pages, that talks about you. When building a business website, it's important to keep the emphasis on the customer. Tell them why they benefit, give them information to help them and be a resource. Break up the content on the page. For example:

• Add sub-headers
• Use bullet points
• Write "list" articles
• Include a picture or two to keep them reading longer
  
  

Avoid this mistake, and you'll have more people reading the information you present on the website.

4. Wrong Color Schemes

The design element of your website is important to your business identity and to keeping visitors on your website. Choose basic color schemes that make the text easy to read, and ones that invoke professionalism. Don't try to be quirky in your color scheme, because it will go over your customer's head and they'll go away. It's fine to play around with different colors if you're writing a personal blog, but not when you're building a business website.

5. Music on Auto Play

Visitors may want to visit your website privately, and not want co-workers or anyone else to hear your website's music that plays automatically when the homepage loads. It's best to stay away from these altogether, unless you sell music and are playing selections from a recording. In that case, give visitors the option to turn the music on manually.

Keep visitors happy by avoiding these common mistakes when building a business website.

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Daphne Mallory, Esq. is the co-owner of Mallory Writing Services and has written more than 100 articles helping home based business owners and entrepreneurs start and market their business. You can learn more about her here.