If you are thinking about building a website, you can save yourself some money and grief by avoiding some common mistakes.  Here are 3 which come up regularly..

 

VERY guilty of this myself.  You get a bright idea for a business or domain name and before you know it - you have registered the name.  Domain names are not that expensive (if you have made the wrong decision and need to purchase another one), so this is not a total tragedy.

 

But be aware:  your domain name is one of the key factors for ranking in search engines (Google, Bing, Yahoo).  Having a clever name, while funky, will not help you get found online.  If you already have good  brand awareness then certainly you need to secure your brand domain name and of course you should claim your business domain name so you are in control of it.   However if you also intend to get business through people searching for your services online, you may also need to purchase other names, more targeted for those specific search terms.

 

How to work out what domain name to purchase?  Invest in learning about keyword research (or talk to us).

 

If you plan to sell anything online, you will need to think about how you will accept payments.  Most website platforms have their own list of preferred or eCommerce integrations.  If you go ahead and arrange this before you know which platform your site will be built on, you may have to spend this money all over again.

 

On the other hand, if it is essential for you to use a particular Payment Gateway/Merchant, then you need to make this very clear to your developer, so the platform they use is compatible.

 

 

When you first get your website concepts back and work with your designer to come up with what you are happy with, you may be absolutely anxious for the website build to start.  However, sit with the design for a little while - I recommend a week.  During this time, make sure you look at it daily, compare it to other sites, look at all the links and pages, all the functions and make sure everything you want is there.

 

While it may cost a little more to create some revisions or additions at this stage, you can be certain that this will be far less costly then making changes any point after when the site build begins.  Additionally, changes after a site build has started, can delay your site live date, as the additional work may need to be scheduled around other projects.

 

What do you wish you had known before you started to build your website?