Did I get your attention with this dramatic headline?
Good. Turns out the following five errors may not ruin your business, but they certainly won’t help your business or your brand.
1. Broken links
Before publishing a page or a post on your site, always test the links to make sure they work. Additionally, run a link check on your site every month. I rely on the Xenu’s Link Sleuth to tell me about my broken links. Broken links can hurt your SEO ranking and create a poor user experience.
2. Stale passwords
You know that websites get hacked, I don’t need to tell you that. But we all need a reminder to change our passwords. Consider this your friendly reminder.
3. Busted contact forms
On a couple of occasions, the contact forms on my site stopped working, and I had no clue. Test your contact forms regularly to make sure you don’t miss a single client communication.
4. Hidden contact information
Speaking of contact forms, make the path to your contact information available from the home page and from every other page on your site. How can someone hire you if they don’t know how to reach you?
5. Repetitive information
Don’t repeat information on your site. Tell your story in as few words as possible, and lead the reader to a clear call to action. It’s aggravating to land on a site and have no idea what you should do next. If you aren’t sure that all the pages on your site count, pay for usability testing. I recommend UserTesting.com.
Hi Sara,
Great advice! I especially agree with number 5: It’s always disappointing to me to see so many bloggers reposting material that they’ve already posted. Reframing old content is one thing but putting up actual replications of posts because they think readers have forgotten them is always a phony move.
So true, Christa. #5 should be a post all in itself…it’s that important.