4 things that will make your website fail

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With the business environment to fragile, it’s never been more important to setup a website. It can be done with a very low budget and fast. While it’s now totally acceptable to use free web applications such as Youtube and open source programs such as WordPress to run your business, here are some things to watch out for when setting up a website on a budget.

1) Bad domain name
This is probably the 1st and most important thing you need to do. If your company name is not available, find out why. Find out who owns it and try to get it back if you have a legit argument to do so. If you have to register a new domain name, try to stay away from THEyourbrand.com. Not only is it confusing to customers, people may miss typing THE in front of your domain. THEcoolapps.com sounds weird. Register a .com. Stay away from .info, .cc, .biz, and .mobi. You don’t need them unless your bigime and need to protect your brand name.

2) Hosting your site on Blogger
If possible, try to host your own site on your own server. Stay away from free hosts such as Blogger and WordPress.com. These free services are not flexible enough if you grow your business. It may be difficult to implement ecommerce and other upgrades. Also, it makes you look cheap. These sites usually have a footer message “Get a FREE site”. If your still under a buget but need flexability of a self hosted package, check out Weebly.

3) Comment spam
Watch your comments. If your articles are overwhelmed with viagra and cialis ads, it looks like you don’t A) Have the proper technology to filter spam or B) Don’t care.

4) Inconsistent brand
Don’t do the Dr.Jeykle and Mr.Hyde with your online/offline business. If you have a professional tone offline, then you need to keep that same tone online. Would you talk in slang or swear in the “real” world? There should be no surprises when you lead visitors to your website.