Mostly I hear from people AFTER they've paid a designer a load of money for a new website or spent a lot of time learning how to put one up themselves. They're wondering why their site isn't getting results.

They want easy fixes. Frustratingly, it's often easy to see what's not working but too costly or difficult to set fundamental flaws straight because they've been built into the nuts and bolts of the site.

To save you making the most common mistakes when commissioning or setting about building your site, I've gathered a bunch of the worst offenders below. Take them onboard before you get to work on your website, and it really will pay off.

1. Designed With Poor Or Out-of-Date Knowledge Of Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Most sites are built on outdated knowledge of how the search engines, like Google, Yahoo, MSN and now Bing, are finding and ranking webpages. SEO practices are constantly changing, as the search engines refine ways of prioritizing good relevant pages and stripping out weak unoriginal content.

If free "organic" traffic from the search engines will be important in your marketing, make sure your site is built on good CURRENT practices in SEO. That means understanding SEO even before you plan out your website.

Check that your web designer is up with the latest trends and isn't offering simplistic SEO techniques, such as just adding meta-tags to pages. It's a sad fact that often they aren't - SEO changes at a pace that's too fast for many to keep up with.

Often, something that looks visually slick on the web is actually hard for the search engines to digest. So make sure your designer is prepared to set aside their own creative preferences, such as building a site in Flash, to prioritize web marketing.

If this means you have to stay informed about the latest SEO techniques yourself, so be it. Expecially if you want to sell to consumers direct, SEO is likely to be too important in marketing your product or business cost effectively, to leave it to someone else.

2. The Main Message Of The Website Is Lost

Do you want to make sales of your product or service through your website? Or is it more of a brochure for promotion to potential distributors, investors, licensees and other business partners. And the press? Or is its aim to capture user interest and feedback about your new offering while it's still in development?

In short - Who do you most want to come to your site AT THIS POINT IN TIME, and want do you want them to do?

It's easy to be confused about the main aim of your website as you start out. Chances are you wouldn't turn down any kind of response from anyone!

But for your website to be useful in meeting your business objectives, you have to priortize the result you most want now, and structure the features and text of your site around that. Accept that the aim might need to change in a few months time and make sure your site build can accomodate a restructure if needed.

 
3. Lacking A Clear Call To Action

Even if YOU are clear about what you'd most like your visitor to do while on your site, site owners often fail to make it crystal clear to visitors.

Make sure you place the call to action - join, buy, register an interest, give feedback, enter competition, contact us, etc - at the heart of your copy on homepage, and use a button, image or other features to make it stand out visibly on the page.

4. The Design Looks Amateurish

Gone are the days when it was OK to put up a DIY "sell-sheet" for your newproduct. Or to experiment at being a designer because you've learned how to use a web desigh package or you have an IT background.

Just because you have an eye for design and can tell the good from the bad, chances are your own layout and design skills won't cut the mustard. You might think it looks OK, but to others your site will look home-made.

Putting out the right appearance is important for credibility right from the beginning. Get a professional designer to set up the basic branding and layout for you - it doesn't have to be complicated to look sophisticated.
 

5. The Content Is Hard To Update

A site that isn't updated regularly quickly falls in the search engine rankings and looks sad and neglected. Using your designer to make updates and changes on a regular enough basis isn't cost effective or practical these days. This used to be common practice a couple of years ago, but in these days of blogging and fresh daily content.

Make sure your site is built around a Content Management System (CMS) that makes it easy for you add and change text, pictures, layout and pages yourself.

Although initially a blogging platform, the open source Wordpress now has so much functionality and flexibitily designed into it, it's one of the best platforms to build any website in. If you don't feel up to learning Wordpress yourself or paying a designer to set up your site, an instant site builder like Moonfruit or Mr Site might work better for you.

6. No Means Of Gathering Contact Details

Don't "waste" the hard-earned traffic to your site by letting it click away without giving you some means to stay in touch.

Include a form (the term for the data entry boxes that gather info into a database), preferably easily visible on every page, so visitors can input their contact details to get site updates or a newsletter.

Although many people still don't understand the little orange RSS button, it's still worth including it if your target audience are at all web savvy.

If a visitor is good enough to give you their details, make sure you take it into a reputable email or autoresponder service like Aweber or Constant Contact and get them to confirm (double opt-in) their interest in staying in touch. This could save you a bunch of heartache down the line.

7. Page Layout Is Reinvented

It's tempting to try something different to make your website stand out from the crowd. But web users generally like the familiar. They want to be able to navigate their way around quickly and intuitively.

Make them work too hard and they soon click away. 

Even in the young history of the web, page layout has become fairly standarized. Users expect to find things in familiar places on a page.

Usability on the web is both a science and an art. Make sure you commission a designer who understands and buys into it too. Don't be persuaded by them to get creative and sidestep the conventions that have grown up.

8. Endorsements Or Product Reviews Are Missing

I know I can talk. I have a folder of testimonials that I haven't put up on the She's Ingenious! website yet.

Endorsements and reviews, preferably from named individuals, make a very real difference to the credibility of your site and your offering. Never make them up. But if you're just starting out, it's perfectly reasonable to ask a friend or aquaintance to write one for you.
 

9. There's No Personality In The Site

People should be interested in your product or service, not you, right?

Wrong!

In the world of the web, it's increasingly important to give a personal face to your offering. That means including your name, a bit about yourself and preferably a photo too. Nothing too studio - just keep it real.

Even if your product is B to B (Business to Business), people are people, and the person behind a business or product matters.

Adding personality to your site instantly raises trust. It encourages visitors to stick around longer and answer the calls to action your website has been designed for. So include info about you (and your team) in an About Us section, or even think about add a personal message and picture on your homepage.

Find out more about Wordpress as a publishing platform - it's free and focuses on aesthetics, web standards, and usability.