Are you building a website for your startup? As a marketing advisor to startups at UC Berkeley’s Skydeck incubator, I see founders fall into a lot of common traps. Here are some more common mistakes to watch out for:
Mistake 1: Focusing on website looks
It’s tempting for founders to spend a lot of time building the perfect website. It feels like you made it. You impress yourself; maybe you impress your investors. But it can waste buckets of time.
Fix 1: Focus on driving customer action
A beautiful website is useless if it doesn’t prompt visitors to take action. Think about your goals and what actions prospects or customers can take that help drive your business — whether it is filling out a contact form, signing up for a newsletter, scheduling a demo, or making a purchase. Measure how your site fulfills these goals and make changes that improve these results. And if you don’t already, be sure to put a call to action on every! single! page!
Mistake 2: Writing copy for fellow tech lovers
Founders love technology — it’s why they are founders! But most people are overwhelmed by information-dense tech jargon, when what they really want to know is:
- Is your product and company real and trustworthy?
- Where can I learn more about what I am interested in?
- What do I do next if I want to give you a try?
Fix 2: Write copy for distracted, inexpert people
Write copy that is easy for newbies to follow and understand:
- Assume visitors arrive knowing nothing about you.
- Assume visitors are on a 3-year old phone.
- Be concise and direct.
- Use simple words and sentence structures.
- Use bullets or mobile-friendly formatting for clarity.
- Assume your audience is non-technical and knows almost nothing about your space.
- If your audience is inherently technical, assume this is their first job and they were hired a week ago. (This is the audience that is sent to research solutions.)
For extra points, review your copy from the point of view of a visitor who:
- Reads at a 10th grade level.
- Will only give you 1 minute of reading to make your case.
- Speaks English as a second language.
- Currently uses your top competitor.
- Is cheap and has figured out a way to do it for themselves.
- Suspects that you suck and you need to convince them you don’t.
- Has Wordle open in another tab and would rather be playing that.
Mistake 3: Ignoring implicit objections
Founders always think their solution is the best thing since sliced bread. Prospects, on the other hand, are visiting your website with a bunch of hesitancies, like:
- I don’t really understand what you do, and I don’t have time to figure it out
- I already worked out a DIY solution to this problem, and it’s free (kinda!)
- I don’t believe you have a real, reliable solution (because you’re a startup)
- I don’t see a price anywhere and I’m scared you’ll gouge me
- My current solution seems OK and it’s not worth the time/risk/money/time to switch
- Your site looks weird and nobody ever felt bad/got fired for what they did NOT buy
- Your competitor gave me a good reason to mistrust and ignore you
Even though the friction that these objections create is invisible to you, it has a very visible result: loss of selling opportunities.
Fix 3: Always be building credibility
Use your website to overcome these objections by demonstrating:
- You understand and can explain the main needs of your customer
- Your product is intuitive and addresses those needs
- Your product has been positively validated by others (testimonials, case studies, review badges, social media mentions)
- Your pricing is transparent and reasonable
- Your company is real, experienced, and here to stay
Put these basic proof points as high up on the home page as reasonable.
Mistake 4: Blandly listing product category & features
Good founders are obsessed with their product’s unique feature set. But this often leads to marketing copy that sounds like an Ikea label: “This sofa is made of material that is 65% recycled ocean plastic.” The problem is, prospective customers don’t care — at least, not yet. You need to convince them that your solution is designed for buyers like them and their particular needs.
Fix 4: Highlight your benefits and superiority to competing solutions
Describe product benefits before you discuss features. Think of features as simply proof points for your broader benefits. And highlight benefits that differentiate you from the competition.
Mistake 5: Building for desktop
Founders are tech-savvy, so they live on computers with big screens, where they build and design their websites. That’s great, except for a bizarre fact: even for B2B solutions, a huge number of shoppers — often the majority! — are viewing sites on mobile devices. I don’t know why someone is shopping for a cloud solution on their phone, but in any case, it means you’ve got to make a good first impression on the small-screen crowd.
Fix 5: Design for mobile devices first
Use responsive design so your site looks good, loads fast, and actually works across most devices — even a 5 year old phone. Review the site with all your own devices: does your site work? Most importantly, does it sell?
That said, don’t neglect the desktop experience. Many people search and shop around on their phones, but switch to desktop when it’s time to evaluate features, try a demo, or make a purchase.
Mistake 6: Postponing search engine optimization (SEO)
Search engine optimization (SEO) is a great way to acquire customers for no additional cost. Most founders, however, don’t know how easy SEO is, so they put it off until they can get some costly consultant to deploy it. This is a mistake: SEO greatly benefits from being implemented as soon as possible, even if imperfectly executed.
Fix 6: Start SEO efforts now
First, I’m hoping that you’re not building your site yourself — you should use a standard, drag-and-drop website builder like Wix, Webflow, WordPress, or Squarespace. (I talked about that here.) These builders make standard SEO much easier.
Remember that the point of SEO is to make it easy for people to find you, even if they don’t know who you are. This means taking a step back and asking: what are the key phrases that I need to show up for? There’s a whole process to this, and I detail it all in this article: How to Find the Best SEO Keywords.
Once you’ve done that analysis:
- Use existing pages or create new ones to feature your top keywords.
- Help Google with easy-to-understand URLs and folder names.
- Edit on-page elements such as H1 & H2 headings, meta titles and descriptions using the keywords
- Create useful content for your audience that precisely targets broader, high volume keywords.
- Monitor analytics and SEO rankings to identify areas for improvement and new opportunities.
Wrapping up
Remember, your website is often the first place where prospects (and investors!) see and “touch” your company. It’s also where they judge your credibility and choose whether it’s worth taking action or inviting you to follow up with them. Make that first impression count by speaking to their needs and you can get to traction faster.
If you haven’t already, review my previous article on top marketing mistakes that startups make! In it, I also told you:
- Write your website to sell to prospects and customers, not investors
- Build your website with a standard drag-and-drop tool like Wix or Squarespace
- Have a call to action on every! single! page!
Need help? Contact me. And if you’re in SkyDeck, or I just like your business, I’m happy to provide free advice.