Starting a new business comes with a surprisingly long shopping list. Branding, bank accounts, insurance, marketing, social media, stationery – and somewhere amongst all that, a website.

For an established small business, the problem can be slightly different. You may already have a website, but it was built several years ago, the business has moved on, and what once did the job is now beginning to hold you back.

In either case, getting the website wrong can prove expensive. Not necessarily because you’ve made some catastrophic technical mistake, but because seemingly innocuous decisions made at the beginning can leave you paying to correct them later.

Whether you’re planning a new business website or replacing an existing small business website, here are some of the mistakes worth avoiding.

1. Choosing a website purely on price

When you’re starting a business, keeping costs under control matters. But there is a difference between controlling costs and simply choosing the cheapest option.

Two website quotations can appear to offer broadly the same thing while actually covering very different levels of design, development, content support, SEO, hosting and ongoing care.

A £500 website isn’t automatically bad, just as a £5,000 website isn’t automatically good. The important question is what you’re actually getting for the money.

Look beyond the number at the bottom of the quotation. What is included? Who is doing the work? What happens after launch? What will you own? What might cost extra?

I’ve looked at this from another angle in Pay Monthly Website Design vs Paying Upfront, because how you pay for a website can be just as important as the headline price.

A new business website should be appropriate for where the business is now, but it should also give you somewhere sensible to go next.

2. Not making sure you own and control your domain

Your domain name is one of your business assets.

Ideally, it should be registered in your name or your company’s name, with you having access to the account through which it is managed.

A web designer may register or configure a domain on your behalf, and there is nothing inherently wrong with that. The problem comes when a business has no idea where its domain is registered, whose name appears against it, or how it could regain control if the relationship with its supplier ended.

For UK domains, Nominet operates the .uk domain registry and provides services for domain holders, including resolving certain problems with registrars and domain control.

This is one of those wonderfully boring details that nobody cares about until suddenly they care about it very much.

Know where your domain is registered, who the registrant is and how it can be accessed.

3. Not having proper access to your own website

The same principle applies to the website itself.

If your business owns the website, you should understand what access you have to it. With a WordPress business website, for example, that would normally include appropriate WordPress administrator access.

You don’t necessarily need to use that access. Many of my clients would much rather I looked after their website for them, which is perfectly sensible.

But choosing not to manage something yourself isn’t the same as being prevented from doing so.

One of the reasons I favour WordPress for business websites is precisely this flexibility and portability. Why Choose WordPress for a Business Website? looks at the wider advantages in more detail.

Before commissioning a website, establish who controls the website, hosting, domain and any important third-party services associated with it.

4. Putting everything in one person’s hands without knowing where anything is

There’s a genuine advantage to having one person or company look after your website, domain, hosting and maintenance. It can make life considerably simpler.

In fact, that’s essentially the principle behind my fully-managed website service: one point of contact for design, hosting, maintenance, backups and ongoing support.

But simplicity shouldn’t mean mystery.

You should still know what services are being used and what would happen if your web designer disappeared, retired, became unavailable or you simply decided to move elsewhere.

This isn’t about expecting a supplier relationship to go wrong. It’s ordinary business continuity.

You probably know which bank holds your business account even if you don’t personally operate the bank’s computer systems. Your website shouldn’t be treated differently.

5. Starting with the design instead of the purpose

One of the easiest mistakes in new business website design is starting with what the website should look like.

Colours. Photographs. Fonts. Animation. Whether the buttons should have rounded corners.

All important eventually, but none answers the first question:

What does the website actually need to achieve?

A solicitor’s website, restaurant website and an online shop have very different jobs. Even two businesses offering similar services may need their websites to achieve different things.

Before thinking about appearance, establish who the website is for, what those people need to know and what you want them to do next.

That’s really the foundation of what makes a good business website: design should support the business and its customers rather than simply decorate a collection of pages.

Good website design should support those objectives, not dictate them.

6. Trying to say everything on the homepage

A homepage has an important job, but it doesn’t necessarily have to contain your entire business.

New businesses in particular can fall into the trap of trying to explain absolutely everything immediately. The result is often a homepage that becomes longer, busier and harder to navigate as every possible piece of information competes for attention.

That doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with a one-page website. For a new business with a straightforward service or proposition, one well-designed page may be all that’s actually needed. Likewise, a carefully planned five-page startup website can be considerably more effective than twenty pages created simply to make the website look bigger.

The difference is structure and purpose. A good one-page website deliberately leads the visitor through the information they need. A conventional multi-page website uses the homepage more like a reception area, establishing who you are, what you do and providing clear routes towards more detailed information.

Neither approach is inherently better. The right structure depends on the business, the amount of information customers need and what you want the website to achieve.

The mistake isn’t having too few pages. It’s trying to squeeze a larger, more complicated business into a structure that no longer suits it.

7. Launching with too little useful content

The opposite problem is a website that looks attractive but barely says anything.

A photograph, a strapline and a button marked Contact Us may look wonderfully minimalist, but potential customers – and search engines – need something more substantial to work with.

People want to understand what you provide, whether it’s suitable for them, where you operate, what makes your business credible and what they should do next.

Useful content also gives search engines context. As I explain in Is Content Really King?, content matters, but it works as part of the wider website rather than in isolation.

That doesn’t mean filling every page with thousands of words for the sake of SEO. It means providing enough relevant information to properly answer the questions a prospective customer is likely to have.

8. Assuming SEO can be added afterwards

Search engine optimisation isn’t a magic switch that gets flicked once the website has been finished.

The structure of the website, page subjects, headings, content, internal links, performance and technical setup can all influence how effectively search engines understand it.

For a new business, thinking about search visibility during the planning stage can also reveal useful opportunities. What are customers actually searching for? Do individual services deserve their own pages? Does location matter? What questions should the website answer?

Google’s SEO Starter Guide is a useful reminder that good SEO is largely about making a website understandable, useful and accessible rather than hunting for secret tricks.

You don’t need to turn the project into an enormous SEO exercise, but building a website without considering search at all can mean rebuilding parts of it later.

9. Assuming a new website will automatically bring visitors

Launching the website is the beginning, not the ceremonial cutting of a ribbon followed by thousands of customers marching through the door.

A website needs ways for people to discover it.

That may involve Google, local search, social media, referrals, advertising, email marketing, printed material or simply people already familiar with your business.

I’ve covered this particular misconception in more depth in Why a Good Website Isn’t Enough to Get Found on Google.

For businesses serving a particular town or region, local SEO and a properly configured Google Business Profile can also become important parts of the picture.

For many small businesses, the website becomes the central point those activities lead back to. It can explain the business in greater depth and turn initial interest into an enquiry, booking or purchase.

But it still needs that initial interest to come from somewhere.

10. Forgetting about mobile users and website speed

Your website doesn’t only exist on the large monitor it was designed on.

Visitors may be viewing it on a phone while walking down the street, sitting on a train or trying to find your details with an unreliable connection.

That makes mobile-friendly website design and sensible performance important considerations from the outset.

Huge images, unnecessary effects, badly structured layouts and excessive scripts can make an otherwise attractive website frustrating to use.

And speed isn’t simply a technical vanity metric. How Website Speed Affects SEO & Conversions looks more closely at why performance matters to both visitors and search visibility.

The aim isn’t simply to achieve an impressive score in a testing tool. It’s to give actual visitors a website that loads quickly and works properly on the device they’re using.

11. Treating accessibility as an optional extra

Accessibility shouldn’t be something considered only by large organisations.

Clear typography, sensible contrast, descriptive links, logical headings, usable forms and properly structured content make websites easier for everybody to use.

Many good accessibility practices are simply good design practices.

The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) provide the recognised international framework for making web content more accessible.

Planning accessibility into a website from the beginning is usually much easier than attempting to bolt it on afterwards.

12. Building only for the business you have today

This is particularly relevant when choosing a website for a new business.

At launch, you may offer two services. Six months later there may be five. You might add staff, case studies, online booking, ecommerce, downloadable resources or an entirely new part of the business.

Nobody can predict everything a company will need in five years, and trying to build every conceivable feature on day one would be expensive and unnecessary.

But the website should at least have room to develop.

That’s one of the reasons I use WordPress for business websites. It allows a relatively straightforward website to evolve as the business does without automatically requiring everything to be rebuilt from scratch.

For businesses just starting out, my startup website options are designed around exactly that principle: start with what the business genuinely needs, while leaving room for the website to develop with it.

13. Forgetting what happens after the website launches

Websites need looking after.

Software changes. Security issues emerge. Plugins and WordPress itself need updating. Backups need to exist. Content becomes outdated. Services change. Staff leave. Telephone numbers move. Google changes how it presents search results.

A website launched and then ignored for five years shouldn’t be expected to perform exactly as it did on day one.

I’ve covered the ongoing requirements in more detail in What Does Website Maintenance Include?, while my WordPress website care, hosting & maintenance guide looks at the subject more broadly.

Before commissioning a website, understand who will be responsible for hosting, backups, maintenance and updates once it goes live.

That might be you, your web designer or a managed website care provider. What matters is that somebody has responsibility for it.

14. Not understanding what you’re actually buying

Perhaps the biggest mistake is assuming every website arrangement works the same way.

Some websites are purchased outright. Some are effectively rented. Hosting may be included or separate. Software licences may belong to the designer rather than the client. Maintenance may be included for a period and then become chargeable. Content updates may or may not form part of the agreement.

None of those arrangements is automatically wrong.

Problems arise when the business owner doesn’t understand the arrangement until they want to change something.

Before agreeing to a website project, make sure you understand the important basics:

• What am I paying for?
• What will I own?
• Who owns and controls the domain?
• What access will I receive?
• Where will the website be hosted?
• What happens to the website if I stop paying for maintenance or hosting?
• Can the website be moved elsewhere?
• Who is responsible for backups and updates?
• Are there ongoing licence or subscription costs?

If the answers are unnecessarily difficult to obtain before you’ve paid, they’re unlikely to become clearer afterwards.

A good small business website should belong to the business

There is nothing wrong with relying on professionals.

You probably don’t service your own car, prepare every legal document or print your own business cards either. Using specialists is part of running a business.

But there is an important difference between having something professionally managed and surrendering control of it.

Your web designer should make the technical side easier, not use its complexity to make the business dependent upon them.

For a new business especially, establishing that relationship properly at the beginning can prevent a great deal of trouble later.

Planning a website for a new or small business?

A good website doesn’t need to be unnecessarily complicated or expensive. It needs to be appropriate for the business, professionally designed, properly built and structured so it can continue supporting you as the business develops.

If you’re starting a new business, my Startup Website Design options provide a straightforward route to getting professionally online.

For established businesses that need something more bespoke, my main Website Design and WordPress Website Design & Development services are designed around the individual requirements of the business.

Whichever route you take, understand what you’re buying, retain control of the things that belong to your business, and build something you can grow into.

It’s considerably easier than discovering three years later that nobody quite knows where the keys are.