We’ve all chased the dream of online riches and seen it turn into a nightmare - but are you making it worse? Check you these 10 fatal website mistakes and see which ones you’re guilty of!

1. Gave it to a relative to do - Just because a nephew is good at video games it doesn’t mean he can create you a wonderful website. It amazes me that people fall for this. Once they’ve asked them to do it they are trapped. If he doesn’t deliver then the risk of family rifts put so much extra pressure to accept what is finally given.

2. Used a copy writer - You should never ever use a copy writer to create copy for your website. This is expensive and created content that isn’t yours - content that lacks your personality, knowledge and passion that is supposed to appeal to your customers. This won’t ever work. There is a better way. Create your own copy and then get an Editor to review it. This is quick, simple and much, much cheaper.

3. Knowledge is power - Do you waste money buying book after book that may be read but then forgotten? This habit can get even more expensive online with ebooks and courses - some costing thousands of dollars that is a lot in any currency! This habit has two serious dangers. If you read without acting then you will never get anyway as it is only through action that knowledge has any point at all. The second danger is that you will always think of yourself as a newbie or beginner and never develop further.

4. No plan - “People don’t plan to fail - they fail to plan”. We all know this saying and we all know its true but when it comes to launching a website our brains somehow go offline and we leap into things without planning and then we wonder why they don’t work. One reason why we don’t plan is that we don’t know how to plan properly and what the key elements are.

5. Any traffic is good traffic - I got 1000 hits so my website must be great, right? No, wrong dead wrong. Hits don’t matter a stuff. Hits are meaningless as a single visitor can create dozens of hits. Visitors are also meaningless to some extent. What actually matters are prospects - people that may become customers. I’d rather have 1 customer than 1000 hits.

6. Analysis paralysis - Your website has the ability to produce a wealth of statistics that you can analyse and reanalyse until the proverbial cows come home. These can be incredibly useful but also paralysing as you can spend so much time analysing statistics that you do very little else.

7. Throw money at Adwords - Setting up Adwords campaigns can be deceptively easy. It’s easy to get going to start displaying adverts and driving traffic to your website the very same day. The really hard bit is to do it profitably. This is to pay less on Adwords that you then make in sales. If you don’t take the time and effort to monitor and test your campaigns then you could end up losing a lot of money as many have found out to their cost.

8. Do you concentrate on style over substance? - Have you been sold on a choice of pretty templates or been mesmerised by graphical tricks that are the latest in website design? If so, then you fallen for the style over substance con. You have a pretty site but it is also pretty useless and does nothing to get visitors it may attract to stay or come back.

9. Don’t update website content - When was the last time that you updated your website with new fresh copy? If the answer is months or years ago then you are presenting a very bad image to your potential customers. It’s like one of those shop or store windows that are dusty and uncared for with goods going stale and cobwebs all over them. That’s not going to attract your customers in to buy is it?

10. Full of errors - Why is it when we send a business letter we check it and retype it but throw up the first draft of web content without even reading it? This strange behaviour is extremely common and leads to websites that are strewn with spelling mistakes and other writing errors that will annoy your customers.

It is not too late to put these dumb and destructive ways behind you and get on the route to website success. Stop reacting in a panic and instead become committed to your online success.

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