The Seven Sins

2. Failing to communicate your purpose clearly to your site designer.
If you hire a professional designer to create your site (most practitioners should), you can expect to pay additional charges if you continually exercise your right to change your mind.
Alterations in design once the project is underway can result in many wasted creative hours. Unless your designer has agreed to a flat rate, you’ll be stuck with a larger bill than you anticipated.
You can avoid this common error by spending time with your designer to discuss your ideas. Sketching out designs, layouts and text with paper and pencil can save many hours of costly designer time.
Don’t over-manage, but don’t sit back and assume that you shouldn’t be involved at all in the creative process. Either extreme would be a mistake.
You may not know a great deal about computer technology, but you know your business and you know what you want your Web site to accomplish. This is what you must communicate to your designer.
Massage therapist Gini Maddox of Oxford, Ohio, searched the Internet for Web designs that appealed to her. “I felt that most of my clients were people with tastes similar to my own,” she said. “I figured what appealed to me would probably appeal to them.”
She forwarded her materials to her out-of-town designer and worked with him through e-mail to arrive at the final layout.

Failing to provide an easy way for interested viewers to contact you.

If your site is a full e-commerce site, this requirement is obvious. However, if you have designed it more as a basic informational site offering only such details as location, driving directions and a general description of your product line, it would be easy for you to overlook the need to provide a feedback link.

Prospective customers may have questions that you haven’t anticipated, or there may be problems with the site, such as broken links. In either case, a quick-and-easy e-mail link will allow the viewer to reach you with the click of a mouse.

Caution: If you set up a feedback link, it is essential that you check your e-mail every day, and that you respond promptly to every message. Many people regard unanswered e-mail messages as a personal affront. That’s not a good way to build your practice’s image.