Having a website is important to your bottom line. This fact has become well known. What some business owners fail to grasp, however, is the degree to which they incorporate costly mistakes into their web design. Here are three things to avoid at all costs with your small business website:

Not Making Your Website Responsive

Today, most consumers in your target audience have a cellphone. For this reason, it is important to optimize your website for mobile compatibility and ease of use. Businesses whose websites are not optimized for mobile interaction are missing out on thousands of dollars’ worth of revenue, as many consumers now place orders for merchandise on the road using a cellphone, away from their home computer.

Large Photos and Files

You have approximately three seconds to make your case from the time a consumer clicks on the link to your website as to why they should stay on it at all. If it takes your website more than three seconds to load, your odds of generating a lead, let alone a sale, decrease drastically. One way to avoid slowing your website's load time is to avoid uploading large pictures or files. Keep picture KBs relatively low and limit the text on the page.

Not Using Calls-to-Action

Even if you have a phenomenal, responsive, quick-loading website, you need a call-to-action if you want users to interact with your page in a manner that allows you to move them along the conversion funnel. Something as simple as a subscribe button is usually enough to engage users. Without it, you are presenting your product and leaving it to sell itself, which shows consumers that you are no more invested in your product than they are. Give your product a voice by using calls-to-action.
Your website can make or break a sale. Using calls-to-action, avoiding large photos and files to increase the loading speed of your landing pages, and ensuring mobile compatibility will go a long way toward improving your bottom line over time.