Seven Deadly Mistakes an Online Business Can Make

1 – Letting internal business politics influence website design

Just because an executive may like the color blue doesn’t mean thats the best decision or direction a website should go based on his/her taste and opinion alone. And just because you may want to kiss up and do what the boss says, you’re making a larger mistake in the long run. You will always be respected for doing the right thing and maintaining your artistic integrity then to sell out for quick and cheap short lived praise from the boss. Most businesses run with the “what have you done for me lately model” so a mistake like this can bite you back. There are ways to avoid these situations and easy compromises can be made if you approach the subject professionally with statistics to back you up. If an executive thinks a purple, green and orange color scheme represents the new product best, have documented proof that it doesn’t and discuss how using an alternative and complementing color scheme can be more successful.

2 – Launching prematurely

Personally I think this happens everywhere, even though a few companies have their launch strategy down pretty well, there are some that will just always jump the gun. Most times executives get a little too excited about a new product and think that a site can be launched prematurely, a.k.a. a “soft launch”. Just because it is mocked up in Photoshop doesn’t mean it can be made live the next day. There are so many components to releasing a large corporate site that launching early with limited features will just wind up turning into a mess. There needs to be design sensitivity training for management that focuses on timelines and why it is important to stick by them.

3 – Re-designing for the hell of it

This one of the biggest wastes of time for a designer. Just because your competitor has revamped their site doesn’t mean you have to do the same. There needs to be a clear strategy behind changing your design and not just because it looks cool.

4 – Understaffing and overworking

Having one designer work on a major corporate site is down right insane. I’ve seen it plenty. Not only can you burn them out on working on one project for months at a time, the room for error increases because of the repetitiveness they are engaging in and sheer volume of multitasking they are performing. No matter how great a designer is, and at no fault to his/her own, everyone benefits from having their work reviewed or collaborated with another person. For a major news publication styled site, there should be at least three designers. One for designing core elements such as navigation, page layout. One for CSS and page styling, and one for accents such as buttons, banners etc.

5 – Involving novices for senior decision making

Sometimes team building is best left to staff events. Although newcomer input should always be valued, and is a great way to make them feel more a part of the team, involving newly hired or entry level designers to make decisions that can significantly impact the businesses bottom line is a big no no. Senior people are senior because they have years of experience under their belts and know how to avoid amateur mistakes that a new designer may make to get his/her name known.

Always go with a senior designers advice, even if the boss thinks the newbie is cutting edge and has thousands of people following their twitter account.

6 – Not adhering to Best Practices

Skipping steps. Yes there’s a time and place when deadlines supersede certain processes, but if there is a formal procedure of doing things always stick to it. I have seen first hand the simplest of mistakes slip through for the sake of getting something out in a haphazardly way.

7 – Prematurely partnering for quick bucks

So a new site has alot of buzz, and they get a ton of traffic to their site. You’re in a position to partner up and looks like a win win. All of a sudden a month later, the site goes belly up with some type of scandal, and your name is dragged through the mud with them. Now it’s time for damage control. Cleaning up the mess of your company being associated with a scandal. You spend more time scouring message boards to clear your name then you spent putting into the partnering decision in the first place.

Bottom line, do business with reliable and established businesses. Don’t just jump on the bandwagon for a quick buck. Always think long term.