When entrepreneurs decide to take their business dreams online, they tend to make a lot of common web content mistakes because websites built for visitors and the type of technology visitors use to interact with you is entirely different from networking offline and making sales calls.

Even when entrepreneurs have a seasoned online business, they still fall back on old bad habits that won’t help their online presence continue to grow. I know this all-too-well myself.

Today, my focus is to help you to avoid the common mistakes many online businesses make with their websites and social media accounts.

I know. You think you know what your website visitor wants, but if I were to sit you down and ask you the following questions, could you answer them with certainty?

• Describe your ideal visitor:

1. What is his/her age? No range. The age–period.
2. Sex? Not both.
3. The number of children? Their ages? Their sexes?
4. College educated … or not?
5. Entrepreneurial?
6. Scared? About what?
7. Happy? About what?
8. Depressed? About what?
9. Height and weight?
10. Eye color? No, I am not kidding.
11. Work?
12. Bad habits?
13. Sleeping habits?
14. Driving habits?
15. Computer habits?
16. Cell phone habits?
17. Dine out or in?
18. He/she lives where?
19. Disposable income?
20. Married? Single? Divorced? Widowed?
21. Conservative? Liberal?
22. Spiritual or atheist?

You must be able to answer these questions before you build your website, your Pinterest Page or create a landing page for your product idea. It will make all of your content publishing decisions more natural. Instead of trying to communicate to a mass visitor-base, you should use these questions to create an image of a real client, so when you do communicate online, you are talking directly to this one person, as if you were sitting in a restaurant chatting one-on-one.

I’ve had people tell me their web content is for written women over 55, yet they use some dark distracting background and font the size only an 18-year-old can read with images of 20-something women then wonder why the perfect visitor isn’t interacting with their web content.

Do you know who you are speaking to?

For more understanding your customer:

• Knowing Vs. Understanding Your Customer
• Customer Profile Template
• How to Define Your Target Market

What search terms will your perfect visitor use to find you? Will visitors use Google? Bing? DuckDuckGo? Facebook? Twitter? Pinterest? Reddit? Buzzfeed? Will your business name and domain name work in all these places?

I love Auto Body shops. They tend to call themselves names like Franks Auto Body Repair, Joe’s Best Auto Repair, Precision Auto Repair, etc. There is no question when you read their logo what they can do for you. Why not call one of their websites: www.(name-of-city)bestautorepair.com? How many people use the term “best auto repair” along with the city when they search? How easy it would be to find them.

Naming your bike riding tips website “belle.com” before you’ve built an established brand under that name won’t bring you the same traffic as bestbiketips.com.

Simplify Your Website With The KISS Rule

When you start your online venture, no one is going to be searching for ‘Belle’, unless you have a large and very loyal client-base who knows you by that name. But in using just that name, you will miss the opportunity of getting that first shot at a new visitor looking for badass bike tips. Your tribe may never find your website because the domain name doesn’t resonate with how your visitor searches online. The same goes for Facebook, or anywhere your visitor hangs out and seeks out information. Do you realize there over 1 billion websites?

Please name your website something the world can spell so they can find you in search and your website name is already selling for you before anyone clicks on your link in search. Leave the complicated names for naming your pets.

For more on naming your domain:

• Top 5 Mistakes When Naming Your Website or Company
• How to Pick the Perfect Name for Your Blog or Startup

Once you’ve figured out how these people will be searching for you –by a city, by a particular name, by a product, or by a service, and then not using this information every time you place content online is a sin. I can tell you with certainty that someone else is doing this and getting your visitors.

Nothing drives me crazier than to see a title online that says, “How To Grow ‘Petunia’ in 48 Hours” and the word ‘petunia’ is not used in the opening sentence of the content. The accompanying article image isn’t a flower.  The image is a dog. The story ends up being about a girl named Petunia who grows up in 48 hours due to a life-changing event. What?

When your visitor uses their 4 seconds of their attention span to glance at your story, will they see what they came for, or will they leave because it looked like you were talking about pajamas and dogs? Your potential visitor is not reading a book and walking the halls of the library looking for your best-selling items, so show them some kindness and tell them again why they are there. Get to your point in the first three sentences to remind them why they stopped by.

Because your post is what your title told them it would be–right?

For more on titles and keywords:

• 9 Secrets of Professional SEO Article Writers
• Best Article Titles and Headlines Ever to Create Viral Blog Posts
• When and How to Use Keywords to Improve an Article’s Search Ranking
• Writing Headlines that Serve SEO, Social Media, and Website Visitors All Together
• Why Text Structure is Important for SEO

I wish I had a dime for every entrepreneur who thought they had the most fantastic idea or story to tell and trusted that just putting it on the Internet would change their lives forever. On the Internet, there isn’t such a thing as street traffic or window shoppers randomly passing by your amazing article because you “pushed it live.”

Running a website requires real work, and you must promote your work every single day–both online and offline.

You must discover where your potential visitors hang out online and engage with them there in a supportive way to encourage them to visit your website to get more (where there is hopefully more) of beautiful you, your products or your service.

Where they hangout may mean your presence on Facebook, too. Or Twitter. Pinterest. Get over it.

For more on social media marketing (SMM):

• Social vs. Search: 9 Differences Between Social Media and SEO
• The Definitive Strategy for Driving Organic Traffic Without Ranking in Google’s Top 10
• How to Easily Double Your Traffic from Social Media
• Social Media: The New Hybrid Element of the Promotion Mix (Research paper – pdf)

I am blown away by businesses that claim what they want on their website instead of telling me what it is their potential ideal visitor will want.

“But I want to tell my story, my way!”

Would people at a party stand there and listen to you tell this story? At this length? With that opening?

Some businesses want to dump their feelings about their love of something on to their visitor without realizing the visitor doesn’t care–no matter how great they believe their product or service might be. If you are a business owner reading this who thinks you’ve never made this mistake, then you are the worst kind of online contributor: one who doesn’t question your web content all of the time.

I’ll quote Seth Godin here, “When you are busy telling stories to people who want to hear them, you’ll be tempted to tell stories that just don’t hold up.”

For more about it not being about you:

• 19 Experts Explain Why Your Website Isn’t Bringing in Customers
• How to Make Creative Content That Really Tells Your Brand Story
• The 10 Commandments of Marketing from Seth Godin
• The One Rule About Content Marketing is It’s Not About You

Not understanding the rules of how people read on the Internet and thinking that you can bend these rules because your ‘rose story’ is so amazing is BS. Ever go into a grocery store when they’ve moved around the merchandise, and you can’t find what it is you usually buy?

Doesn’t it frustrate you to the point of crazy? What happens when you attempt to hunt it down, and you can’t find anyone to ask? Have you ever walked out of the store without purchasing anything or leaving a half-full cart in the aisle? If so, then you do know what kind of a hassle this type of irritation is to consumers.

Why wouldn’t your frustrated web visitor leave when it’s just a click of a button to go?

And those annoying auto-play video ad pop-ups and notification permission pop-ups. They disengage visitors too. Marketers will try and tell you otherwise–don’t believe them.

To read more on readable content:

• 8 Incredibly Simple Ways to Get More People to Read Your Content
• Entry Popups Could Be Killing Your Conversion Rate
• F-Shaped Pattern of Reading on the Web: Misunderstood, But Still Relevant
• Scrolling and Attention
• The 15 Second Rule: 3 Reasons Why Users Leave a Website

You must define a topic for your website, just like you must decide on a USP for a business. A USP is your unique selling proposition. Having one sets you and your blog apart from your competition.

The most successful websites have a well-defined niche with a target demographic in mind.

Starting out talking about swimming, then switching to candle-making, and later discussing your fear of flying will only confuse your readers. You won’t develop a following.  And you have to watch that this isn’t a sign that you quit things too quickly before they’ve had a chance to develop, or it’s another way you set yourself up to fail.

You also won’t be able to link your blog posts together to form a cohesive story-line. Your story-line matters to search engines and your readers even if it doesn’t matter to you.

Don’t be one of those people who has a website where you are a “Life coach/graphic designer/make-up artist/author/part-time chef.”

Choose One! Uno. PERIOD.

You can create 5 websites targeted to each of your passions and link them to each other, but stick with just one niche on each site.

And make sure the specialty you chose is something you have a real interest in promoting. Managing more than one website is a pain, but you’ll quickly find out which pursuit you’re most interested in sharing. For your website to become a success you will need to be able to regularly update and promote your web content. You will need to live it every day. You need to pick something that you are willing to work at for at least 3 years.

For more on niches:

• 9 Simple Tips for Writing Persuasive Web Content
• Finding Your Niche and Sticking With It is the Key to Success
• How to Connect with a Hard-to-Reach Audience: A Niche Marketing Strategy
• Single Topic vs. Multi-Topic Blog: Which is Better and Why?

Building a successful online presence takes time. It can be an agonizingly slow process. Every successful blogger and online business owner knows about the 3-month itch–the point at which you run out of things to say about your project and you become bored with your chosen niche. You grow tired of updating your Facebook Page, your website content, your Google Business Page, Instagram photos, and your Twitter feed.

You thought it was going to be easier.

It’s okay only to update your web content once a week. Just know that your site won’t grow as fast as others, but it is better to have a schedule and stick to it, then to only update your content twice a year.

But understand that there will be times that you hate all the time you spend online promoting your big dream. When this happens try looking for inspiration in a new place. Try looking at your dream business from a different perspective.

For more on not giving up:

• 5 Ways to Avoid Side Hustle Burnout
• How Long Does It Really Take to Rank at the Top of Google’s Search Results?
• Navigating The Dips
• The Shocking Reality of Scaling an Online Business
• Want to Earn a Living Creating? Here’s Your Mountain

Ignoring your visitor interactions is the same as not responding to emails or phone calls about your topic/product or service. You should visit other blogs and websites where your perfect visitor hangs out and engage with them in a real (non-selling) way.

Responding back in your comment section and interacting with visitors to your social media sites and gently responding to reviews is a sign that you are a professional and you value what you offer. You don’t have to comment on every single interaction on your social media pages, but showing up to comment once in a while says you are not a poser.

Answer questions online. Help other people solve problems. Help another struggling website by being the first to comment on a post they’ve written.

Treat people online the way you’d like people to respond to you. 

Promote blogs, websites, writers, entrepreneurs who compliment your niche and who are just starting.

Reading popular social media pages, their comment sections and online reviews in your niche helps you understand your target audience and gain new perspectives on what you could be doing wrong. Another way online businesses blow their interactions with visitors is to have people jump through registration hoops to interact. Don’t put up an extra wall between you and your visitors.

Visitors have the right to voice their opinions–even if you don’t like what they have to say. Negative reviews can give your business authenticity and a reason for a satisfied customer (who might not usually comment online) to speak up to defend your business. Be sure to respond with reverence–how you want a business owner to treat you if you are unhappy with a product or service.

And NEVER engage with people online in anger–ever.

For more on engagement:

• 7 Customer Engagement Strategies for Small Businesses
• Facebook Engagement: How to Get More Likes, Shares, and Clicks
• How to Engage and Delight Your Readers So They’re Begging for More
• The Importance of Interacting on Social Media
• The Ultimate Guide to Responding to Positive and Negative Google Reviews

Advertising genius, David Ogilvy once wrote that “5 times as many people read the headline as read the body.”  Crafting a great page title or article headline may be the only chance you get to sell someone on clicking through to visit your website.

If you don’t stop potential visitors with your title, 99% of your time spent on your web content is a waste of time. The purpose of a headline is to get people to click-through and scan your page. From the title, they typically read only the first 120 characters of the first paragraph before they begin scanning the page.

Are you reaching out from the page and grabbing them by the throat? Does your title shout, “You must read this!” Is your keyword phrase included? Think about how you read and interact on the web. Do you think your visitor behaves differently? I like what author, Victor Urbach says about this topic:

“The only purpose of the first paragraph is to get them to read the second paragraph, and so on. A headline is an engine that pulls this train.”

Don’t make your titles so long so that it makes it impossible to tweet your post and share your article. Always count your headline and try to keep it under 70 characters. Make it easy for people to help promote you.

For more on headlines and titles:

• Best Article Titles and Headlines Ever to Create Viral Blog Posts
• Clickbait or Damn Good Headline?
• How To Write Page Titles And Meta Descriptions For SEO
• Microcontent: A Few Small Words Have a Mega Impact on Business

A. You don’t bother to link your content.

Linking is vital because it helps your content behave like a resource for your readers. Don’t put the title of a book in your content without linking out to where they can read more about it, or purchase it. Help search engines understand what your topic is about by linking your keyword niche phrase articles.

B. You write in long paragraphs and don’t use bold or sub-headings.

It is hard to read on the Internet (which is different from reading on a Kindle) don’t make it more difficult by having paragraphs longer than three sentences. Break your content up with sub-headings in bold, so it helps keep the visitor’s eye on the page.

Don’t combine a bunch of font-styles and font colors, or use italic styling all over the place. It’s distracting. Keep it simple. And easy to read. And stop with the extra !!!! and CAPS!! Let your words communicate feeling for you.

For more on web content:

• Contextual Link Building: 4 Proven Ways to Get Rank-Boosting Links
• A Beginner’s Guide to Growing Popularity and Links
• How to Make Your Content More Readable
• Research Shows Having A Bad Website Can Hurt Your Business
• Typography for Glanceable Reading: Bigger Is Better

People want to hear a unique voice when they are reading the Internet. Don’t talk in corporate-speak, or lawyer-speak, or sales-speak. Talk to your readers like they are sitting next to you. Have a strong opinion. Don’t be afraid to be bold and write something outrageous!

But mostly, be original.

Allow your followers to tell you that you are wrong, you missed the boat and point out your faults. It’s what makes for engaging web conversations. But do not let anyone insult you with cruelty or lies.

For more on why you should have a strong online voice:

• 3 Tips For Creating Controversial Marketing Campaigns Without Destroying Your Brand
• 25 tips for Becoming an Online Influencer
• Controversial, Risky, and Offensive Content: When is it Appropriate for Online Marketing Success?
• The Science of Creating Controversial Content

You need to concentrate on perfecting your message and your web content first before you think about asking for money. Work hard at discerning what your visitors want from you first. Too many people begin their online venture thinking about the money instead of solving problems, entertaining people or adding value.

Don’t get sucked in by claims that you can make six-figure incomes in your first year online. What they may not be telling you is that the owner of the platform in question failed at 6 other online businesses before making good money and has been working towards the business idea for years. Proceed with care.

For more on making money online:

• 12 Ways You Can Absolutely Make Money Online
• Don’t Start Marketing Before You’re Ready to Start Selling
• How to Attract Enough Visitors to Your Website to Earn a Living From It

People naturally tend to ignore their weaknesses–a universal human trait, but when you want to sell to the public, you must understand your weaknesses. You must be able to look critically at what you are putting out for people to digest. Constructive criticism can assist you in bridging the gap between your perception of how terrific you think your content is and what others are seeing. Having a critical eye helps to make you a better dreamer.

If someone tells you that your website is hard to read–ask them why. Then look at what they are experiencing from their point of view. If people tell you that they don’t like it every time you post social media content about animal cruelty, consider putting that topic to rest.

Care about what your readers are saying. Quit looking at everything from “… but this is what I want to say …” You should always read your website analytics reports like a detective to see your website flaws, which brings me to number 15 on my list here.

For more on accepting constructive criticism:

• 5 Tips for Gracefully Accepting Constructive Criticism
• How Do You Handle Negative Feedback? A Business Coach and a Fitness Entrepreneur Share Their Experiences
• The Dos and Don’ts of Handling Bad Online Reviews
• Thick Skin Thinking: How To Use Negative Feedback To Your Advantage

You should dissect your analytics reports at least once a month to see where you are missing the boat.

Look at what your web content is doing for the visitor:

⇒ How long are people staying on your pages?
⇒ Do your visitors click on your links or visit more than one page on your website?
⇒ Do you have pages with a high Bounce Rate?
⇒ Are visitors abandoning your checkout cart or not completing online transactions?
⇒ What are your popular exit pages and why are people leaving your site?

If visitors are staying on a page or post less than a minute–go back and review it. If you aren’t sure what is wrong ask someone not involved in your business to read it. If you do not care enough to analyze your web content, then you shouldn’t have a website. Give search engines a break.

For more on evaluating your website:

• 5 Information Architecture Warning Signs in Your Analytics Reports
• 6 Tools That Reveal Why Your Users Abandon Your Website
• 12 Awesome Custom Google Analytics Reports Created by the Experts
• A Guide to the Standard Reports in Google Analytics: Audience Reports
• Frequency and Recency of Site Visits: 2 Metrics for User Engagement
• Search-Log Analysis: The Most Overlooked Opportunity in Web Research

There are many valid reasons for building an email list, especially if you are planning product launches, but you should create one even if you’re not. Search engines and social media sites like Facebook change their practices all the time.

You do not want your web traffic entirely controlled by search engines or social media sites. Your email list belongs to you, and no algorithm change can affect your list. Your list should be more critical than your traffic. Having an email list offers you the opportunity to further interact with your readers by providing them something special that they won’t get by dropping by your site.

But you should also have a clear and easy way for visitors to contact you. Not having a contact page sends the message that you don’t want to hear from your visitors. Visitors often find broken links, missing images, comment issues, and old pages with wrong or dated information. Offer them a way to tell you.

For more on contacting and connections:

• Acquiring Customers with Email
• 23 of the Best ‘Contact Us’ Pages You’ll Want to Copy
• Seth Godin: Permission Marketing
• Website Forms Usability: Top 10 Recommendations

I don’t care if you are a freelance writer, you take lousy photos, and your phone camera is the worst–you need to add photo elements to your stories.  People like to see images with content. But you don’t have to be a professional photographer to add stunning images to your content. There are quite a few top quality free image sites available.

Images, remember they are content too. You need to help search engines understand what they are about by correctly describing them. So also learn how to use Alt tags. Learn how to set your vertical and horizontal spacing, placement, linking, and the ability to open your images in a larger webpage if you want people to download and them. Create simple edges or borders around your images that don’t take away from your content.

My favorite image peeve is when someone uploads an image on to the Internet with a name of something like “4869874472000.jpg.” How on earth does this benefit anyone? If it is a picture of a sailboat name it “sailboat.jpg” before you upload it and place with your web content.

You need to learn and understand DPI to make sure your image content loads quickly for your visitors. Renaming the image from what your device named it is just one more step in the image optimization process.

What often sets a website apart is the quality, relevance, and placement for maximum impact.

For more on images see:

• Image SEO: Optimizing Images for Search Engines
• LunaPic – Free Online Photo Editor
• Pixabay – Stunning Free Images and Illustrations
• Optimizing Images for Web: A Practical Guide
• Unsplash – Beautiful Free Photos

Visitors often look at websites while at work and they don’t want to disturb others in the room or their bosses to know. Allow your visitor the choice of when they want to hear your message. Auto-play videos, podcasts and video ads are just plain annoying, along with the ability to forward the audio is purposely disabled.

For more on website annoyances:

• 17 Things People Absolutely Hate About Your Website
• 2018 Is The Year Autoplay Video With Sound Dies
• Do Not Autoplay
• The Rise and Fall of Autoplay Video in 5 Charts
• Video Usability

You need to check out your website/blog on other people’s computers with different operating systems and browsers, so you see how others see your site. This is also true of mobile and tablet testing platforms.

For more on browser testing and web compatibility:

• 8 Essential Tips for Building a Cross-Browser Compatible Website
• Browser Shots
• Test My Site Think With Google
• Website Grader
• Webpage Test

Ever since we all saw the movie, Field of Dreams, entrepreneurs on the Internet, writers dreaming of publishing contracts and all manner of start-ups have imagined if they “build it” visitors “will magically come.” I don’t know what it is about putting up a website that makes people think Google will love it and index the content to page one of whatever glorious search term then visitors from all over the world will flock to see what you are all about. Within a month you are a millionaire.

Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Unless you are Madonna.

There are more than 14.3 trillion pages live on the Internet. Please read that again. The world is distracted. Why do you think if you build something online people will automatically flock to see it?

Are you remarkable? And when I say remarkable–I mean like Coen brothers’ movies remarkable?

⇒ Do your images take a viewers’ breath away?
⇒ Does your web content make grown men cry?
⇒ Do you get angry emails?
⇒ Does the media talk about everything that you do?
⇒ Are you scared when you hit the publish or post button?
⇒ Do you believe in something so passionately that you can’t sleep at night for wanting to work at it?
⇒ Does your web design or logo win awards?
⇒ Do you want it so badly that your stomach hurts? Does your passion shine through on your website and social media interactions?

How does a piece of art stand out in a museum; a house stands out on the street; a car attract your attention, or a beautiful woman (or man) catch your eye in a nightclub? It’s because something about the experience of seeing them is remarkable. It’s worth “remarking” or talking about to other people. Web content is no different.

The web universe is fair. There is no such thing as in overnight success. The world requires that you pay your dues and prove just how badly you want it. You will be tested at every turn. Don’t believe me? Then ask every successful online entrepreneur.

Roll up your sleeves and get a job that supports you while you are building your online reputation. Connect with a business network that will support you. Band together. You can rise faster if you connect with a top online marketing mentor or a group of entrepreneurs working their way to the top.

Also always have a backup plan, a plan B, and an emergency exit plan for everything you are doing online.

For more on why ‘build it and they will come’ doesn’t work:

• 8 Reasons You’re Not Getting Any Website Traffic
• How I Get Over 100,000 Visitors a Month With Top List Articles
• Why No One is Visiting Your Website and How to Increase Website Traffic

What I have written is what I have learned in my years spent creating web content and helping business with their online presence. Have I made these mistakes? Absolutely. That’s why I know so much about them. Do I still make some of these very mistakes on my websites? Yes, sometimes I do, especially when I am exhausted.

One of the most critical factors in business is that you look at the realities of your situation–not what you wish it to be–and make decisions based on those facts. It may make running a business a little less glamorous, but I promise you that it will make your entrepreneurial journey more realistic and more likely to succeed.

Catherine Hughes

Affinity Designer and Photo
Affinity Designer is a vector graphics editor conceived as an alternative to Adobe Illustrator. It’s less technical by nature and easier to use for creatives. Not to mention the price! If you are looking to create your own graphics or edit photographs then I recommend you check out Affinity Designer and Photo, here.

ColorMind
Do you ever wonder what colors to use with an image for your website or web content? With ColorMind, you upload an image and it will render a color palette to match. Instead of finding the most representative colors, Colormind aims to find good colors that work together in a color palette. And it’s free! Check it out, here.

CopyBlogger

Grammarly

Instant Eyedropper
Instant Eyedropper is a free color detection tool that helps identify and automatically paste to the clipboard the HTML color code of any pixel on a web page. I cannot tell you how many times I use this handy tool. It’s free to download, too and you can find it here.

Nielsen Norman Group
Nielsen Norman Group is considered a leader in the online user experience field, conducts groundbreaking research, trains and certifies UX practitioners, and provides UX consulting to clients. The NNG website is packed with web content advice and testing.

Whenever I travel, I’m still amazed to find businesses listed in Google who do not have a website. The owners rely on a Google local listing, a Yelp listing, or a Facebook Page for their Internet presence. Many small business owners still believe that managing a website is difficult and too much to learn and manage.

But really, it’s never been easier to set up a professional-looking business website or blog.

Most all hosting companies offer some type of website builder included in their hosting plans and there are simple CMS interfaces owners can use like WordPress. There are also companies like Squarespace, Weebly, and Wix dedicated to delivering what a business owner needs to easily set up a website for a monthly fee.

If you are looking where to go to set up a business website, here’s some of what’s available.

A website hosting service is a form of Internet hosting service that supports websites by making them available for the world to see and interact with on the Internet. Here are six of the better shared hosting providers:

• A2 Hosting
A2 Hosting is good for small-to-medium size companies. They are known for their server uptimes and great customer service. You can read more about them at PC Magazine’s review here.

• A Small Orange
A Small Orange is perfect for a single entrepreneur or someone starting a small business who needs a simple website coupled with a cheap hosting plan. You can read more about them at PC Magazine’s review here.

• DreamHost
Dreamhost is my hosting service provider and I love their service! I feel their hosting is for more experienced businesses and business owners and their VPS can handle large traffic websites. You can read why PC Magazine chooses DreamHost as their Editor’s Choice for web hosts here.

• Hostgator
Hostgator is a good web hosting company if you are on a tight budget and just starting out building and managing your business or personal website. Hostgator’s easy-to-use site-building software is perfect for novice entrepreneurs. You can read more about them at PC Magazine’s review here.

• InMotion Hosting
InMotion is a great hosting company for websites built on the WordPress CMS. They offer plans that allow an unlimited number of websites, disk space, and monthly data transfers which is great for bloated WordPress websites, especially ones that are image-heavy. You can read more about them at PC Magazine’s review here.

• SiteGround
Siteground is known for their customer service and their clear understanding of WordPress CMS. If you are an entrepreneur or business with a website built on WordPress and you believe you may need serious hand-holding and super responsive tech support, then Siteground may be for you. I find their plans a little limiting for me and my sites, but I know a lot of WordPress users love this hosting company. You can read PC Magazine’s review of them here.

A website builder is a medium or interface that allows users to build websites, e-commerce websites and blogs without having to do back-end coding. There are two types of website builders: offline and online. Offline means you build the website on a computer through software and online means you build your website online through proprietary software provided by an online company, usually in the form of templates. Here are five of the better online website builders:

• Duda
Duda’s website builder is meant for the artist/designer with built-in brand-building technology, a client management interface, and a team collaboration tool for businesses and digital agencies. You can read why PC Magazine chooses Duda as their Editor’s Choice for website builders here.

• Pixpa
Pixpa is an all-in-one platform for photographers, artists, and designers to build a website, e-commerce store, client proofing, and blog easily and seamlessly. You can read more about Pixpa at SitePoint’s review here.

• Simvoly
Simvoly is an all-in-one website builder geared to a more advanced website owner and one more suited for building an e-commerce website. There are both landing pages and online stores. You can read more about Simvoly at PC Magazine’s review here.

• Squarespace
Squarespace is an all-in-one website builder where you can host, build, and design an elegant, mobile responsive website. They also offer the potential for full-scale commerce websites which include shopping carts. You can read more about Squarespace at PC Magazine’s review here.

• Wix
Wix is a cloud-based website builder that is simple to use with its drag-and-drop website creation tools. It’s one of the more popular website builders and considered easy to use. You can read more about Wix at PC Magazine’s review here.

There are a lot of email marketing tools that can help you grow your business. Often, new entrepreneurs handle everything involved in launching their business, including all of the marketing.

To support those efforts, I’ve compiled some of the most helpful email marketing tools I recommend to help develop a loyal following and turn your email list into raving fans.

Sending email newsletters to prospects and clients is one of the most popular uses of email marketing. Utilizing an email marketing service provider is a worthwhile way to reach potential customers and stay in contact with existing clientele. Email service providers are companies that send your newsletters and marketing message in bulk by offering an email marketing platform or software.

As examples, these are just a few of the many email service providers available. You should research what each email provider offers worthwhile solutions and tools that best fit your email messaging needs and level of coding knowledge.

• AWeber

AWeber is another email service provider that is only free to use in the beginning. Their free trial period is for 30 days, then the cost increases from $19.00 a month to $29.00, to $49.00, to $69.00, to a high of $149.00 per month before you need a quote for a list size greater than 25,000+ subscribers. AWeber’s marketing automation features are why a lot of large marketing companies like this email service provider.

• Constant Contact

Constant Contact is only free to use for the first 60 days, then the cost goes up substantially from there based on the size of your list. For example, a subscriber list of 0-500 is $20.00 a month, a list of 501-2500 is $45.00 a month and the monthly cost grows as your list reaches targeted thresholds. Constant Contact offers one of the largest free template libraries available which new email marketers like to use when first building their lists without having to learn HTML.

• Drip

Drip is popular with eCommerce businesses and they offer interfaces with both WooCommerce and WordPress platforms. Drip provides a lot of great email marketing tools to fully automate your marketing while being easy to use, but their service is also pricy starting at $41.00 a month. OUCH. What I don’t like about their website is that a business has to schedule a demo to get pricing details, while other email marketing review sites share Drip’s pricing model. I never understand marketing that places an extra step or wall in front of an interested customer who is price conscious. So that you are informed, Drip sells plans that start at $41.00 per month.

• GetResponse

GetResponse markets its platform as “marketing software for small businesses” but I think it costs too much for businesses with a small, growing list. I have personal to automate your marketing while being easy to use fully using GetResponse and many features I like about the interface, like it’s simple ability to integrate with WordPress and the site is easy to use, but the price … OUCH. GetResponse advertises a $15.00 monthly for up to 1,000 subscribers and an unlimited amount of emails, but you don’t get much in the way of bells and whistles and the tools you need for that price. You really have to start at the $49.00 a month level to access what you need and that’s pricey for a list under $5,000 subscribers. Once you purchase at the $49.00 level, you cannot downgrade your plan without leaving their service and I find their backend confusing and counterintuitive.

• iContact

iContact starts at $14.00 a month for 500 subscribers with unlimited sending and the cost increases as your list grows. A lot of small business owners like iContact because they don’t want to deal with or learn to code from scratch. iContact’s Message Builder offers users flexibility with newsletter layout and design.

• MailChimp

MailChimp is free to use up to 2,000 subscribers and 12,000 emails per month. This includes almost all of their features like drip automation and landing pages. MailChimp is easy to use but their basic email sign-up subscription forms and interface leave a lot to be desired. But as a simple email provider solution, it’s perfect.

• Brackets

Brackets is a source code editor with a primary focus on web development. Created by Adobe Systems, it is free and open-source software licensed under the MIT License and is currently maintained on GitHub by Adobe and other open-sourced developers. (Source: Wikipedia)

• Canva

Canva is a graphic-design tool website that offers a drag-and-drop format and provides access to photographs, graphics, fonts, email newsletter templates, and marketing templates. Canva for Work costs $12.95 per month. I use Canva but I often find the site speed frustrating when working with a design.

• CoffeeCup Free HTML Editor

CoffeeCup is one of my favorite services on the Internet. They offer a free HTML Editor, CSS Editor, and Quick-start Templates. The HTML Editor from CoffeeCup Software has it all! And with the free support, it is my default choice for a design editor.

• HTML Formatter

HTML Formatter is a free online tool to format an ugly HTML code, making it readable and pretty, with the proper indentation so you can check your email marketing templates once they’re complete for any mistakes or bad code.

• Litmus Community

When you join Litmus Community for free, you also receive access to free, modern HTML email templates and templates you can use for all kinds of automated marketing. The community itself is great with active email marketing discussion boards.

• Emotional Marketing Value Headline Analyzer

This free tool will analyze your headlines to determine an Emotional Marketing Value (EMV) score. Reaching customers in a deep and emotional way is a key to successful web content and copywriting, and headlines are unquestionably the most important piece of copy used to reach prospects. EMV analyzes and scores headlines based on the total number of EMV words it has in relation to the total number of words it contains. This will determine the EMV score of a headline. In addition to the EMV score, the analyzer shares which emotion a headline most impacts, either intellectual, empathetic, or spiritual.

• Google Trends

Google Trends is a website by Google that analyzes the popularity of top search queries in Google Search across various regions and languages. The website uses graphs to compare the search volume of different queries over time. (Source Google) Google Trends is a great tool for checking your keywords for popularity over time or to see if there is an upcoming trend that you might want to provide articles about to catch an online wave of visitors.

• Grammarly

Grammarly is an online grammar checker, spell checker, and plagiarism detection platform that can be used both on the website and with a browser extension. Grammarly’s proofreading and plagiarism-detection resources check against more than 250 grammar rules to help you catch your copywriting errors. There’s a minimal free version or the premium subscription at $29.95 per month.

• Hemingway Editor

The Hemingway Editor is a word processor and proofreading tool designed for writers. Hemingway Editor detects the presence of adverbs, hard to read sentences, complex words or phrases, and passive voice within a text. The interface believes in a minimalist writing style. Hemingway Editor offers an online version that you can use for free or you can purchase the desktop app for $19.99.

• Slogan Generator

Slogan Generator is a slogan creator to advertise or market your company, organization, business or product. Slogan Generator provides free slogans and taglines for your business or branding needs. Play with some keywords and watch Slogan Generator translate them into slogans. This is a fun tool for getting your creative juices flowing for advertising copy, titles, headlines, and email newsletter subject lines.

• UnSuckIt

UnSuckIt is a free online dictionary for translating awful business-speak into plain English.

• Yoast SEO for Everyone

Anybody can create a website using WordPress, but not everyone can get their site to rank in search engines. The Yoast SEO plugin, together with the SEO knowledge Yoast shares on the website Yoast SEO for Everyone, enables small entrepreneurs to compete with larger companies in search. The Yoast plugin for WordPress analyzes keywords, readability level, internal linking, and is a great SEO training tool. There is both a free and paid version for $89.00 per year.

• Pixabay

Pixabay is an international website for public domain photos, illustrations, vector graphics, and film footage that can be used to add graphics to email marketing campaigns or web content.

• Unsplash

Beautiful free images and photographs that can be download and used for any project.

• Picfont

Picfont is a quick and easy free online image editor to add text to photos. The text editor can be used to make a cool photo statement from their library of images, add graphics and effects or upload your own images. With all the fonts and models, create beautiful images to complement your email marketing or web content.

• Lunapic

LunaPic is a free online photo and image editor for editing, cropping, rotating, resizing, adding effects and transparency, creating slideshows, animation, and much more for email marketing or web content development.

I hope this list of email marketing tools will assist you with your email marketing. I am passionate about helping businesses improve their web content and online marketing efforts. If you feel overwhelmed by the idea of handling your email marketing or web content development, please contact me. I can help you get started, design a template that is customized for your needs, train you on how to use any of the tools listed here, or handle your email marketing and web content development for you with regular updates and reports on the progress. Please fill out my contact form here or feel free to email me at ch[at]catherinemhughes[dot]com.

I love helping businesses succeed!

Are you curious what the best web analytics tools are for online success? Alternatively, do you find yourself questioning why you need them or even what web owners use analytics for in today’s competitive online marketplace?

Reviewing and understanding your website’s web analytics allows you to see if your online content efforts are successful or unsuccessful, which content strategies you should improve, and what steps you need to take to achieve more desirable outcomes from your content marketing strategy.

Here is a quick list of the 8 most popular web analytics tools:

1. Google Analytics™
Google Analytics is a free web analytics engine offered by Google to analyze website traffic. The pay-per-click (PPC) advertising platform, Google Ads platform is also integrated with Google Analytics.

Marketer and best-selling author, Neil Patel, has a great article on 9 Awesome Things You Can Do With Google Analytics here.

2. Bing Webmaster Tools™
Bing webmaster tools is a free web analytics service which is part of Microsoft’s Bing search engine. Bing summarizes how well your website is performing and helps you identify what needs emphasis and improvement.

Search Engine Land contributor and Bing Chief Evangelist, Christi Olson, offers a series on The ultimate guide to using Bing Webmaster Tools here.

3. Woopra™
Woopra is a real-time customer analytics service used by sales, service and marketing teams. The platform is designed to help organizations optimize the customer life-cycle by delivering live, granular behavioral data for individual website visitors and customers. (Source: Wikipedia)

Woopra looks at visitor retention, sales funnels, site navigation, and launch campaign tracking. It includes the ability to live chat with site visitors while on your website.

Media and marketing education company, Zindo+Co’s editorial staff, discusses Woopra in the article, Woopra: Real-time Customer Analytics.

4. Clicky™
Clicky is a specific type of real-time web analytics that pays distinct attention to visitor clicks on the very first stage in your sales conversion funnel. Clicky is free for a single website with less than 3,000 pageviews per day.

Writer, Sharon Hurley Hall, offers her opinion at The Daily Egg on Clicky titled, Analytics Update: Do You Need a Second Analytics Package.

5. Chartbeat™
Chartbeat is a content intelligence platform for publishers to empower media companies to build loyal audiences with real-time and historical editorial analytics across desktop, social, and mobile platforms. Chartbeat helps digital publishing organizations understand what, within their content, is keeping people engaged. (Source: Chartbeat).

Search Engine Watch offers a review of Chartbeat by Resolution Media’s Amman Badlani called, Analytics in Real-Time with Chartbeat Publishing here.

6. UserTesting™
UserTesting is considered an industry leader in user testing and research. UserTesting boasts that they make it easy for website owners like you to get on-demand feedback from your target market—wherever they are—so you can protect your brand, boost conversions, and provide amazing web experiences.

Consultant and writer, Ritika Puri, shares her impression of UserTesting on How To Diagnose Costly Website Problems For Just $29 here.

7. FullStory™
FullStory is a is a customer experience data application that allows website owners the ability to replay any visitor’s interaction with your website and see what they like and don’t like about your web content.

Capterra offers FullStory reviews and pricing here.

8. CrazyEgg™
Crazy Egg offers visual reports that let website owners see how your visitors engage with your web pages. CrazyEgg is most known for its heat map tracking which allows you to view each movement of your web visitor’s cursor and everything they click on.

Chris Mercer at Seriously Simple Marketing offers his CrazyEgg critique, Tried And Tested: A CrazyEgg In-Depth Review right here.

In this digital marketing article, I’ve offered 8 best web analytics tools that you should consider using to analyze your website performance to gauge if your online marketing efforts are charming your visitors and converting them to evangelists.

What web analytics programs do you prefer and what features do you think still need to be developed? Let me know your thoughts in the comment section below.