The first mistake I’d like to start off with is a big mistake and, obviously, that’s why it’s number one. The biggest mistake I see business owners making on the Internet is the fact that they employ a graphic designer to build their website.

Now, I’m not saying graphic designers do not have a place. They do a great job, but it’s only one function of a website. In fact, if you’ve got a pretty looking website but no one’s coming there because the search engines can’t find you, or there’s no marketing structures or methods built into the website - so, in other words, it’s not selling, it’s just a glossy brochure.

Some companies do just need a website that is a particular site that is informative, but most websites owned by business owners really should have marketing built into their websites.

If you’ve got a great business but it’s in the middle of the desert and no one’s going past, what’s the point? It’s just like having a website that the search engines can’t see, because a lot of graphic artists put flash onto a website. Flash is one of those big animation type of websites and the search engines can’t see them. There’s nothing for them to read, so it throws them away.

Secondly, human visitors also click off the website too, because they don’t like to see that sort of stuff loading.

So, mistake number one is graphic designers who don’t understand marketing and they don’t understand search engines, so be careful, because what normally happens is the business owner will say to the secretary, “Can you look up a couple of places in the yellow pages or on the Internet?” And the secretary will go find a website that looks pretty.

This happens a lot. This is a very common mistake and it ends up costing the business owner a lot of money, because they keep going to different graphic artists and keep spending, when really the answer is never in the graphic artist. It’s in the marketing and the search engines. So, a graphic designer is the first mistake.