If you are a start-up planning to set up a website in WordPress, you must be aware of some common mistakes which many beginners commit. It is not bad to commit mistakes, but to be forewarned is to be forearmed. Let’s have a look at some of the mistakes to be kept at bay.
Avoid These 7 Common Mistakes on Your WordPress Website
1. Using A WordPress Platform Rather Than a Self- Hosted One
- For beginners, the hosted WordPress platform is very simple and easy to use, but there is very little room for customization. Many beginners fall into this trap but they do not realize the benefits of owning a self-hosted platform.
- One reason why a Hosted WordPress platform is attractive to so many newbie’s is that it comes free of cost. But as they progress, the newbie bloggers realize that many features they could have used to their advantage are missing. That means a lot of wasted time and effort.
2. Outdated and Insecure Themes
- Beginners very often use themes and plugins that are free but infrequently updated. Some themes are great looking but after they have been launched, their developers hardly give those a second look. So, how does this impact your website? Outdated or infrequently updated themes can affect your website in a multiple way. One, it can get infected with a bug. Two, any deficiencies in the theme may adversely impact your website visits.
- Take up those themes or plugins that are regularly updated. It is preferable to buy themes because this way, the WordPress developers keep on working on their products regularly, so that more buyers come to them.
- Another thing to be noted is that choose only those themes that are suitable for your business.
3. Choosing Too Many Plugins
- Plugins give functionality to your website and help the visitors interact with you. When you launch your WordPress website, you will be tempted to install as many plugins as you can.
- However, using too many plugins may lead to a slow website and that may leave a bad impression on your visitors. As a start-up, would you want many potential buyers walking away from your site for this reason? I am sure, your answer will be No.
- Having too many plugins has another downside as well –i.e you will be hard pressed to keep those plugins updated.
4. Not Renaming the “Sample Page”
- When you launch your WordPress website, the platform will automatically launch a “Sample Page”. If you continue with this default page, it will create a dissonance with your visitors. This default page may not affect the SEO performance of your site but it is advisable to delete or rename it.
- Another default page which you must remove is the “Hello World” page.
5. Do you have Backups?
- It is amazing to know that so many website owners do not have a back-up of all their important files. Many of them presume that their hosting service providers must be keeping a back-up of all their content. No, it is not necessary that your provider would be giving you this service. Or even if he is, the service would be outdated or would be susceptible to attacks by bots or viruses.
- Look up on the web to find out how you can keep your web content backed up. A little bit of extra hard work is necessary to ensure that your content remains safe and backed up.
- A good back up service provides safety against hackers, host failure, viruses, user error, malware and exploits. The back-up is also easy for site migration.
- It is recommended that you take up a priced plan so that you are regularly updated about the latest developments happening on the back-up front.
6. Keeping Website un Optimized
- While it is great to populate your website with great content frequently, you must also pause and check whether your website is optimized.
- Too many heavy images may slow down your site and this may result in loss of visitors and later, loss of sales.
- A good website must load within 3 seconds and if it is not happening that way, you must speak with your WordPress development company USA about optimizing your site. There are many tools that let you check your site load speed. Some of them are Pingdom, ySlow, Google PageSpeed, GT Metrix and WebPageTest.
- Choose the right host and optimize your site by modifying the file sizes of your images and other media. You can also consider installing the Yoast SEO plugin or the All in one SEO tool for site optimization. These plugins come free but you can also acquire their premium versions.
7. Google Analytics
- Avoid the mistake of NOT adding Google Analytics to your website. GA measures the number of site visits and much more. It can tell the website owner about the time spent of a visitor on the website, which pages are performing and which one are not, the traffic sources, age of the visitors and much more. Google Analytics can also tell about which operating systems are working for you and which are not. Based on this information, you can re-fashion your site so that your site can be operated flawlessly. Create goals and track them.
- You can also find out the percentage of unique visits versus returning visitors to your website through the Google Analytics tool.
- Setting up Google Analytics is not a difficult job. The Google Analytics for WordPress plugin can be installed without copy-pasting any code.
While launching a WordPress- based website is a great idea because of its functionality, there are certain mistakes that should be avoided. May the tips mentioned would help you build an unflawed WordPress website!