Common Joomla Mistakes You May be Making

Joomla is one of the world’s favourite platforms for building eCommerce websites and all manner of other online business ventures. However, there are certain common mistakes made particularly by newcomers that have the potential to put a serious dent in the outfit’s potential for success.    Here at Pivotal Hosting, we’re always being asked to advise on how to take a Joomla-built eCommerce business to the next level, so what advice do we give? Well, we always insist that’s rarely something you’re not doing, but rather something you’re probably doing wrong. And in terms of common mistakes from the Joomla camp, the following tend to crop up way more than any others:Insufficient Keyword FocusKeywords are of the utmost importance for all eCommerce websites covering every imaginable niche. The trouble is that without the right keywords chosen with care and attention, even the most stunning eCommerce site will disappear into the background. Effective keyword choice means thinking beyond the obvious, targeting less competitive words and phrases and carrying out extensive research.Poor Template or Plugin ChoiceAnother common mistake when building a Joomla site is failing to take into account that not all of your target market will visit your sire using the same device and browser as you. To create a site that isn’t at least almost universally compatible with all popular browsers and device types is to deliver your site and business as a whole a severe handicap.Over-Egging the SEOIt’s not enough to build a Joomla eCommerce site that’s sort-of OK and then blast the whole thing with an OTT SEO campaign. This of course isn’t something that’s reserved exclusively for Joomla users as to get carried away with SEO as the sole tool for success is to risk the whole thing backfiring in a potentially fatal way.Opening External Links in the Same WindowAn extremely important tip for Joomla users – never incorporate links that will transfer your reader to a different site by leaving your site in the process. Instead, it’s crucially important to make sure that all external links across the whole of your site prompt the opening of new windows and don’t effectively boot your readers out each time they make a click. It’s bad for you and hugely annoying for them too!Using Too Large ImagesThe fact that no image resizing is currently offered is one of the biggest setbacks of Joomla – you have to go about the resizing yourself before uploading. Not that it won’t work at all if you use huge images, but you’ll end up harming the performance of your site by increasing load times and generally slowing the thing down.Using Spaces When Naming FilesAnd finally, any file created across the site should be named carefully without the use of spaces. Anywhere a space is left in a file name, it will be filled with “%20” which ends up not only looking a mess, but can also trigger all manner of problems. So instead of using spaces, use underscores instead.