Every company’s website serves as its foundation. That’s why you need to avoid common web design mistakes and create a well-designed website if you want your business to succeed in the modern world. As a result of the new normal, an increasing number of potential customers are using the internet to search for products and services or visit the company website to look for information.
A professionally designed website can aid in business growth because a fantastic first impression of potential customers will persuade them to take the appropriate action. However, common website design mistakes can often undermine even your best efforts. And even though you get a lot of tips on how to construct an excellent website. But are you aware of what NOT to do?
We’ve listed nine frequent website design mistakes affecting many businesses to give you a head start. To increase your chances of converting visitors, stay away from them when designing your website. So, without any further delay, let’s dive in!
Common Web Design Mistakes and How to Avoid Them
1. It Takes Too Long for Your Website to Load
If your site takes too long to load, you must rethink some design elements. The user experience on your website will improve the quicker it loads. We won’t go into great detail on how to speed up your website; instead, we’ll just touch on the basics to get you started.
The first thing you should consider is optimising your website’s images, especially the ones on the home page. Users will leave a landing page with images and graphics that take too long to load, so make sure to reduce the size of your images and optimise your content whenever you can.
Heavy plugins, themes, and modules can further increase the time it takes for your website to load. You can speed up the process by updating these elements to newer versions, especially if you haven’t updated them in a while.
2. Lack of Attention to Accessibility & Intuitive Navigation
Many web design mistakes come from skipping the crucial steps of brainstorming, creating a sitemap, and wireframing. One of the obvious ones is the poor menu and navigation design. Since it is difficult to navigate through websites with randomly structured navigation, it might be detrimental to your website’s user retention.
If you’re developing a website with many pages, it makes sense to categorise and arrange them hierarchically so that users can easily navigate the website.
Additionally, navigation differs depending on the device. You must choose the right technique, even if there are numerous ways to use navigation.
In addition to navigation, important website elements from the standpoint of accessibility include text size, colour contrasts, page titles, image alternate text, keyboard accessibility, moving and blinking contents like carousels, advertising, auto-playing videos, scrolling news feeds, and tickers.
Zooming the content on small devices may be helpful for someone with hypermetropia. A person with vision impairment could prefer listening to speech to reading text when accessing information. An attention-deficit user might want to pause carousels and other things.
All of this is addressed in effective web design to improve website accessibility. Making mistakes like this can harm the user experience and hurt your business.
3. Your Website Is Not Responsive and Mobile-Friendly
You lose out on many visitors if your website is not responsive, mobile-friendly, and scaled nicely to a smaller screen. This is because users of mobile devices will abandon your page if they cannot access it or adequately read its information.
According to a recent survey, 83.32% of people worldwide currently use smartphones, which can generate thousands or even millions of internet browsing traffic.
That means that more than half of your visitors expect you to give a quality experience to their mobile devices, therefore if you want to keep this significant portion of users engaged with your content, you should make sure that you can match their expectations by ensuring your website is responsive and mobile-friendly.
4. Poor Website Design or Layout
Users must be able to utilise your website easily, especially if there is a specific purpose you want them to do, like signing up for your newsletter or buying something from your store.
It’s likely that your website’s navigational structure has not been properly planned out and constructed for your users if you haven’t given this any thought. Users frequently become stuck in a loop and cannot understand your content, which prevents them from returning.
You should examine how your design and layout elements are currently created if you are seeing a reduction in users or poor user retention. You run the risk of confusing and aggravating your customers if your menu layouts are confusing.
People have more options than ever before, so if your website does not provide them with all they need, they will most likely look elsewhere.
5. You Are Missing A Clear Call-to-Action (CTA)
If you see that even if you are receiving a lot of traffic, your objective to entice users to buy a product or sign up for a free trial is not being met, you may not be directing your users’ attention in the right direction.
Another typical web design mistake is not having a clear call to action. Websites resemble a sales and marketing funnel. In that funnel, your website visitor moves from the stage of prospects to the stage of converted clients. Many hot prospects might not convert without a clear “call to action” on your website.
Implementing and making your Call to Action known is the best and most efficient way to accomplish your goal. Make sure that what you want them to perform is crystal clear and that they can do the tasks you have in mind for them.
Your overall plan will decide what task a new user is expected to do. Do you want people to sign up and start making purchases, or do you want them to read your content regularly and interact with you? Whatever you choose, ensure that your design complies with it and makes it possible for you to carry it out.
6. Using Low-Quality or Irrelevant Images
We know how important graphics and images are in web design. When used effectively, images may communicate to the visitor what you want them to know. If done wrong, they may mislead or confuse the reader.
Many companies continue to use irrelevant and low-quality images without giving them any thought. Avoid making this error since it can ruin your website and push users away, decreasing conversions.
Similarly, irrelevant images confuse your visitors and discourage them from acting as you want. You should also avoid overcrowding your website with images, as doing so can cause visitors to look away from the CTA and reduce conversion rates.
7. You Don’t Implement SEO or Use Analytics
A diagnosis is necessary before you can treat a problem. The best diagnostic tools for gauging the popularity of your website are SEO and analytics, which can inform you of how well it performs in terms of positioning and ranking.
Due to the extremely low probability that users would view the second or third pages of a search engine results list, SEO will ensure that your website shows considerably higher up on the search results pages.
You may learn more about visitor behaviour on the page and the average visit duration on your website with the help of analytics. This is a useful method for determining if recently added website features are functioning and whether users are using them as planned.
Additionally, you can monitor their activity just before they leave your page. You can identify and fix the problem if many of the same tasks are completed shortly before a user logs off or closes the browser tab.
8. Does Not Keep Content Fresh and Updated
You know how an old website appears to users if you’ve been to one with out-of-date content or a neglected news section. People are less likely to interact with a website that can’t answer their questions and are, therefore, more likely to look elsewhere for news and content.
The same thing occurs with blogs. Sometimes a blog begins with frequent updates that gradually diminish before ceasing altogether. If your blog is not updated, it is much less likely that people will start with older content.
Make sure to stay on top of this with your website so that you can draw in new people and then keep them coming back frequently with new content. People want current, fresh content that adheres to its delivery schedule.
9. Your Website Is Missing Important Information
If you do not list your interests and businesses on your website, you lose out on significant traffic because visitors are eager to learn more about these things.
Incorporate Google Maps into your location section if you want to draw customers to your physical location. You should also have accurate address information so customers can find your company quickly.
You will only get good business from your website if your details are present or correct. Any contact information you have provided must be accurate. Ensure the email address listed on your website is an attended inbox you can access.
Remember to stay on top of your users’ correspondence and respond as often and promptly as possible. If visitors send emails to an address that is never read, you are wasting both your time and their time.
Avoid Common Web Design Mistakes with Digital Rescue
With these quick fixes for some of the most common website mistakes, you can quickly attract more customers and increase your business revenue. When creating a new website, take the following best practices into account:
- Use a compelling call to action to direct people in a specific direction.
- Install Google Analytics to track website analytics and include SEO in your digital marketing strategy.
- Offer crystal clear messaging to the right audience with fresh and up-to-date content.
- Optimise all your web design elements to enhance your page’s loading time and improve the user experience.
- Prioritise accessibility and intuitive navigation during your web design planning stage.
- Ensure that your website is responsive and mobile-friendly.
- Maintain accurate and complete information about your company to avoid wasting your and your customer’s time.
If you’re a business owner with much on your plate, consider hiring a professional web design agency like Digital Rescue. By giving your customers the best possible user experience, we can ensure your website generates leads for your company. And, more crucially, avoiding all the common web design mistakes.
In addition to web design and development, we collaborate with our sister company TopRankings, the leading SEO agency in Melbourne, to offer advice on the right content marketing to attract an audience, effective search engine optimisation techniques, and a strategic social media campaign.
Raise your hand and get rescued today – it’s that easy. Contact us today and get started with your FREE chemistry call.
