9 Common Web Design Mistakes that Small Business Make
Today, most consumers rely on the internet to find information that will help them to make smarter decisions. This behavior trend emphasizes the importance of online presence for a business.
If you are a booming business in today’s modern marketplace, you need a professional website that can enhance the growth of your business. However, before getting started, read this blog and make sure you have not committed any mistake that will ruin your image among customers!
1. Lack Of Research
If you are developing a website, it is very important to understand the customer persona before designing it. Analyze the real user problem and have a clear solution for them on your website. Knowing your audience will help you to make choices regarding features and design elements. Here are certain questions that you must ask before building your website,
- Who are my ideal clients?
- What is the current behavioral pattern of my clients?
- What are the goals and needs of my clients?
- What are the issues and pain-points do clients face currently?
Stat: People take about 0.05 seconds to decide whether they like your website or not.
2. Improper Positioning of CTA
CTA is considered as a gateway to your business. It is very important to place CTA in the right place and it should explain to visitors what they want to do. You should provide all the beneficial information about the services that visitors need to know before grabbing your service via CTA. Also, make sure there are minimal and effective sections in your forms.
Stat: 70% of small business websites fail to place a CTA button on homepage.
3. Poor Use of White Space
Content is one of the crucial parts of your website and marketing campaign. It allows you to describe your services and products to visitors. So, make a wise choice of font and layout of the page. Add limited information and updated content wherever possible. Make good use of white space instead of dumping a block of texts all over the page.
Stat: 75% of customers judge a company’s credibility based on website design.
4. Not Following a Proper Brand Guide
Brand guide is one of the essential documents a business must hold. It gives consistency for your website even if it is modified or redesigned by a new designer. Brand guidelines are utilized as a resource by most of the organizations to understand how to represent their brand. It communicates a variety of things about your brand, both internally to your organization/business and externally to your partners, affiliates, or other general public. If you fail to follow a proper guideline, inconsistency may spread across your website which can affect user experience.
Stat: 38% of the people stop engaging to a website with unattractive content and layout.
5. Irrelevant Images and Stock Images
Images and graphics act as an integral part of web design. Important information can be quickly conveyed via images rather than writing complex readable paragraphs. Business owners must be more careful in choosing images because low quality and boring stock images will muck up your website and reduce your visitors. Likewise, irrelevant images will confuse readers and they might not understand what you are trying to say. Therefore, grab a professional custom web development and design service providers and make your website unique.
Stat: Website visitors spend almost 5.94 seconds in looking at the website’s main image.
6. Weak SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
Search engine algorithms are grown smarter today. A few years back, people used a lot of black hat techniques like keyword stuffing, irrelevant backlinks, hiding content, etc. Anyone following these practices can get penalized or lose website authority nowadays. Therefore, make sure you provide quality content and focus on long-tail keywords that can help readers. If you are displaying quality content, search engines are going to rank you anyways.
Stat: 50% of search queries hold four words or longer.
7. No Analytics to Measure Performance
One of the important things to protect your investment over the website is to analyze your process and measure success. You can gain the entire benefit of online marketing only if you are able to test, track, and adjust your business improvements. This analysis can be done with free tools like Google Analytics. By coupling the data from analytics you can specifically target and retarget the audience those who bring you business.
8. Hidden Contact Information
Clear contact information help to minimize clicks and maximize opportunities. More often than not, business owners fail to display their mobile numbers prominently on a dedicated contact page. Website visitors may not like to search on how to get in touch with you. So, do not neglect to display your contact details on your contact page, header, or footer. If you are adding details on your contact page, make sure you link the page in the main navigation.
9. Mobile Responsiveness
Customer’s impression about a website is now contingent on how it looks on their mobile devices. Due to this fact, if you miss an opportunity, your competitors may try to take advantage. Therefore, make a lasting impression among your customers by providing them with a mobile-friendly experience. Also, make sure your website looks good even on all other devices like desktop, tablet, iPhone, iPad, etc.
Stat: 57% of internet users do not recommend a poorly developed website design on mobile.
Winding Up
A cluttered website will affect traffic because site visitors will not return back if they can’t understand what you are trying to convey. Many great contents may stay useless due to minor website mistakes. Thus, use this information effectively and try to focus on providing great user-experience to your customers.
Have you ever noticed any other mistakes on websites? Do share it in the comment section below!
About the Author - Srividhya
Srividhya is a copywriter at ColorWhistle. She’s passionate about writing blogs related to web development, web designing, online marketing, and more. In her spare time, she works out or paints.
