A professional website is a must for expanding your customer base, building trust with your audience, increasing your authority, and building strong relationships with your customers.
Ideally the site:
- should be intuitive and comfortable to use
- must provide a steady flow of leads
- must make sales
Creating a website has become much easier recently thanks to the emergence of special constructors that do not require you to know code and do almost everything for you. Constructors are positioned for beginners, not for professionals, which is understandable, because professionals do not need assistants and can create a website on their own from scratch.
The abundance of designers, on the one hand, has made it easier for small and medium business owners to conquer the digital space, and on the other hand, has spoiled their absolute majority. If earlier, to develop a website, it was necessary to think through all the little things on your own, now people rely entirely on the capabilities of designers. However, this does not cancel out mistakes, sometimes completely annoying.
Today we will figure out what mistakes are most often made and what needs to be taken into account when creating a website. We hope you will take the advice below into account, because preventing errors on websites is much cheaper than fixing them after launch.
Mistake 1: Too many different styles and fonts
The website owner is tempted to try as many different styles and fonts as possible, because your own website is the perfect platform for creativity. But this is a bad idea. The website should be made in a single style that conveys your individuality and tells clients what your goals are.
Visual consistency plays a huge role in the success of a website, as it increases audience trust and company recognition. Large companies often have entire branding guidelines, the purpose of which is to compile all marketing materials in the same style.
Mistake 2: Lack of visual harmony
One of the common mistakes is that the site either has too much of everything or practically nothing. Too many images, fonts, text creates a feeling of overload, the message of the site is blurred, and its goals become vague. On the other hand, a site that consists only of empty blocks also cannot offer anything good to customers.
Mistake 3: Complex navigation
Web design errors can include poor navigation. The site may have an opaque structure: it is not clear what subsections the pages consist of, how to get from one page to another, or how to return to the main page.
Be sure to place a menu with links to the main pages and sections of the site at the top or side of the screen.
Mistake 4: Bad photos
Don’t fill your site with stock images. It’s better to give preference to your own high-quality photos. Low-quality images are an absolute faux pas and are unacceptable under any circumstances.
Images should be optimized for fast loading of the site and should also be relevant to the topic of the page, otherwise it will only confuse and confuse users, which will negatively affect engagement and conversion.
Websites without any images look empty and uninviting, which increases user churn.
Error 5: Missing favicon
A favicon may seem like an insignificant element of a website to some, but even it can have a positive impact on how your audience perceives your website. It makes it easier for your website to be found among the many open browser tabs.
Mistake 6: Inappropriate colors
Choose a color palette that reflects your brand philosophy. For example, if you have a legal website , subdued colors (black, dark blue, brown, gray, gold) will do. The optimal number of colors on a website is four.
When filling out your page template, choose colors that will contrast with the background and make the text easy to read.
Error 7: Text is too long
Don’t try to fit all the text you’ve prepared onto the site. Choose only the most important points. Sometimes a powerful but short headline can say more than a whole paragraph of vague text. This is especially true for home pages and landing pages. Be concise, keep users engaged with professionally written text without unnecessary fluff.
The text must be unique, written specifically for you. No copying from external sources! It is recommended to alternate it with blocks of empty space for better readability.
To accurately reflect the brand’s philosophy, a web page should contain at least 250 words. If you can write thousands of words about your product, refrain from long monotonous texts: it is unlikely that the client will want to spend time reading them.
Error 8: Useless animation
Flashing banners, flashy GIF animations, pompous visual effects accompanying basic actions on the site – all of this spoils the impression of the site. Nowadays, users simply do not have time to admire visual delights. They came for information, and your job is to give it to them as quickly as possible. Animation has a powerful effect only when used moderately and only when it is absolutely necessary.
Error 9: No blog as a source of relevant content
If you want to do more than just have a nominal presence online, but rather gain authority and a loyal audience that follows your every move and awaits the release of a new product, be sure to start a blog. There, you will post original content, negotiate with other experts to publish guest posts or interviews to increase the visibility of your brand and its appeal.
Mistake 10: Keywords are used incorrectly
Google favors relevant content that follows the rules. Using too many keywords without context may temporarily boost your site’s rankings, but at the cost of user engagement.
Dead text that doesn’t add any value and is only used as a backdrop for keywords will seriously damage your authority.
Error 11: Users are given too many choices
Don’t overcomplicate your site. As soon as you offer too many options to users, they stop interacting with you because they experience what is known as ” analysis paralysis” – a phenomenon where a person refuses to make a decision because of the large amount of information to analyze and the fear of choosing the wrong option.
Mistake 12: Annoying typos and grammar errors
Typos and errors on websites negatively affect the company’s reputation and look unprofessional. Be sure to check the text before publishing it.
Error 13: Missing Lead Magnets
If you have registration forms and want to get users’ data (email, phone, name), then be sure to prepare lead magnets to increase the attractiveness of the subscription. This can be a reference book or a checklist.
Error 14: Video autoplay
Videos that play automatically after opening a page can cause discontent. Why? Your site can be viewed at different times of the day (including at night) and in different places (including places where sharp and loud sound can cause discontent among others).
Error 15: Annoying pop-ups
Marketers are positive about pop-ups. However, you shouldn’t launch them right after a customer opens your site. Instead, schedule them to appear some time later, when they are more familiar with your company and are ready for tempting offers. Another option is to launch an exit pop-up, which appears before the user is about to close your site.
Error 16: Working with tabs
The user chooses which pages to open and which to close. If after clicking on a link the system redirects him to another page in the same tab, this causes unpleasant emotions – the connection with the page on which the user was located is lost, as a result he cannot navigate the site normally. If you have a pdf file or other resource in the form of a link, make it load in a separate tab.
Internal links that do not lead to downloadable materials, on the contrary, should open in the same tab.
Error 17: No clear and understandable CTA buttons
A call to action button is the culmination of any landing or product page. If it is not there, the user does not understand what to do with all this information and where to go next. In such a situation, he will simply close the page and go to competitors who know exactly what they want from him.
First, decide on the purpose of the site: do you want the customer to make a purchase / subscribe to the newsletter / contact you? There should be a CTA button for each of these cases.
We recommend adding no more than one CTA button per page.
Error 18: Contact details are missing or difficult to find
A customer who can’t find your contact information the first time will leave the site, and this cannot be allowed. The link to the “Contacts” page should be in a visible place.
It is also recommended to duplicate contacts in the footer of the pages. Add as many channels for contacting you as possible: mobile and landline phone, email, social networks, address and directions.
Keep your contact information up to date.
Error 19: Mobile optimization not provided
Given the huge segment of global mobile traffic, it is necessary to provide an adaptive design of the site so that it is equally convenient to use on both PCs and mobile devices. Mobile sites have a completely different structure and hierarchy. Here and here we talked about their features in more detail.
Error 20: Slow loading site
Slow loading is a business website killer. Optimize your website loading time to under 3 seconds, otherwise user engagement will be zero.
How to do it?
Choose jpeg images rather than png
Compress photos
Embed video in text as a link instead of uploading it to your website
Disable unnecessary plugins
Error 21. Incorrect SEO optimization
SEO optimization affects the site’s position in search results. The higher the site is on the search results page, the more potential customers will see it. How to achieve good ranking?
SEO recommendations:
- Use the right keywords, but add them where appropriate, taking into account the context. They should look natural.
- It’s not the quantity that matters, but the quality. It often happens that a keyword with a broader meaning attracts more traffic, but this audience is not the target audience, and if they get to your site, they will leave it in a second, because your site does not correspond to their true requests.
- Optimize URLs.
- Use unique metadata on each page
- Submit XML Sitemap to Google Search Console
- Avoid situations where two or more pages are written for one keyword. They begin to compete with each other for positions in the search results, and this is bad for the visibility of the site.
- Start a blog to publish and regularly update useful content
- Write meta tags (Title, Description) taking into account the character limit. You can use various services to check the limits, for example, this one .
Error 22: Failure to Pre-Test a Site
Any website should be tested for errors before launch.
Error 23: Standard 404 pages
There is nothing worse than a regular 404 page. It doesn’t evoke positive emotions in the audience anyway, and if it is also a template, then the impression of the site is noticeably spoiled even for the most loyal users. Here we tell you how to make a 404 page that customers will remember for a long time.
Error 24: The search function is not thought out
The search function is especially relevant for online stores with a large range of products. But even if you have a regular corporate site, the search bar must be present. This will make it easier for the user to find the information he needs.
Error 25: Missing links to privacy policy or copyright notices
Be sure to include all necessary legal documents on your website to protect your company from liability and to tell your client who you are and what you do.
Error 26: The site is not adapted for people with disabilities
People with disabilities also use the Internet and can open your site. Make it easier for them to view pages. For example, add a high-contrast mode or a screen magnifier for the visually impaired, alt tags for the blind, subtitles for videos for deaf or hard of hearing people, etc.
Error 27: No FAQ section
Typically, a client who lands on a company’s website is looking for answers to questions and wants to dispel doubts about a product/service. If you answer the most popular questions from clients, you will bring them closer to conversion.
Error 28: The site plan and goals are not formulated
Before you start building a website, ask yourself the following questions:
- What is the purpose of my website?
- Who is the target audience?
- How will I attract traffic to the site?
- Who will be responsible for maintaining and updating the site? How often?
- How much will it cost to maintain a website?
- If you don’t have a clear answer to these questions, there’s a good chance that the resulting site won’t work effectively.
Error 29: Metrics not parsed
Even after you’ve successfully launched a site that attracts targeted traffic, your work doesn’t end there. You need to monitor your site’s analytics to better understand what topics and techniques work best with your audience.
The site requires constant improvement, and analyzing metrics provides the information needed to make the right decisions and make changes to strategies.
Web Designer Mistakes – Conclusion
Learn about the 29 common mistakes made when creating websites and how to avoid them. Improve your website’s performance, user experience, and SEO with expert tips and best practices. Discover top web design services to help you build a successful website.
