In a world with 644 million active websites, a single mistake on your company’s web design can cause your visitors to abandon you in flocks. A high bounce rate, although bad on its own, can also cause Google to take a closer look at the shortcomings of your website and therefore further lower your rank. In other words, a single major flaw in your web design and you are done for. With this in mind and in order to help you overcome this obstacle on your road to success, here are four common web design mistakes that small businesses keep making over and over again.
1. Putting too much content on the homepage
Every single element of your website requires an additional HTTP request, which means that the more you have of them the slower your website will be. This is just one of the reasons why you shouldn’t put too much content on the homepage. Another reason for this is the fact that your audience will get easily distracted from things that really matter (call-to-action button(s) and contact info). Finally, trying to squeeze too much content will reduce this page’s friendliness to touch, which is an irredeemable sin in the mobile digital world of 2017.
2. Bad CTA button(s)
Another mistake that a lot of websites make is ignoring their call-to-action (CTA) button(s). You see, every website has an agenda. Some want to close a sale, others to make you subscribe, while there are those who would simply like to make you curious about the topic so that you want to learn more. The first step on this digital breadcrumb trail is the CTA button(s). Recent statistics show that red CTA has about 21 percent greater click-through rate than the green one. Furthermore, by making your CTA button(s) spam-like you are further going to decrease your chances. Overall, your main goal here is to make the button(s) as organic and as appropriate to your website as possible.
3. DIY web design project
Even though it is completely possible for a layman to make a decent web design, when it comes to your business (your livelihood), decent simply doesn’t sound good enough. Sure, with WordPress and drag-and-drop website builders, you could potentially be able to design without writing a single line of the code, still, wouldn’t you rather entrust this to a professional? You don’t have to hire a major design company when you can get a skilled freelance web developer to do the job for just a fraction of the price. If you still aren’t comfortable with this, you could do some homework on their portfolio and in this way get a basic idea of what you can expect should you opt for this course of action.
4. Irrelevant images and videos
Finally, you need to be aware of the fact that 8 out of 10 people online won’t read past the headline. Nonetheless, with adequate images, videos or even a soundtrack, you might be able to encourage them to skim through and ultimately even read the text. Unfortunately, this is a double-edged sword, seeing how using attractive images that don’t fit the context or have nothing at all to do with your content is a bad practice, which will get interpreted as a deliberate deception by some of your readers. Needless to say, this is something you want to avoid at all costs.
In the end…
Of course, these are not all mistakes one can make when constructing their first company website. Hiding navigation or making it counter-intuitive, placing ads in the middle of the content and poor management of whitespace are honorable mentions of other things you can get wrong in the process. Still, steering clear of just these above-listed four can on its own ensure that your website is off to a good start.