With the world getting increasingly digital, your official website is the first thing that your potential customers would come across about your business. The website is the “best man” for your business and needs to look dapper, polished, and flawless all the time. This is extremely crucial as your business is banking on the site to drive traffic, bring results, and enhance the rate of conversion.
The web world is flooded with websites similar to your products or services. The competition is fierce and only has room for the most well-organized, attractive, professional, and cutting-edge websites.
Now, while you should focus on the best tips for a highly converting website, you must also be careful about the key mistakes that you must avoid while designing the website.
The post below sheds light on the major mistakes to steer clear of while designing the official website for your business.
Ditching the “mobile” game
With mobile phone fast becoming the browsing device of choice, all websites must maintain a responsive layout for users browsing through mobile devices. In other words, if your site is not designed to be mobile-friendly, it’s a waste.
If we study the numbers, around 70% online browsing populace comes from mobile phones. Google has also declared that mobile-adaptive websites will be given preference on SERP, and for all the right reasons. Your website should be friendly enough so that your visitors feel welcome. But, if your website only displeases a huge chunk of website visitors, you are going to lose business big time.
The number of mobile users is only growing; it’s imperative for businesses now to build up a professional mobile-friendly site to cater to the evolving range of mobile users.
Writing a story with a page title
The ideal page title is one that offers a glimpse of what the page has to offer just at a glance. But, a lengthy title is only a killjoy. Not only it’s boring but also gets cut off by Google while on display on SERP. And that might convey misleading information to readers, thereby affecting the ranking of the page. This is another grave mistake that you must be mindful of while designing the site.
You have to keep the title concise yet meaningful. One of the key aspects of an inspiring and converting title is a title within 70 characters. This way, the reader will have a complete view and understanding of the title at a glance, thereby leading to several voluntary website visits.
SEO taking a backseat
You are aware of the strong presence of your competitor's websites. You know it would be hard to make the cut in a cut-throat competition if your website is unable to make it to the top results on Google. So, how would you achieve that coveted top result? It’s rather simple- complying with your website with Google’s specific requirements. And one of the key aspects here is SEO-optimized web content.
Alas, some web designer-developers are so engrossed in banners and graphics that the need for SEO-optimized content often takes a backseat. And, it’s a mistake that could be nearly fatal for the competitive edge of your site.
In other words, make sure to optimize your website content as per Google algorithm requirements. Simultaneously, you have to ensure that the content is appealing to your target audience as well. The ultimate goal is not just to find a top spot on SERP but also to inspire potential customers to visit your site and keep them engaged so that visits could turn into positive conversions.
Sloth speed
“Slow” is not really appealing, especially when it comes to website content.
The modern world is in a rush where people barely have time to stand and stare – they are looking for speed that can offer them quality insights without eating up their time unnecessarily. In such a hyperactive world, slow load speed is one of the biggest mistakes found with several websites.
If your site takes too long to load, your visitor might simply move to your competitor, no matter how great your content is. One of the major causes of slow load speed is lengthy content. Sure Google loves long content but your audience might not. So, keep the content crisp and short, without compromising on needed information.
Besides, don’t burden your site with videos as these too can take a toll on site speed. Videos are certainly leverage for a modern website but keep them on a limited range. Don’t put videos where they are not needed.
Poor CTA visibility
CTA elements are meant to inspire your website visitors to take a concrete action that is likely to lead to conversions and sales. No matter how amazing your website is if the CTA is not properly visible and legible, the website won’t be able to perform online. Worse, the website would leave the visitor confused about where to find the CTA element so that they might take an action. This way, the website would lose out on several visitors who were otherwise interested in taking a step forward with your site.
An almost non-visible CTA is almost equivalent to having no CTA on the site.
Rather, you should be careful about the clear visibility of CTA on every web page. Every page must use icons, links, or tabs that would lead visitors straight to the offer request or contact form page. The pages, each of them, must be equipped to nudge your visitors to the ultimate agenda- sales and more sales.
As mentioned before, people are always in rush today. They have no spare time to comb out your pages for CTA- if they don’t find it at a glance, then chances are high that they would leave you for a more comfortable site.
Playing the wrong game with content
Bombarding the site with too many unnecessary elements would only lead to a cluttered UI. The design team might be excited about putting various kinds of content but wait before you go all-in. The idea is to inspire conversion from visitors and that won’t be viable if your website visitors don’t feel connected with the site.
Too many colours and fonts could create a messy and jumbled look that could be an eye sore to visitors. Worse, clutter all around would badly hamper navigation and might force your visitors to leave the site.
You certainly don’t want that. So, it’s better you rather proceed with a plan and strategy for proper usage and placement of contents. Don’t put anything that’s not directly relevant to your site business, brand, and offerings. Try to maintain a clean streamlined look that would help to attain an intuitive UI. The goal is to make the visit as seamless as possible for your visitors.
Not minding colour contrast
The general rule is to feature the brand colors on the website since your site is the best man for your business online. But in doing so, designers might overlook the fact of whether or not the colors are able to create a smooth visual flow over the web pages. And that creates visual interruption and confusion – a strict No-No if you want to keep your visitors to your website. A recent survey has reported that 80% of homepages surveyed suffer from colour contrast issues.
Your website is not only about imparting insights about your business and offerings. It’s also about creating a smooth and pleasant visual experience for the visitors. Colour contrast plays a key role in crafting an inviting visual experience. Your brand colors are certainly significant but if they only lead to visual clash when used on the website, don’t use them over a larger surface area. Rather use those shades that would altogether help to build a pleasant visual story with strategic colour contrast.
Dated information
Do you apply the same marketing strategy to your promotional efforts that you used to deploy 5 years back? Chances are high that you don’t- the market is always evolving and so are the strategies. Some strategies do stand the test of time but most of the others need to be altered as per the changing demands of the market.
The same applies to website design- however, a lot of businesses are yet to envision that. In fact, not updating the website as per the demands of time is one of the biggest mistakes seen with website design. And if your site is not able to come up with updated content about your offerings or if it is still stuck with old images and videos that appeal no more- it will lose out on its competitive edge.
The website design world welcomes new trends and bids adieu to dated ones every year. Thus, you must make sure to update the site as per the latest trends to maintain your competitive edge in the market. Timely website redesigning is extremely crucial to leverage your peak position in the modern fiercely competitive market.
Updating a site is not just integrating new design trends. It’s also about checking for existing glitches, such as missing pages, broken links, insufficient content, and so on- and making the necessary updates in the nick of time.
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