What are the Common Website Design Mistakes to Avoid?
The website has increasingly become the means to devise strategies for audience outreach. It is among the essential means to communicate with the target market about various aspects. The website acts as the critical point of interaction that new businesses can have with their prospects. Hence your website must be designed with proper workflows that improve user experience and increase conversions.
Studies show that visitors make an opinion about the website within 50 ms. Moreover, the website design is a critical factor for 48% of internet users to understand a company’s credibility. (Source: Review42) The website design must be thoughtful and not hamper the website's potential to draw visitors. The article discusses some of the most common website design mistakes.
Common Website Design Mistakes to Avoid at Any Cost
Not Choosing a Responsive Design
Search engines provide more significant weightage to mobile users. Hence websites must optimise the design to help them. It would help if you kept in mind that smartphones have varying screens. It would be difficult for users to pinch and zoom to view the information on the website.
With the number of mobile internet users increasing, the website must be responsive. It means the user must have the same experience whether viewing on the desktop or any handheld device. The website can be dynamically served on all handsets and provide the same quality experience to all users.
No Specific Call to Action
It is great to have an informative website that will provide the visitors with the necessary information. But, as part of your digital strategy, you must embark with the visitors on the buyer's journey to increase conversions. Therefore, you must have the right call to action (CTAs) to induce the correct activity from the visitor.
Not having the right CTAs on the website pages is another frequent design mistake. It can mean the difference between viral conversions and low revenues. You must also ensure that the CTA buttons are of the proper size and presented at the right place on the website. It can help optimize conversions and improve the onboarding process for visitors.
Not Tackling Low Page Loading Speeds
How much time would you give for a web page to load? Research shows that if the page load speed increases from one second to three seconds, the probability of the visitor abandoning the website increases by 32%. (Source: Website Setup) It is among the crucial website design mistakes to avoid. The visitor will probably move to the competition. Web admins must do an audit and check the website speed periodically. They can find out the issues on the website that can slow down the loading speed and rectify them.
Google uses various metrics to find the website speed. However, you must also ensure that the site does not face slow server response time. Always partner with a renowned web host to prevent this from happening. You can also opt for a dedicated server that can ensure you optimally use the resources for your website.
Problems With Colour, Font, and Other Factors
What use is the website content serving if the visitor cannot read it? You must optimize readability for the user and is another critical website design issue. The fonts must be readable and stay away from cursive fonts as they would be illegible on a handheld device with smaller screens.
Illegible fonts can lead to cognitive overload and cause problems in understanding. Similarly, you must also use colours that are suitable for your brand. Also, ensure there is adequate spacing between two letters and paragraphs. Along with that, the background must not be too harsh for the eyes. You wouldn't want the mobile visitors to strain their eyes too much to read the website content.
Having Stale Content on the Website
One of the common errors on the website is not updating the content. It is because the top keywords can change over time. It will help optimize the website and insert new keywords to improve website rankings. It would be best to undertake adequate on-page SEO measures like changing the web page title and the meta tags for improved crawling by the search engines.
Have a team that will update your blogs periodically. It can also help you have adequate links and allow Google to rank the website during keyword searches. Moreover, an updated blog also has a greater appeal to visitors. Finally, you can also use social backlinking techniques to improve search rankings.
Don't have an Insecure Website
One of the most common website design mistakes is not having proper trust factors. The website must be on an HTTPS platform to help visitors know they are on a safe website. Also, keep in mind that web browsers will flag non-HTTPS as "Not Secure" and make visitors move away from the website.
If you are an e-commerce website, you must also have trust factors like the Secure Seal on the transaction page. A secure website is a prerequisite for this industry as it must also adhere to the PCI-DSS norms. Also, host the website on a renowned web host to prevent hackers from having unauthorised access to your website.
A Poor Design can Break the Website
The website must be optimally functional to help the visitors carry out the activities you would like them to do. You must take the help of experienced UX designers to create your workflows. Always keep in mind the buyer's journey that a visitor would take to complete an activity on the website. It could be signing up for a newsletter, downloading a whitepaper, or even signing up for a product demonstration.
If there is a sudden decrease in website visitors, do an audit to find an issue with the website design. You can go through your peers and take ideas on making changes to the website workflows. The website must have the correct elements in the right places. The visitors have several options before them.
Don't Clutter the Website
One of the errors on the website is having too much content on a single webpage. It will be difficult for the user to process all the information to understand what the web page conveys. In addition, several websites do not have a scalable design that makes them unstructured.
It would help if you had adequate whitespace on the web pages. It is soothing for the visitor, and they can quickly assimilate the information on the web pages. It improves readability and draws additional attention from the visitor. It can help draw visitors' engagement with the web page's critical components like CTA, contact form filling.
Not Optimising Images
The images you select for the web pages must sync with the content. They are an integral part of your website and must be selected or designed with care. It is equally essential to have them adhere to the branding guidelines.
Do not have irrelevant pictures on the website that could move visitors away and increase bounce rates. They can also confuse the visitors and lead to lower conversions. Also, unoptimised images can make the website bulky and increase page loading speeds.
Conclusion
The website is a critical asset to the business, and experienced designers must design the website to draw visitors and increase conversions. A flawless website design can improve visitors' impression of the website. You must have a list of must-do activities to help design an attractive website.
Many companies make common website design mistakes that can reduce visitors in the long run. You must have a professional custom web design and rope in the experts for help. Our website design experts have helped several clients design top-class websites. Contact us, and our experts are ready to help you.
