5 Most Frequent Mistakes To Avoid In Website Design
- April 20, 2022
- 9:57 am
- No Comments
Creating a website is often compared to an art and a science mixed into one. That is often the case, a website should look great but there’s also many components needed to make the site effective.
If you are running a business, you want your website to generate you more revenue and customers. If the site only looks great but doesn’t perform these important aspects and being outperformed by a more basic looking site that follows some golden rules of web design then it might be time to rework your website.
If you are a small business owner, there may be a chance you are running on a shoe-string budget and shilling out for a web design agency could leave you short-changed on other parts of your business so you’ve decided to roll up your sleeves and create a website.
If you’ve had no experience creating websites it can be a hard task, while we always recommend if you have it in your budget to reach out to a professional web designer to save you the hassle, time and money plus create a website that’s tailored to your business. Sometimes we understand that’s not an option.
No need to worry, we want to help you create the best website possible if that’s the case, that’s why we’ve put together this article on the most frequent website design mistakes we see and how you can avoid them to make a fully functioning website that generates you business.
Let’s begin…
Ugly Stock Images
Stock images are a handy way to put images on your site especially if you don’t have many images available to use to show people but they can often be damaging. While choosing the correct ones can enhance your site, if you are putting too many across your website it can look cheap, untrustworthy and your site speed can be damaged by too many images.
If you are an accountant business and you are using stock photo images of people in suits that don’t even work for your business, would you want to work with a company like this? Especially in the business of dealing with something as precious as people’s & businesses everyday finances.
Find the right stock images that aren’t cheesy or scream I’ve downloaded this from a stock image website.
No Contact Information
If your running a business that requires people to contact you, don’t make it difficult for people to actually contact you through your website! This is a mistake we often see when scrolling through some businesses website.
You can place your contact information above your header, in your footer, around your content and even place CTA’s (Call To Actions, we will explain these later) that can allow people to contact you.
Always create a ‘Contact Us’ page on your website that people can click on through your navigation with all the necessary details on for people to contact you. If you are selling a service, people don’t want to go through a maze in order for them to contact you, make the site experience as simple & smooth as possible!
Too Much Content To Process
If you click on a website, if you are suddenly bombarded with too much information, animations, images or colours. There’s a high chance that you are going to instantly click off the site and find yourself looking for another site that isn’t a headache.
You need to create a website that visitors won’t get confused by, a lot of people who create websites often try and over compensate by adding lots of information about their business as soon as someone enters their site as they think it’s the correct way to make a site.
This isn’t the case, people’s attention spans are the shortest it’s ever been in recent times due to the fact it’s the easiest time to consume content in the world. Keep your content simple, easy to digest and most importantly do not overload your site.
Too Little Content To Read
Now we have the other end of the stick, minimalist designs is a really hot trend in the world currently and while it works for some sites especially ones who have already built a reputation in the world. It can seem tempting for small business owners to take the approach but leaving too much to the imagination can be hurtful.
Visitors want to know information on your site such as the services you provide, details about how your business is run and the people behind it. There needs to be a direction behind your business, find the sweet spot between too much & too little and you can create content that keeps readers eyeballs on the screen and make them understand completely how your business operates to avoid any confusion.
Not Reaching Your Target Audience
This is one crucial mistake that people doing website design often do and that’s create a site that completely misses the target audience. Now you might think ‘I’m not stupid, I know exactly who my target audience is’ while that might be true. You need to think of how they’d navigate online.
If you are running a website that deals with life insurance, you aren’t going to create a website with small text, adding slang into your content and trendy website design. Your going to create a website that’s easy to navigate through, content is informative plus easy to read and the design isn’t going to be overwhelming because the people who are going to be browsing are often eldery and not computer savvy.
While the service you may provide be completely professional and in mind for your target audience, your site needs to match the service and the target audience in mind. To create the most effective website design for your business, don’t try and be a people pleaser by creating a site for every person in mind as it won’t work and it will leave you with a site muddled leading to no conversions and poor brand image.