Great web design legitimizes your brand and boosts organic traffic – and a poor one can quickly tank your revenue. Learn more about the 7 most common web design mistakes and how they hurt your business.
Mistake #1: Poor Website Navigation
Have you ever visited a website and struggled to find the page you need? Users leave most pages within 10 – 20 seconds if they don’t see what they need immediately.
Navigation is the glue that holds your website together, so it’s integral to achieving the best web design possible. It’s one of the biggest website mistakes to avoid.
Whether you choose a top or side menu, your main website pages should be one click away for your visitors, with enough internal links between your most important pages.
Your site design should include plenty of Call-to-Actions (CTAs) that are easy to find and clearly labeled. eCommerce sites do exceptionally well when they include ‘breadcrumbs,’ which are those nested, hierarchical navigation links you see to easily bring users back to other categories as they browse.
Not enough room in your menu for every important page? Make space for them in your page’s footer.
Great navigation won’t just keep users on your website for longer – it makes it easier for Google’s web crawlers to “understand” and index your site in their search engine rankings.
Mistake #2: Auto-Playing Videos With Sound
The number of video users watch online has doubled since 2018. While adding video to your website is quickly becoming a must-have to attract visitors, when used incorrectly it can quickly have the positive effect.
Videos that automatically play on your website become a user deterrent, especially when the audio auto-plays, too.
It’s frustrating for visitors to be bombarded with loud audio and flashing video. At its “best,” auto-play video doesn’t allow users to consent, and, at worst, it can be especially harmful to users with sensory processing disorders.
If you don’t have a news or sports coverage website, your website creators should leave the auto-play video behind. And if you must auto-play your video, always mute it.
Mistake #3: Missing H1 Tags (Especially on the Home Page)
If your website design has no H1 tags, your visitors likely won’t notice a difference. But Google won’t notice you, either, which significantly drops your SEO-friendiless.
Your header tags lead Google web crawlers through your site content and make sense of it so that they can index your page to the suitable topics.
In good website design, your H1 should always include your primary keyword and sit ‘above the fold,’ meaning on the area visible at the top of the page before scrolling down further.
Mistake #4: Poor Content Design and Whitespace
Ever felt overwhelmed by a wall of text on a website?
Great web page design isn’t always about what is there but what isn’t. And no, you don’t need to have a full-blown minimalist website design (unless you want to)! You need to share enough content to give users what they need, without overwhelming them with unnecessary details.
And where you need to share a lot of content, choose your typeface and spacing mindfully. You can use whitespace to move your visitors’ eyes around your website and create a natural flow.
Users have short attention spans. Breaking your text up makes it less intimidating and more appealing to read.
Mistake #5: Not Asking For Feedback
You’re in business for your customers. But does your homepage design cater to them?
While infusing your passion into your project, your responsive web design should maintain a ‘customer-first’ perspective. You should design your site to please the people using it and gather their feedback.
Read visitor comments, send out subscriber surveys, and gather feedback 24/7. Asking for specifics about your customers’ website interactions can help you uncover any problem areas and continually improve user experience.
Deepen customer relationships and build trust with your customers by making efforts to keep your simple website design performing beyond their expectations.
Mistake #6: Large Images & Media Files
Beautiful images and rich media make your website pop. But an image and media-heavy website with no attention paid to size can negatively affect your SEO and user experience.
Large images and media files can seriously slow your website down. That annoys users and wreaks havoc on a crucial Google search ranking measure called ‘Page Experience.’
Run your website through Google’s PageSpeed Insights Test regularly. If your page loads too slowly, take a look at the media and scale it accordingly. Google’s tool will even make suggestions for your images used – follow them.
Mistake #7: Annoying Pop-Ups
Pop-ups can be incredibly effective, converting as much as 1,375% more than email marketing subscribers.
When done wrong, pop-ups irritate your website visitors and increase your bounce rate, the users leaving your site, significantly. According to Google, annoying pop-ups limit how well you’ll rank on a search page.
But that doesn’t mean you have to stop using them.
Build high-conversion pop-ups timed or triggered when a user scrolls further down your page. Measure their performance regularly, getting rid of poorly-coverting pop-ups ASAP.
Ready for Professional Website Development?
With the potential losses of design mistakes adding up quickly, leave your fate in good hands with our website design company in Burlington & Hamilton. Contact us to learn more and get a free cost estimate.
