Having a well-designed website is crucial for any business hoping to establish an online presence and attract potential customers. However, we often see businesses make simple yet damaging mistakes with their site's design that hold back their success. In this comprehensive guide, we'll unpack the most common website design mistakes businesses make and how to avoid them.
Many businesses create a website without first identifying its core purpose and intended goals. Is the site mainly for sharing information? Generating leads? Making sales? While most business sites have multiple objectives, lacking clarity on the primary goal can lead to a disjointed user experience that doesn't optimize for conversions.
Before starting your website design, take time to define its main purpose above all else. Is this site primarily a sales funnel, a content hub full of resources, or a simple online brochure? When you orient the website around serving its chief purpose exceptionally well, other elements will naturally fall into place.
A boutique clothing shop has a small customer base and wants to use their website to dramatically grow online sales. The business owner gets clear that the site's #1 goal is driving conversions, so she strategically designs page layouts, content, and calls-to-action to guide users to make purchases efficiently. This focus helps multiply the store's revenue.
Today over half of web traffic comes from mobile devices. Having a mobile-friendly site is no longer optional - it's imperative for any business to succeed online. Failing to optimize for mobile results in sluggish load times, awkward navigation, tiny text, and clunky user experiences that drive visitors away.
An accounting firm initially builds their site to look beautiful on desktop without planning for mobile usage. On phones, the text is microscopic and awkward scrolling makes content hard to navigate. They lose visitors immediately. The firm redesigns the site responsively, improving mobile conversion rates by 400%.
Site speed significantly impacts user experience and conversions. Even minor delays of a few seconds when loading pages or images causes high bounce rates. With 47% of users expecting sites to load in 2 seconds or less, slow load times can quickly drive potential customers away.
There are many techniques to optimize website speed including minifying code, compressing images, using caching, removing unnecessary plugins, and choosing fast web hosting. Conduct speed tests regularly and keep improving page load times, aiming for under 3 seconds on mobile.
A home services company fails to optimize their WordPress site for speed as more content gets added. Load times creep up to over 6 seconds, and visitors abandon their site. They implement speed optimization techniques that shave off 4 seconds from page loads. Their overall site traffic increases by 12% in just 2 months.
Any vulnerabilities in website security can be catastrophic for businesses. Having inadequate security measures in place leaves you open to cyber attacks, hacked accounts, crashed servers, stolen customer data, and PR crises. However, many businesses neglect security precautions until it’s too late.
A startup e-commerce site leaves their servers unsecured. Hackers exploit this, taking the site offline and stealing thousands of customers' personal data. The owners are forced to entirely rebuild the business's reputation and site security from scratch.
Having an incredible website means nothing if people can’t find it through search engines like Google. But many businesses treat SEO as an afterthought and miss out on huge organic traffic gains. To maximize search visibility, on-page optimization and keyword strategies need to be built into the site from day one.
A law firm designs their site without any SEO strategy. After 6 months, they realize no one can find them organically online. By optimizing pages for relevant long-tail keywords, strengthening backlinks, and refreshing content, the firm increases organic traffic by 215% year-over-year.
Websites shouldn't remain static after launch. Fresh, engaging content is key for driving returning visitors, ranking well in search engines, and building authority as an industry leader. However, many businesses design sites that are difficult to update without a developer's help.
Choose a platform like WordPress that makes adding and managing content intuitive without needing to edit code. Ensure your website design has an organized information architecture and content plan. Create roles and processes for regularly publishing optimized content.
A photographer builds a beautiful custom site in Webflow but can't easily add new photos or blog posts without hiring a developer. They switch to using WordPress for better content management. Now the photographer can quickly publish new work, driving traffic and print orders up by 30%.
It's easy to assume your website will be perfectly user-friendly on its own. But without testing, you leave critical UX flaws undiscovered. Confusing navigation, ambiguous calls-to-action, unclear value propositions, and information overload are common issues that frustrate users.
A non-profit site saw 70% of donation forms started but not completed. User testing revealed unclear instructions caused people to abandon the form. Clarifying form language increased submissions by 35%.
Creating a successful website requires avoiding many potential pitfalls, from poor mobile experiences to inadequate SEO. By focusing a site around its core purpose, optimizing for speed and conversions, securing site infrastructure, and facilitating easy content updates, businesses can design an exceptional site positioned for long-term growth. What other website design mistakes have you encountered? Let me know in the comments below!
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