7 Common Website Design Mistakes That Are Killing Your Conversion Rates

The internet is littered with poorly designed websites. As a business owner, having a website that doesn't effectively communicate your brand or convert visitors is essentially just throwing money away. Avoid these common web design mistakes, and you'll be well on your way to an effective online presence.

Failing to Understand Your Audience

One of the most fundamental mistakes is not taking the time to truly understand your target audience. Before you even begin designing your site, you need to intimately know who you're speaking to. What are their needs, interests, objections, and motivations? What messaging will resonate with them? What emotional response are you trying to elicit?

For example, let's say you run an e-commerce site selling baby products. Your audience is clearly new parents. However, you need to dig deeper to understand whether you're targeting gift givers like grandparents, first-time millennial parents, busy dual-income parents, etc. Each has unique needs your design and content should address.

Without this buyer empathy, you end up with a generic, ineffective site. Really take the time to walk in your customers' shoes so you can craft an experience that truly speaks to them.

Tips for Understanding Your Audience

• Create detailed buyer personas based on market research and conversations with existing customers. Include demographic info, values, common objections, and motivations.
• Observe your customers interacting with your site and take note of where they struggle.
• Regularly survey customers to see what resonates and what doesn't.

Focusing on Company Offerings Over Customer Needs

Another mistake is focusing too much on what your company does rather than addressing your customers' problems. You end up with messaging all about you that visitors simply don't care about.

For example, an accounting software company could ramble on about features and capabilities. Or, they could address the real pain points their customers experience, like wasting time on bookkeeping. This customer-focused approach is much more compelling.

Make sure your content focuses on understanding and addressing your customers' struggles. Clearly explain how your product or service alleviates pain points and makes their lives easier.

Tips for Focusing on Customers

• Map out your customers' journey to uncover pain points to address.
• Interview clients about challenges you helped solve for testimonials.
• Use aspirational messaging showing how you'll transform customers' lives.

Treating Your Website as an Online Brochure

Too many businesses view their website as just an online brochure to tout their services. They simply list capabilities, dump blocks of generic text, and call it a day. This fails to captivate visitors.

Your website copy should educate and entertain. Tell a compelling brand story. Share specific case studies. Use bold graphics and visual media. Create a personal connection with customers to turn them into loyal brand advocates.

Tips for Treating Your Site as More Than a Brochure

• Add visual elements like custom illustrations to bring your brand to life.
• Curate client success stories that show real transformation.
• Invest in compelling microcopy and conversational UI.
• Strive for an emotional impact with creative messaging.

Not Having a Clear Content Strategy

Many companies just start adding content without much planning or strategy. This leads to a disjointed site lacking cohesion. Every page should have a purpose, and they should work together to move visitors along the conversion path.

Map out user flows to determine the necessary pages and appropriate content for each. Structure your information in a logical, intuitive way tailored to your audience. Carefully plot the journey you want to take customers on.

Tips for Developing a Content Strategy

• Outline all necessary pages based on conversion stages.
• Create an editorial calendar organizing upcoming content.
• Develop content guidelines on messaging, voice, types of content, etc.
• Assign topics and due dates for new content.

Not Optimizing for Mobile

Today, the majority of web traffic comes from mobile devices. Having a desktop-focused site that isn't responsive or mobile-friendly equals missed connections with customers.

Your site needs to be functional and easy to navigate on any device. Test your site on multiple mobile platforms. Adjust layouts and navigation as needed. Optimize checkout processes and forms. Embrace mobile-first indexing.

Tips for Mobile Optimization

• Use responsive frameworks to dynamically adapt sites.
• Resize images and video for faster load times.
• Check that buttons and touch targets are large enough.
• Simplify navigation and layouts on mobile screens.

Overlooking Your Website's Speed

Your website's loading speed significantly impacts conversions. Even microsecond delays can cause visitors to bounce. Optimize page speed through efficient code, compressed images, browser caching, optimized servers, and more.

Also carefully consider third party scripts that bog down your site. Every tracking script and unnecessary plugin impedes performance. Audit your site using online speed checkers to catch issues.

Page Speed Optimization Tips

• Minify CSS, HTML, and JavaScript files.
• Defer offscreen images and scripts.
• Asynchronously load non-critical resources.
• Compress images and video files.
• Upgrade to more performant web hosting.

Ignoring SEO Fundamentals

Driving traffic to your site requires solid on-page SEO foundations. This includes optimizing page titles and meta descriptions, using target keywords appropriately, structuring pages with semantic HTML, and providing unique, high-quality content.

Technical optimizations like site speed, mobile responsiveness, and page authority also impact search rankings. Don't treat SEO as an afterthought during web design.

On-Page SEO Tips

• Include keywords naturally in headings and body content.
• Optimize page titles and meta descriptions for each page.
• Create XML sitemaps and optimize URL structures.
• Add alt text to images and videos.

By avoiding these common pitfalls, you can design an effective website that expertly communicates your brand story, engages your audience, and meets business goals. Take the time to understand customers, map the user journey, and craft cohesive experiences optimized for conversions.