We’ve all been there. You launch a new website—months of work, meetings, revisions. Everything looks sharp. But six months later, something’s off. Bounce rate is high, leads aren’t converting, the site feels flat. You keep asking yourself: “We spent a lot of money and time on this… so why isn’t it working?”
This is something I hear a lot from clients who come to me after working with other designers or agencies. And honestly, it’s not always the fault of the previous designer or even the client. Often, these issues are rooted in common web design mistakes that have become industry habits—tactics that worked five years ago but don’t hold up today.
In this post, I’m going to break down some of the most frequent website design mistakes I see, especially among small to midsize businesses. These aren't just aesthetic mistakes—they're strategic ones. They can impact how users perceive your brand, how search engines rank your site, and ultimately, how your business grows online.
Whether you’ve got a site built on Webflow, WordPress, Wix, Squarespace, or something custom, these principles apply. And while I’ll be giving some actionable tips at the end of each section, the larger idea here is this: building a website is less about tech, and more about clarity. Let’s dive into how lack of clarity—on design, messaging, functionality—leads to these common, often costly errors.
Imagine walking into a store where every product is featured at the entrance, lights are flashing, music is blaring, and employees are yelling special offers from every corner. You’d probably turn around and walk out, right?
That’s the digital equivalent of what happens when a homepage is overloaded with content, multiple CTAs, animated pop-ups, videos set to autoplay, and five different font styles. This isn’t just a “style” issue—it impacts the cognitive load on your visitor. And cognitive overload leads to decision fatigue, which kills conversions.
Most of the time, 80% of the value of a website comes from 20% of its content. Yet I still see sites where clients have tried to squeeze everything on the homepage—mission statement, every service, blog feeds, four CTAs, a widget from Yelp, and their latest Instagram grid.
I consulted with a real estate agent recently who had this exact issue. Her homepage had nine major sections and a navigation menu with 11 links. We cut it down to five primary sections and restructured navigation around user intent, not business categories. Within 60 days, bounce rate dropped by 40% and average session time doubled.
A useful read on this is the concept of Hick’s Law, which shows how increasing the number of choices increases the time it takes for a person to make a decision (source). Design isn’t about showcasing every option—it’s about guiding people to the right one, quickly and naturally.
This may sound like an old-school issue, but it’s still shockingly common: businesses that focus heavily on desktop design and treat mobile as an afterthought. Given that mobile traffic has consistently made up more than half of global web usage for the last several years (Statista report), it baffles me how many sites still offer a broken or lackluster mobile experience.
One of my clients, a boutique gym in Nashville, had a beautifully designed site on desktop—but on mobile, you couldn’t tap half the buttons because text overlapped key areas. They built it using a WordPress theme that didn’t scale well with their content updates. Within one day of fixing it and optimizing the touch targets, trial signups from mobile tripled.
If you want to test your mobile experience, try using Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test or simply browse your site on your phone and ask yourself, “Would I trust this business right now based on how this looks and works?”
Navigation drives exploration. But when it’s done poorly, it creates obstacles instead. I’m a big believer in the idea that people don’t actually read websites—they scan them. And they rely on navigation to orient themselves.
Too many businesses approach navigation by creating categories based on their internal structure, not by how their users think. For instance, labeling pages as “Solutions,” “Capabilities,” or “Proprietary Framework” sounds sophisticated, but doesn’t actually communicate what those pages are about unless someone is already deeply familiar with your company.
I worked with a candle company last fall who had 200+ SKUs but organized their navigation by candle names like “Eucalyptus Dream” and “Alpenglow.” This forced shoppers to click into every category to find basic types like “scented” or “seasonal.” We restructured their nav into simple categories based on user behavior: “Fall Scents,” “Everyday Candles,” “Bundles,” and “Gift Sets.” Revenue that holiday season increased by nearly 70% compared to the previous year.
Your navigation is not just a map—it’s part of how you communicate ease, relevance, and professionalism. People feel more confident working with a company when finding information is effortless.
This one is tough because it blends brand identity, psychology, and copywriting. Designers are often handed blocks of content to "make look good," but rarely is that content strategically developed to tell a story, address pain points, or express value quickly.
On most websites I audit, the hero section—the first thing people see—is filled with vague promises like “Unleashing Potential” or “Solutions That Scale.” But what problem do you really solve? Who do you serve? Why you, not the competition?
Two frameworks I use when helping clients refine messaging:
I worked with a B2B SaaS client in Ohio whose homepage read “Empowering Digital Acceleration Using AI-Driven Pipelines.” Within our first 20 minutes, I asked, “If I’m your target user, how would I describe my problem right now?” We reworked everything to focus on the user's frustrations and simplified the messaging: “Manual workflows costing you hours each week? Automate the boring stuff, so your team can focus on what matters.” Their demo signups went up 3x.
This one is more technical, but it has direct business impact. A slow-loading website feels untrustworthy. Studies have shown that a 1-second delay in page load time can reduce conversions by 7%. Page speed also affects your SEO rankings—Google uses Core Web Vitals as a ranking factor.
Earlier this year, I redesigned a bakery site built in Squarespace. Their homepage featured a gallery with 20+ 5MB images—every one loaded full-res, even on mobile. We compressed all media using TinyPNG, restructured their gallery to lazy-load, and shaved off 7 seconds of load time on mobile. Immediately, we saw more online orders placed via mobile checkout.
Want to test your site? Use Google PageSpeed Insights or GTmetrix to get performance grades and specific recommendations.
I get it. Platforms like Wix, Squarespace, and even Webflow make it easy to drag-and-drop your way to a polished-looking site using prebuilt templates. But here’s the kicker: aesthetics aren't strategy. If you rely 100% on a theme without adapting it to your brand personality, messaging, and audience behavior—you end up with something that looks nice but doesn’t feel right.
Your website should feel like your business, not like a copy-paste brochure. Think of templates like prefab homes: they can be efficient and beautiful, but you still need to customize the layout, interior design, and curb appeal if you want it to feel like home.
One of my clients—a career coach—had used a Shopify template designed for product listings. We redesigned it into a benefit-driven site with testimonials front and center, retreat booking integration, and a clean video banner introducing her services. Same website platform, radically different results.
This one hits close to home because it’s where I’ve often stepped into the role of what clients call a “marketing therapist.” The site itself often isn’t the issue—it’s the fact that it was designed by someone who didn’t fully understand the business goals, growth challenges, or even what “success” looked like for the client.
I once worked with a nonprofit that said they wanted “a modern-looking website.” After probing, we uncovered that their real priority was getting more recurring donors under 35. The previous design team gave them a trendy aesthetic, but no donation-focused UX, no clear audience targeting, and no mobile optimization for one-click repeat giving.
It’s not just about beautiful design. It’s about alignment. Designers, freelancers, and agencies need to be stakeholders in understanding the business, not just the brief.
It’s okay if you don’t have all of this figured out upfront. But you need a partner who asks the right questions. In the end, good design starts with understanding—and the best solutions come from conversations, not templates.
Website design isn’t just about pixels or page structure—it’s about how people feel when they visit your brand online. If you’ve made it this far, you probably know that by now. But it’s worth repeating: clarity beats cleverness, functionality beats flash, and alignment beats aesthetics.
To recap, the most common web design mistakes I see are:
If your current website suffers from one or more of these, don’t panic. These are fixable problems—and often, the solution doesn’t require a full rebuild. It requires seeing your website not as a static project, but as part of a living system that reflects your values, your goals, and your customer’s needs.
Good design listens first. And great strategy follows thoughtful questions. Start there, and you won’t just avoid mistakes—you’ll outpace competitors who check boxes instead of building trust.
Copyright © Zach Sean Web Design
