Let’s face it: web design has gone through a massive democratization over the past decade. Platforms like Webflow, Squarespace, Wix, and the ever-persistent WordPress have handed the keys to the creative kingdom to business owners, hobbyists, and anyone willing to drag and drop their way into a homepage. That’s awesome. It’s empowering. But it also means there are more websites out there that, to be perfectly honest, just... miss the mark.
In my work running Zach Sean Web Design here in Franklin, TN, I’ve seen hundreds of websites—some beautiful, some broken—and I’ve consulted with clients ranging from coffee shop owners to financial advisors. Regardless of industry, size, or ambition, nearly every business I've worked with has fallen into at least one of these traps. Many of them are inadvertent mistakes, based on assumptions rather than best practices.
The truth is, a bad website design can silently sabotage even the most compelling business model. It’s not always obvious. Sometimes it’s death by a thousand UX cuts, or sometimes it’s a single, foundational misstep that undoes everything else. This post lays out some of the most common website design mistakes I come across and offers actionable advice on how to avoid them.
Listen—I get it. A sexy layout feels good. You want your site to be stunning, modern, edgy, clean, insert-your-favorite-adjective. But here’s the uncomfortable truth: beautiful websites that don’t convert are like show homes with broken plumbing.
I had a client who ran a high-end boutique in Nashville. Their existing site was visually dazzling: full-screen videos, trendy fonts, animated product galleries. But they came to me with a conversion rate that was dismal. A quick audit revealed the contact form was hidden two clicks deep, and the checkout process took upwards of five steps. We stripped back the unnecessary frills, simplified the customer flow, and within six weeks their online sales had tripled.
Remember, users don’t land on your site to admire it. They came to solve a problem. The faster you help them do that, the better your site performs.
It still blows my mind how many business websites I audit that are borderline unusable on mobile. According to Statista, over 58% of worldwide web traffic now comes from mobile devices. And in some industries (like restaurants, local services, or healthcare), that number can be even higher.
I once worked with a landscaping company in Middle Tennessee. Their desktop site looked okay, but on mobile, buttons overlapped, forms were incomprehensible, and images took ages to load. We restructured their layout in Webflow, implemented lazy-loading on images, and introduced larger tap targets. Their bounce rate on mobile dropped by 40% within a month.
Test your site rigorously on multiple devices. It takes a few extra hours, yes. But you’re designing for real humans whose thumbs are probably tired, whose patience is short, and whose expectations are high.
We’ve all been to that website where halfway through reading the homepage, you still don’t know what the company actually does. That’s usually a sign of branding being developed in an echo chamber rather than in conversation with real clients.
One of my earliest clients was a holistic health coach. Her homepage headline read: “Helping You Reconnect with Your Inner Alchemy.” Now, I love a good metaphor as much as anyone, but—what does that mean? We did a messaging workshop, interviewed some of her best clients, and reworded her hero message to: “Personalized wellness coaching for women ready to feel balanced again.” Her traffic didn’t change. But her conversion rate doubled.
Approach your messaging like this: what job does someone hire my business to do? Speak to that. Be the guide, not the hero. Your ideal visitors should land on your homepage and know within three seconds:
A fantastic book that nails this point is Donald Miller’s “Building a StoryBrand”. It’s well worth the read if clarity is something you’re grappling with.
Just because you can put nine items in your main nav bar doesn’t mean you should.
Complex or cluttered navigation is a silent bounce generator. I remember working with a multi-service home contractor. Their main nav had twelve items, with three submenus each. Users were overwhelmed. We collapsed similar services under broader categories and implemented a persistent sticky nav. The result? Site journey depth increased—meaning users clicked deeper into the site—by 52%.
Navigation is like a restaurant menu. Too many options? People end up choosing nothing. Simplify to amplify.
Website speed isn’t just a technical issue—it’s a user experience issue and an SEO factor. According to Google, as page load time increases from 1s to 3s, the probability of a bounce increases by 32%.
I worked with a wedding photographer whose beautiful website was destroyed by slow loading. Huge, uncompressed image galleries took forever to load on mobile. We ran performance checks using PageSpeed Insights, compressed all images via TinyPNG, and set up Cloudflare for CDN caching. Her site speed jumped, and her SEO rankings improved noticeably in three months.
Your website is like a first date. If you show up late, it doesn’t matter how charming or talented you are. First impressions matter.
This one’s sneaky. You might have great messaging, intuitive UX, lightning-fast loading—but if your site doesn’t make people trust you, they’ll leave anyway. This is especially true for B2B and service industries where results aren’t always immediate.
I coached a startup founder who had developed a very niche SaaS tool. Their site made bold claims, but had no testimonials, no team bios, no certifications—just stock icons and buzzwords. We added a testimonial slider with real faces and names, published a couple member case studies, and created a transparent About page. Conversions increased by 67%.
People do business with people. Humanize your site so that it doesn’t feel like a faceless tool trying to harvest emails.
If you're not telling your users what to do next, they'll do nothing. I see this constantly: beautifully built sites with passive language like “Explore” or “Learn More” instead of direct, intention-driven CTAs like “Schedule Your Free Consultation” or “Get a Quote Now.”
I helped a personal trainer here in Franklin redo his Squarespace site. We shifted from a vague, lifestyle-blog feel to a service-forward layout with multiple strategic CTAs placed throughout. Lead submissions tripled in a matter of weeks.
Your calls to action should answer your visitors’ question: “What’s my next step?”
Too often, SEO gets bolted on like an afterthought when it's really the groundwork. Web design and SEO go hand-in-hand. Site architecture, loading speed, structured data, image optimization, and internal linking all influence how Google and users experience your site.
One of my clients, a dog trainer outside Nashville, launched a great-looking WordPress site. But they’d used generic image titles, no header structure, and had a homepage buried under a “home” permalink slug. We fixed all that, mapped keywords based on their ideal customers, and introduced schema markup for local SEO. Six months later, they were ranking in the top 3 for “dog trainer in Williamson County.”
Tools like Ahrefs Webmaster Tools or Moz can help spot gaps after launch. But the real gains happen when SEO is built in from day one.
If there’s a theme that connects all these mistakes, it’s this: misalignment between what we assume a website should do and what users actually need it to do. Great web design isn’t about trends, bells, or whistles—it’s about translating your value clearly, creating a journey for users, and eliminating friction at every step.
As someone who often plays the role of “marketing therapist,” I can tell you that fixing these mistakes isn’t just a technical process. It’s an emotional one. It requires reassessing beliefs about your brand, getting brutally honest about goals, and being open to change.
Whether you’re building your first site or are about to launch a redesign, keep these pitfalls in mind. Audit your site with fresh eyes. Ask tough questions. And remember—your website isn’t just a digital business card. It’s often someone’s first real experience of what it feels like to work with you.
Make that experience count.
Copyright © Zach Sean Web Design
