Top 9 Website Mistakes Business Owners Should Avoid

1. Creating a Non-Mobile-Friendly Website

According to numbers released by Statista, more people use mobile devices to access the internet than those who use desktops and laptops. This serves as a clear indication that every website should cater to mobile users. It is also more likely that mobile users will visit businesses near them after they carry out relevant online searches.

Despite statistics that highlight the growth of mobile internet users, many bad business websites are not mobile-friendly, which means they eliminate mobile users from the picture. This can be a big loss because a significant percentage of their target audience may use mobile phones.

One of the top mistakes online business owners make is not keeping up with technology. Now, you no longer need a separate website that is mobile-friendly, what you need instead is responsive web design. This approach ensures that your website provides a good user experience across different devices and screen sizes.

Simply put, a person using a desktop will view a responsive website in pretty much the same way as a mobile phone user. The only difference is that the content adjusts according to the size of the screen. This means all your website’s visitors will have seamless experiences regardless of the devices they use.

2. Unclear Navigation and Communication

If your website’s visitors find it hard to understand or navigate, you may expect them to leave fairly quickly. The top web design companies ensure that they don’t confuse or frustrate web users and create websites around their needs.

For example, you should not take the risk of assuming that people visiting your website understand what your business does and the solutions it provides. You should, on the other hand, try to address all the questions and concerns your target audience might have about your offerings.

Your website’s homepage should carry enough information to highlight who you are and what you have to offer. It should also tell visitors how they may benefit by using your products or services. While getting your communication right plays an important role in user experience, it also helps establish trust.

One of the pitfalls to avoid when building an online presence is having a website that fares poorly on the navigation front. Ideally, users should be able to find the information they seek quickly and easily. To do this, you may:

• Prioritize mobile navigation.
• Use information architecture (IA)
• Create a sitemap.
• Limit the menu options.
• Use sub-categories.
• Offer search functionality.
• Use a back-to-top button.
• Use sticky navigation.
• Make effective use of the bottom navigation bar.
• Link to the homepage from every page.

3. Lack of Content Strategy

Not having a suitable content strategy makes it to almost every list of the top 10 mistakes in web design for good reason. Incidentally, this is also one of the top website redesign mistakes. After all, if your website’s visitors can’t find the information they’re looking for, if they find your content outdated, or if your content is not engaging enough, you may expect higher-than-normal bounce rates. This is when visitors leave a webpage without taking any action.

When you create a website for your business, one of the best ways to keep its content fresh is by incorporating a blog. You should use this section to update content often, ideally at least once a month. Remember that people will not visit your website just to look at service pages because they do not change much. With a blog, you can share industry news or your knowledge on certain topics.

Having a content strategy will ensure that when users visit your website again, they find the fresh content informative and useful. Besides, this is a good way to stay relevant in the eyes of search engines. When determining what you should write about, always think of what your audience is interested in, and try to go for long-form content that ranges from 1,500 to 2,000 words. Optimizing your blog posts for search engines is crucial to increasing organic traffic.

4. Providing Thin Content

If you’re wondering what to avoid when building a website, know that you must steer clear of providing thin or limited content. For example, if you are a roofing company, the service page needs to be more than the generic kind where you just list the services on offer. While you need to list all the services, you also need to build on them by having separate web pages for each, ensuring that you provide top-notch content.

From the search engine optimization (SEO) perspective, listing your services on a single generic services page makes it hard to create keyword-specific content that finds favor with search engines like Google and Bing. Besides, a page for each service helps visitors find relevant content about the services they seek.

If you have no idea what to write, ask yourself a few questions about the service and think of what potential customers might want to know. By creating content between 500 and 1,000 words for each page, you may consider your website good to go.

5. Poor Page Optimization

One way to look at the top website mistakes to avoid is to go through multiple poor website design examples. More often than not, you’ll find that most don’t pay enough attention, if any, to page optimization. The good thing is that optimizing your website’s pages is not all that technical. It’s about basic optimization of elements such as page titles and metadata.

For example, your page titles should ideally include the industry your business belongs to and its location. Continuing with the roofing company example, one page title could be “Emergency Roofing Services in New York”. The best-ranking websites include their industry and location in their page titles, which highlights the importance of optimizing this element.

Make sure you include target keywords in your content without going overboard, and ensure adding internal links. If you’re writing blog posts, make use of external links as well. When you optimize your website’s pages, they have a better chance of ranking well on search engine results pages (SERPs), which then gives your website more exposure.

6. Slow Page Loading Speed

One of the top website mistakes to avoid when creating a business website is not paying attention to page loading speed. This is because most web users have access to high-speed internet and they look for websites that load quickly. If a website falters on this front, there’s a very good chance that its visitors will leave and head to a competitor’s website.

Speed is very important, all the more so if you have an eCommerce website or hope to use your website as a marketing tool. Keep in mind that most users will not wait for a slow website when they can find others that load faster.

The different types of business websites notwithstanding, all need to consider this aspect because Google includes page loading speed in the ranking elements it considers. As a result, you need to:

• Optimize your website’s code to make it efficient.
• Use solid-state drive (SSD) hosting as it’s much faster than hosting that relies on conventional spinning disks.
• Reduce unnecessary media that might be slowing your website down.

By ensuring that your web pages load quickly or keeping visitors informed about the progress, you can get them to stay on your website for long enough and hope to boost conversions.

7. Poor CTAs

Having poor calls to action (CTAs) makes it to most lists of the top website design mistakes. This is because a CTA serves as an important gateway to conversion, encouraging users to do what you want them to, whether it’s buying a product, getting a coupon, or signing up for a membership.

This is why your CTAs should tell your website’s visitors what they need to do and what they may expect in return. For example, an effective CTA could be as simple as a clickable button that says “Get 20% off”. CTAs can also come in the form of clickable links, forms, banners, pop-ups, and slide-ins.

When web design agencies come up with content marketing strategies, they ensure the use of effective CTAs in different places on your website and it’s common to find them on all pages. While creativity plays an important role in coming up with a good CTA, it should ideally be simple and concise, and it should also create a sense of urgency.

8. Ignoring Web Security

When it comes to what makes a bad website, poor web security is among the top culprits. Website security is crucial not just from the point of view of safeguarding information but also when it comes to building trust. For instance, if your website’s visitors feel that it fails to provide a secure browsing experience, they have every reason to look for an alternative.

Addressing website security during the design and development stages requires that you:

• Use Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS) instead of Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP).
• Have strong password requirements.
• Require user authentication for accessing sensitive information.
• Have a plan for carrying out regular updates and backups.
• Have an effective recovery strategy.
• Partner with a reliable web hosting company.

9. Absence of Contact Information

While this is among the top eCommerce website design mistakes, other types of websites suffer from this problem too. Remember that providing inadequate or no contact information about your business is something you need to avoid. For starters, make sure your website has an easy-to-find Contact Us page. It should ideally find a place under the main menu, although you may add it as a sub-category under the About Us section. You should also include it in your website’s footer.

The contact information you need to provide typically includes the official name of your business and its:

• Phone number
• Physical address (with a location map)
• Email address
• Contact form
• Hours of operation

Depending on the type of business you run, you might also choose to provide contact details of different departments or specific employees.

Keep in mind that the Contact Us page is among the most viewed pages of several websites, and providing the right information helps your business look accessible. This, in turn, increases the trust your target audience places in your business.  Not surprisingly, getting a website without a Contact Us page is one of the top website mistakes to avoid.

Conclusion

Online marketing is an important part of most businesses and their websites help represent their brands in the digital landscape. As a result, you should aim to put your best foot forward and your goal should be to meet the needs, wants, and expectations of your target audience. While your website should look good, it should also deliver a great user experience. Only then will it serve its true purpose.

Now that you’ve identified the most common website design mistakes, make sure you avoid them at all costs. If you don’t have an in-house web design team or if you don’t have the required technical expertise to create a website, partnering with a professional web design company might be in your best interest. This is because your website’s visitors should get to view your business in the best possible light.