First impressions are everything and, unfortunately, you can’t deliver a second first impression. Imagine a customer heard about your brand through a trusted friend or colleague, they’re in need of your services, and they go to your website to see what you have to offer. They will either be pleasantly surprised, or they could see an outdated (or ugly) website, assume you don’t care about your product, and move onto a competitor who presented themselves better.
Let’s talk about 10 common website design mistakes you should avoid so the above situation doesn’t happen.
1. Outdated Content
No one wants to read an article, click an embedded link within the article, and the link turns out to be a dead end. It’s annoying. Be sure to consistently monitor inbound and outbound links on your website to ensure they are working properly. I’m talking weekly, not once a year. Not only should you update broken links, but you should also regularly update your FAQ page with new, relevant, and common questions that your customers can benefit from.
More often than not, customers are not going to read an entire web page, so make sure only the most accurate and important information is on your page - and update it frequently so you don’t miss out on any key words (hello, SEO!).
2. Poor Navigation
Your site should make sense even to the most non-internet-savvy user. Offer an intuitive menu option that appears on every page. Position your menu along the top of the page, and the footer if you’re feeling bold. Put your logo at the top of every page so that a user can click it to go back to the home page of your website. Navigating your site should be the easiest part of your user’s experience. Don’t let your customers get lost and frustrated and then run off to a competitor instead. Yikes!
3. Not Putting Contact Info in an Obvious Location
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I’m going to guess that if you have a website up, you’re selling something – whether it’s just information via articles or video, or it’s an actual product or service. You need to provide your customers with multiple ways to contact you. This means an email address, street address, and phone number. My suggestion is to put this information on every page of your site so that you appear trustworthy, transparent, and genuine to your customers (which you are, right? Right).
4. Visually Unappealing
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This one is tough to define because everyone has a different opinion. Stick with the basics and you’ll be safe. For example, don’t have a colored background with a low-contrasting font color, like in the photo above. Stick to a light background with darker font colors, or with a dark background and very light font colors. You should also use the same one or two font styles throughout the site to maintain consistency.
This isn’t an art project for the county art fair (if it is, please ignore this advice); the look of your site should appear unified and clean. You don’t want to plant the seed in your customers’ minds that you can’t make choices or your business is unstable. Remember that many customers will be viewing your site from a mobile device, so be sure to address this when you are choosing fonts. Can you read them when they are tiny?
5. Failing to Link to Social Media
It is currently 2014 and there are about a dozen common social media sites that businesses are using. If your business has social media accounts (I hope you do), link to them! Put them in the footer of your site so they are visible on every page. Your users should be able to check out your social platforms directly from your website. If it’s easy and fast, your customers will likely click them if they find what you are offering to be interesting.
6. Unnecessary Design Items
I applaud you for thinking out of the box, but there is no need for loud sounds, flashing graphics, or unnecessary, cluttering banner ads. Clean, crisp, and modern website design is all the rage right now. Don’t startle someone so they fall right out of their seat. Instead, offer customers a soothing browsing experience.
7. Unclear What You’re Offering
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Is it very obvious what your company is offering? If not, it should be. Take a look at the image above. Below their photo they say exactly what they do: Custom Digital Printing in Chicago. Customers know right away what they are looking at and can then continue looking around the site for any information they need. There is also an immediate call to action: “Check out our specials”, which is effective for the customers and for the company. Customers can click the call to action right away, discover any specials, while also generating a lead for Blooming Color, Inc. These are two simple design elements that are often forgotten.
(Photo source: www.bloomingcolor.com)
8. Word Walls
Have you ever looked at an online article, saw the wall of text, and said “I don’t have time to read all of that” and left? So have I. It’s easy to combat this issue, though. We all have a lot so say to our customers, but you don’t need to trap them in a sea of text.
- Break up an article with numbers, bullets, and images (see what I did there?)
- Keep your articles fun, brief, and easy to read – no confusing jargon
- Include some quotes or applicable embedded links
9. Flexible Sizing
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With the ever-increasing percentage of mobile browsing, companies need to be sure their websites accommodate the sizing differences. Is your website mobile-friendly? If not, run fast and fix this issue immediately. If your site isn’t viewable on a mobile device, say goodbye to 20% (or more) of your website visitors. Need I say more?
10. DIY vs. Outsourcing
Finally, we are going to talk about how we can fix all of these problems. Some of these mistakes are easily fixed with a quick DIY tutorial, but others aren’t so simple. Don’t butcher your website because you are pinching your pennies.
The easiest and safest way to solve your website problems is to hire a professional digital marketing agency to take care of your website for you, but they can be costly. Many agencies feed on the desperation of companies with horrible websites and charge an outrageously high amount. You don’t need to trade your limbs in exchange for an awesome website. On the other hand, if you find a marketing agency who is promising you the world for a much lower amount than you expected, beware. Do your research and find the perfect digital marketing agency to fit for your needs – you don’t need to pay for services that you won’t use, but you also should not sacrifice quality.
By following these tips, you can avoid making some common website design mistakes. Turn your customers’ first impressions into a home run for your business.
