Websites are the digital presence of your business. They depict who you are, the type of products and level of services you provide, and how well you solve your audience’s problems. An attractive website is an excellent way to raise your voice among your potential clients and avoiding certain web design mistakes will help to build user confidence.
Unique and compelling website design is no longer an option; it’s a necessity. When building your website, you want an excellent final product that will inspire users to take action and help your business grow. Unfortunately, the number of poor websites on the internet is alarming. This article highlights costly web design mistakes that can hurt your business.
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1. A poorly designed logo
The importance of a logo cannot be stressed enough. It is a representation of your brand’s business identity, and it can make or break your business’s reputation. Generating a compelling logo is not easy – even the most experienced designers can have a difficult time when designing a brand’s custom logo. Common logo design mistakes include:
- Over-reliance on trends – Don’t be tempted to design your logo based on current trends. A logo is a brand identity symbol and should not have a hint of unprofessional design that looks dated. Adhering to trends will only serve to make your logo look cliche and dated quickly.
- Incorrect use of typefaces
- Poor color selection
- Creating a complicated design
- Plagiarizing your logo – This is probably the biggest mistake you can make when designing your logo. A unique logo is very important as it represents your company’s identity. Stealing or copying ideas from other companies will negatively affect your brand
2. Non-responsive design
A responsive design is one that is optimized to the user’s preferred device. Today, people use mobile phones more than computers to browse, and it’s important that your website adapts to smaller screens. A responsive design will keep potential customers engaged for a longer period of time. On the contrary, a non-responsive website:
- Contributes to negative user experience
- Generates poor web layout in some devices, which results in low-quality images and poor readability.
- It is hard to navigate
- Is not mobile-friendly
3. A terrible call to action (CTA)
Your call to action is among the most important parts of your marketing efforts. It’s the difference between making a sale and losing a prospect. It is vital that your CTA tells your site visitors what to do. However, there is more to it than just adding a ‘buy now’ or ‘click here’ button on your webpages, and there is a thin line between a compelling and an annoying CTA. Ensure your CTA is concise and tells site visitors exactly what to do. In addition, you should keep form-filling to a minimum, make the CTA visible, use practical language and be consistent.
4. Irrelevant or poorly-designed images
Graphics and images are crucial elements of web design. Images help to convey a message clearly, attract attention, and guide visitors’ line of sight. Low-quality images will make visitors lose interest in your site, which will hurt your conversions.
5 Too many pop-up CTAs and chatbots
As we mentioned above, there is a very thin line between helping and annoying users. While it’s commendable that you want to help your site visitors as much as possible, chatbots and pop-up CTAs can easily become annoying if they are excessive. It’s always beneficial to remind your site visitors that you’re around to help, but informing them once is generally enough.
6. Ignoring hierarchical aesthetics
The visual hierarchy of your content is very important. Efficient visual hierarchies are an excellent way to implement user journeys. You can achieve this by using compelling small animations, colors, words, and images. The sizing and spacing between these elements are also crucial in driving user engagement. Lack of strategy on hierarchical aesthetics implies less interaction, which can hurt your business.
7. Wordy or slow loading landing pages
Users tend to have little patience for slow loading times, and will quickly move to a competitor’s site if yours is taking too long to load. It’s vital that you have a fast-loading website and a landing page that quickly offers useful information. Remove any extra features such as videos, complex graphics, and audio files from the home page, and take them to another page. You want all your potential client’s attention on what you are selling. Provide concise explanations and use clean graphics to draw the visitors in.
8. Using fonts that are hard to read
Swirly fonts on your website may look appealing, but they are difficult to read. Use easy-to-read fonts that look professional. Don’t place dark text on a darker background, and don’t use fancy colors like pink and yellow either.
9. Weak SEO
Great web design does not only involve improving user engagement; it also involves a strong search engine optimization strategy to improve traffic and lead generation. You need great, SEO-optimized content that offers excellent value and gets found organically through search engines.
There is no shortcut to obtaining high search engine rankings, and it won’t happen overnight. However, don’t be tempted to apply old-school SEO tactics like keyword stuffing, as you will be penalized and lose website authority. Use the following SEO tactics:
- Focus on long-tail keywords
- Post quality content more often
- Write long-form content
- Optimize for voice search
- Design for mobile
- Improve user experience across all your webpages
- Target local searchers
10. Lack of contact information
A lack of contact information is one of the most common web design mistakes. A visitor must be able to find your contact information when they use your services or buy your product. If a prospect has to search through your website to find your contact, they are likely to get frustrated and leave. Be sure to have a ‘Contact Us’ page or provide contact information on every web page.
Endnote
In today’s marketplace, a website is a crucial business tool. If you fail to leverage it the right way, you will leave leads, sales, and money on the table. If you have made one or more of these web design mistakes, there is no better time to start fixing them than now. Mistakes are part of the creative experience and a learning opportunity.
