If you’re trying to get yourself a business website, this piece is for you. I’ll discuss the primary mistakes we make so you can avoid them.
Some of these mistakes are sly and you wouldn’t even see their negative effects till a lot of time has gone by. Most of these mistakes can be avoided simply by being well-informed.
Yes, in most cases you wouldn’t need to spend anything to avoid the mistakes and get yourself a solid project.
Let’s get started then.
Table of Contents
Too much flash too little speed
This one’s a classic. When we start out, we often want our website to look the best. In this pursuit, we overload it with sliders, animations, flashy fonts and so much more.
The problem is all of these add more loading time to your website. As Google says, any website that loads <2 seconds isn’t a very good website. Hence, you must prioritise speed even if it means sacrificing a few aesthetics.
Here are ways you can reduce your website load-time:
- You may try either replacing your current elements with better-coded elements or get rid of them altogether.
- You can also try moving to a better host or a cloud host.
- Try reducing the number of plugins you use as well. And of course, employing CDNs helps as well.
- Optimise your images for size and resolution, they’re one of the most resource consuming aspects on your website.
Responsiveness
You may have the best looking designs. But, if your design doesn’t automatically change the size and ratio of elements depending on the users’ device, it’s no use.
Responsiveness is simply the ability to display your website as you created, without distorting shapes or eliminating content by auto-adjusting the shape and size of elements.
Google has even made responsiveness a mandatory requirement for websites. It prioritises websites that are optimised for mobile over non-optimized sites.
The best way to ensure responsiveness is to hire a specialist. One company I’ve heard a lot about is Bizango when it comes to all-bases-covered web design.
Many websites that are created lack basic navigational optimization. E.g. links should be clear about their destination. They should be easy to find. It’s best to not use hidden links and keep as many of them displayed transparently as possible.
How you organise your layout matters as well. It’s best to keep related items together or close by. You can also sort by item type, importance and so on.
Also ensure your URLs are on point. The homepage is best left at www.yourwebsite.com. Using subfolders or subdomains isn’t the best option. Similarly, for each article, ensure your keywords are set right so you get the best possible URL.
No popups or too many popups
Popups have always been a topic of hot debate. Some say you shouldn’t use them, others disagree.
Popups have multiple benefits. From a business perspective, the best benefit is they can help you offer rewards, discounts and gather e-mail addresses for future offers.
On the downsides, they’re definitely annoying. This is primarily because they appear out of nowhere and break the user’s concentration.
The solution here is, use popups but with caution. For starters, it’s best not to use more than 1 popup/session. Then, It’s best if whatever you’re offering in your popup is worth the users’ frustration. A “$X off your next purchase” coupon generally helps.
Self-designing a website without experience
Okay, this is only if you’ve never designed a website before. Trying to instantly design a business website is impressive. Problem is, it may backfire.
You may make mistakes that are irreversible or will cost a lot more to reverse. The most common being installing unsafe themes/plugins.
Build websites, that’s amazing. However, I’d recommend that if you’re absolutely new and you need a “business” website, please take some help from the experts.
Conclusion- 5 Web Design Mistakes That Can Hurt Your Business
These aren’t the only web design mistakes that hurt your business but these definitely are the most common. As Einstein said, “two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity and I’m not sure about the universe”. Hence, there are always other mistakes we can come up with. However, as long as you take care of the problems above, you should be fine.
