Website Design Mistakes

If you’re planning a new website for your business then this post is for you. Avoiding these common website design mistakes will greatly help your site to achieve popularity with your intended audience and therefore gain a better conversion rate.

1. Don’t sell to everyone
   Selling to everyone will have a negative impact on your relevancy and position. It is essential to know your target market and sell niche products or services specifically to them. This will ensure focused information, higher ranking, less competition and a higher conversion rate.
2. Don’t hide your message
   It may seem obvious, but do not hide your message. Home page design should be your advert – state your message clearly and also state what you want your visitors to do.
3. Avoid huge unnecessary graphics
   Images need to be optimised to be as small as possible. Large graphic files will cause the site to load slowly, which is frustrating to visitors who will not wait around but simply hit the next search result.
4. No obvious contact or sign up details
   If visitors can’t easily find your contact details, they will leave the site. Ensure your navigation includes a link to your ‘contact us’ page and include different forms of contact.
5. Visitor counters are tacky
   Arriving at a website and seeing that you are visitor no. ### is not an impressive feature. It will make the website look cheap and show visitors that it was designed by a beginner.
6. Don’t ask visitors to download software just to view your site
   Visitors hate having to download anything just to see a site and therefore won’t bother, but simply click on the next site. So unless it is absolutely essential for virtual tours or music stores etc don’t do it.
7. Don’t add sound that can’t be turned off
   Don’t let any sound or music start when the page loads. Visitors can find sound infuriating. Ensure any sound can be disabled by offering a button to disable the sound function. Think of those visitors that surf the web at work!
8. Avoid lots of adverts and pop-ups
   Adverts and pop-ups can be distracting. If visitors are researching information concerning your company, too many ads or pop-ups can detract from this.
9. Don’t hide text within a graphic
   Search engines do not index graphics and Flash, they only index text which is essential to your site’s search engine ranking and also to selling your product or service.
10. Just because you can doesn’t mean you should
    For all those web geeks out there – new or just discovered technology isn’t always suitable for a business website. New technology should only be used on a business website if it improves the visitors experience or sells more products.

Can you think of any more website mistakes? Have you made any mistakes or do you have any website gripes? Let me know in the comment box below.

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Hazel Jarrett