Quickly grow your website by avoiding these common pitfalls
The goal of developing a business site is to bring in new consumers, increase conversion and drive user engagement. However, there are many blunders that can happen from the initial stages of website development to marketing.
These are the top 10 common web design mistakes in web page design to avoid:
1. No overt CTA
A website that lacks a strong call-to-action (CTA) doesn’t serve its purpose.
How will website visitors interact with you and purchase products if you don’t have a direct call-to-action button? As a website owner or manager, consider the functionality of your website and desired conversion rate.
Make sure to include a clear CTA push-button on each page. You may even want to include more than 1 CTA button, particularly on your homepage. But avoid overdoing it, too, since an overload of CTAs can be distracting and confusing to the user.
Find that CTA sweet spot. (More on this below in section #3.)
2. Sluggish website
A slow-loading website will lose visitors quickly. Studies show that if your website takes over 3 seconds to load, more than 55 percent of visitors will leave contributing to a high bounce rate.
Moreover, Google prioritizes speed in its organic rankings. In fact, speed is 1 of its most important SEO ranking factors, so make certain your website loads quickly and keep in mind that faulty or out-of-date plugins can affect the page load time of your site.
Actionable tips on how to improve your page speed and create a responsive website.
3. Too many features
As a business owner, it’s critical to have accurate information on your website (including up-to-date contact information). However, this doesn’t imply that your pages should be overwhelmed by multiple CTA buttons and giant blocks of copy.
Your customers and search engines can get irritated by never-ending websites. Thus, try to make a good first impression and include essential design elements, such as typography and graphic design, and clever use of subheadings to break up copy into more bite-sized chunks to enhance readability.
If you’re offering several services or products, consider dividing your website into different sections. This will allow your visitors to open only the sections they want. Furthermore, splitting pages will reduce slow load times, please search engines and create a more responsive web design.
Sometimes, simplicity is best.
4. Too many (or too few) images
As is the case with too much copy, using too few or too many images can wreak havoc on website design and SEO.
How important are quality images?
Recent studies show that visual searches will surpass $14,727 million in revenue by 2023.
Images not only brighten your website but also increase its revenue. However, remember that overloading your website’s design with images can significantly slow down its load time, so it can be a delicate balancing act between snazzy design and page optimization. Don’t forget to consider how your website will look as a mobile website.
5. Too many pop-ups and ads
AdSense can be a great revenue source for affiliate markets and bloggers, allowing small businesses to run ads for a little extra cash. Pop-up ads can also be an effective way for websites to promote a special campaign to their users.
But don’t overdo it! Limit pop-up-ads to 1 per page at most. Alternatively, you may want to use intent-based pop-ups that only appear when a visitor intends to leave your website. Remember that many ads detract from the user experience and slow down website loading.
If poorly executed, pop-ups can also be a huge annoyance for the average user. While adding pop-ups to sell your products or increase your email subscriber list can be an effective marketing strategy, often a gentle touch and conservative approach is best.
6. Too little (or too much) content
Content is an excellent opportunity to incorporate keywords into a website and inform visitors about your product line. As such, be sure to have a reasonable amount of content on your site because having too little or too much content can harm its SEO.
On the other hand, long sentences or paragraphs on a website may turn away some visitors. Always keep in mind that people skim through content when they’re online. So, provide them with concise and insightful website content.
7. Failing to integrate social media into your website
Ineffective social media marketing is 1 of the major blunders in web design. A social media button is essential for organic traffic because off-page SEO often comes from social media.
People also want to interact with brands before buying. According to a new Sprout study, 1 in every 3 customers uses social media to discover new services and products. Also, 1 out of 4 consumers buys new products via social media.
Adding social media buttons to your website is a must to please search engines and new users.
8. Stuffing keywords
Keywords are one of the most powerful ways to optimize your site. But that doesn’t mean you should stuff keywords into every sentence.
Keyword stuffing makes your website look robotic and overly promotional, which neither Google nor users like. A keyword density of 1-1.5 percent is ideal for SEO.
Also, Google now uses intent. Remember that Googlebot is very intelligent, so instead of using exact key phrases, tweak them to fit in the sentence without looking stuffed.
9. Poor navigation
Poorly-planned navigation can harm your website’s user experience and search rankings. Search engine crawlers and users can’t navigate your site if all of your navigation is hidden in the hamburger menu.
We advise website designers to use the classic top-of-screen navigation menu and develop XML sitemaps to assist search engines in finding your website.
10. Using Flash
If you’re using Flash on your website, you should stop immediately.
Steve Jobs’ open letter “Thoughts on Flash” essentially ended the Flash era in 2010—for good reason.
Flash is an ineffective web design technology for SEO. For starters, it doesn’t let users create separate pages or track outbound links. Flash-based sites are also difficult for Google to read, which affects rankings and applicable metrics.
So, as your web development team looks to redesign or build a new website, avoid using Flash in 2022 (if you’re still using it). Instead, use a platform like WordPress, which has millions of beautiful layouts to design a professional-looking website.
Bottom line
Remember that UX and SEO go hand in hand. So, a user-friendly website is SEO-friendly.