5 Most Common Web Design Mistakes Small Businesses Make

5 Most Common Web Design Mistakes Small Businesses Make

In today’s world, almost all businesses require websites to gain new customers and maintain a smooth client relationship. As a business owner, web design mistakes are something that you would want to avoid.

An effective small business website generally comes with:

● Responsive Design​ — easily viewable and usable ● Minimalism — fewer pages, with simpler designs

● User-friendly experience — comfortable for users ● Attractive content — simple, easy to get and informative at the same time But crucial web design mistakes hamper your business website’s ability to meet the above-mentioned criteria. Some of the common web design mistakes that small business make are:

1) Terrible Call to Action (CTA) Lack of call to action or no call to action is a terrible mistake found on many small business websites.

Call to action guides visitors to do something. In a way, it is a gateway to your business. A good website should tell you: ● What to do ● Where to go CTA should: ● Guide users well ● Be concise

● Be as simple as possible rather than creative Some well-known examples of CTA are: Get Started for Free, Sign Up, Contact Us, Download Now, Subscribe etc.

2) Search Engine Optimization Deficiency Search engine rankings are based on Search Engine Optimization techniques. A good website must follow proper SEO techniques for the business to flourish.

Often, when you do not create website adhering to SEO techniques, it results into poor search engine performance. Here are some design mistakes that can hurt your SEO: ● Missing H1 Tags Very often website designers and developers try to emphasize on the outlook of a website and ignore essential SEO elements. Removing an H1 tag is one of them.

No matter how amazing the site looks, it won’t appear in the search engines because of the missing H1 tag. Use a descriptive H1 tag with target keyword. ● Large Images and Media Files If we consider the latest ​web design trends​, images and videos certainly enhance the beauty of a website, but they may also affect the site speed. Google rewards

sites that load faster. You can use tools like Google Pagespeed Insights Test and Screaming Frog to identify if the page contains large images and media files. It is possible to re-upload the resized or compressed media files upon identification. ● Pop-ups Pop-ups can negatively impact SEO. So, you should reconsider pop-up strategies if visitors don’t find those user-friendly. ● Text in Images Search engines generally don’t read texts overlaid on images. Some websites include important titles or headings inside images. This is a bad practice and you should avoid it. Even if your image contains some text, restate that text content on your page. ● Infinite Scroll Infinite scroll is harmful for SEO. Search Engine robots only see the content that is primarily visible on the website. It doesn’t see the remaining elements that would load through infinite scrolling. Hence it has effects on SEO. But one can also make infinite scrolls search-friendly. ● Thin Content

Thin contents makes your website’s SEO suffer. Common thin content related mistakes are: ● Not having enough detail information on your product or service pages.

There is a higher chance of visitors turning into customers if descriptive content is present on these pages. ● Listing multiple products or services on one page confuses the search engine regarding what the page is about. ● Search engines do not like plagiarized content. Also, content full of grammatical mistakes hurts the user experience of your website, which in turn affects the SEO. You need to keep these critical SEO elements in mind while working on a new website or redesigning one.

3) Difficulty in Finding Contact Info It is well said that, “If you are hard to connect, people may not connect at all!”

Customers need to get in touch with the business owners often and thus, providing correct contact information stands of importance. You can show the contact information clearly in the header or footer or on a dedicated contact page.

Providing as many contact details as possible (including your social media links) works as a trust factor for your customers. All the contact information it should be convenient and easy to find.

4) Poor Mobile Site Experience Poor mobile site experience is another mistake that people make often. People today are dependent on mobile devices and use it a lot to access the internet. So, with the number of mobile site visitors increasing with each passing day, you should take the responsive websites seriously to reach more people.

67% of users prefer buying products from mobile-friendly sites. 40% users have changed to a competitor’s website due to facing poor mobile experience.

So, if your small business website isn’t mobile responsive, it’s high time to change that.

5) Lacking Content Quality Content quality should be the prime concern while designing the website. Some key concerns might be:

● Sometimes the content is lengthy and irrelevant. It drives away the customers. Sometimes it is not enough to provide information to the customer. ● You should use images should to create better content. But irrelevant images also ruin the quality of the content instead. ● It is important to take care of Poor use of whitespace. Ads in wrong places are also a matter of concern.

The topic and tone of your content must be suitable for your target audience.

Conclusion There are many some other ​web design mistakes apart from the ones mentioned above. The above ones are very common and easy to fix. You can handle them in the first place by taking care of the small things.

There is no better time to look at your web strategy than right now. Start fixing the errors today and attain greater success!

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