Web Design Mistakes That Can Hurt Your Business
In this day, having a website is a necessity for a business and not an option. It’s a critical requirement in your branding and marketing strategies. Besides, the website must fulfil specific design requirements and standards. With a compelling website, you can quickly get your visitor’s attention, engage them and establish a relationship with them. It also gives your business credibility online.
If there’s even a minor glitch, you may scare away visitors and potential customers, as your website design has a massive impact on how visitors perceive your brand. However, it’s entirely possible to create an excellent user experience with an accessible, fast, navigable well-designed website. Here are the design mistakes you should avoid at all costs.
Creating a Non-responsive Design
A responsive web design is simply creating a website that users can work from any device, be it a PC, tablet, or smartphone. A responsive design optimizes a website to the visitor’s screen. Many people access the internet on the move on their mobile devices, primarily smartphones. If your website doesn’t adapt to the user’s device, they’ll have difficulty browsing as the fonts will be too small.
Most older websites are the main culprits of non-responsive web designs. If your website is a few years old or has been a while since you updated it, you need to make it responsive. Without doing that, it will keep repelling visitors using any other device apart from a PC.
Not Paying Attention To Website Accessibility
If you are not aware, there are web content accessibility guidelines or simply ADA compliance guidelines that you need to adhere to when building your website. Legally a website needs to cater to all people regardless of their motor, cognitive, visual, or hearing disabilities. When your website fails to engage the site visitors with disabilities, they will leave and move to a competitor with an accessible design.
People living with disabilities are also potential customers with a high purchasing power. Failing to cater to them impacts your sales and brand negatively. People will also view your brand as not being inclusive. That means it’s crucial to make your website accessible to all users. Right from when you’re thinking about the design process, keep in mind that you are building a website for blind, deaf, and people with other disabilities, as well as for people without disabilities.
Using Auto-playing Videos and Audio
Creating auto-playing videos can be beneficial when looking to have increased viewership, but it has many downsides. First, people living with disabilities and using screen readers navigate sites by listening. Any sound other than what they want to hear interferes with their navigation and experience. In addition, it goes against the ADA requirements for websites mentioned above.
Second, you are forcing your visitors to watch videos that they may not be interested in, which can be quite irritating and intrusive. Ensure that only the user initiates all audio or video to avoid negative brand reviews and higher bounce rates. Anything that negatively impacts conversion rates tells you that you need to find an alternative to it.
Your Website Takes Too Long to Load
Slow-loading websites mean that you need to seriously re-think some elements in the design. Visitors appreciate faster loading websites, with statistics showing that the average time a visitor expects your pages to load is only three seconds. That means almost instantaneously. After three seconds, bounce rates increase significantly, costing you, customers, and potential customers.
If you realize that your pages are loading a bit too slow, the first step you can take is to try and optimize images and especially on the homepage. Visitors who are greeted with graphics and images that take hours to load will leave. Try and scale down on images and optimize content where possible. Other elements that impact loading speed are hefty themes and plugins, which can be remedied by updating newer versions.
Always test your site thoroughly before making it live to see how plugins behave and to ensure that any updates or changes you’ve made haven’t affected the website. Only implement the changes after testing the working of the entire website.
Complicated Navigation
Navigation is how your visitors find and move to different pages on your site for whatever they’re looking for. Making navigation accessible is, therefore, imperative. Good website navigation allows your visitors to move from one page to another seamlessly. When you make this happen, they’ll leave happy, and you’ll have built a relationship. They might come back to sign up for your services or buy products.
With almost all businesses online, there’s no shortage of other places your visitors can go. If you are not offering straightforward navigation and a smooth way to explore what you have to offer, they won’t bother to engage or come back. Also, consider that you have people using screen readers, keyboards, and other accessibility tools. Navigation links need to be accessible to users with either tool. A web accessibility audit needs to be done in this situation.
Lacking A Clear Call to Action (CTA)
Finally, you need a clear CTA so that visitors know precisely what you need them to do. You need to make it visible and appealing. The clearer a CTA is, the more the chances of visitors clicking and taking the intended action. Without a clear CTa, visitors might scan your website, enjoy the design and content and still leave without purchasing, signing up, or engaging in any way.
Takeaway
The best way to know how well your website functions is by tracking its performance and reading reviews, feedback, and visitor suggestions. You may not be able to meet every user’s expectations and needs, but you are catering to a broader range of user needs by avoiding the design mistakes above. Check your web strategy now and fix any errors that inhibit your website’s user experience and usability. Your website is your virtual connection to your customers. Improve it to attract more business and build a good reputation for your brand.
Using the best digital design agency is often the best way to go. However, you can also build a good website with website builders available online today.
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