We’ve all done it. We’ve all made the mistake of choosing the wrong font, color, or layout for our web pages. It can seem like a small mistake, but the effects can be devastating. The wrong design can make your site look dated, unprofessional, or downright ugly. It can even break your business.
There are many web design mistakes that can cause businesses to lose money. From unprofessional websites to weak page layouts, there are a number of web design mistakes that can break your business.
Mistakes happen. We all make them. If you’re a designer who wants to build a solid business, you may have taken a shortcut that ended up costing you. This isn’t a place to point fingers, but to take a step back and see how you can avoid such pitfalls in the future and make things work on your own terms.
When you design for the web, there are many things to consider - from the user-experience to the design itself. Web developers often take the act of designing a website and turn it into a science. The problem is, most of these websites are based on pseudoscience.
Here are 6 mistakes that can make or break your business. It is easy to make these mistakes, even if you know the basics of web design.
1. Information Overload
Information overload is a real problem for consumers and businesses. With millions of marketing messages being served to consumers daily, it’s hard for a business to stand out from competitors and businesses in general.
As our society grows more accustomed to sharing and consuming information, it becomes harder for businesses to stand out from the crowd. As is the case with everything, there are always winners and losers in the content marketing arena.
2. Lack of Consistency
If you’re an entrepreneur, you have to be consistent. More so, you have to be consistent with your business. Consistency is the key to creating a good user experience and it is one of the most important elements of web design.
Consistency is the basis of any great design. It makes your brand recognizable, solidifies your message, and encourages your customers to come back for more. However, consistency is not just about your design—it’s about the way you interact with your customers, too.
While consistency is a key factor in a successful website, it can also be a major weakness. If you don’t take the time to plan your brand and design, you may end up with a website that is inconsistent from the front to the back, with confusing navigation or a jumbled-up design. If you’re a new website owner, it’s important to note that planning a site’s layout or design is just as important as choosing the color scheme and a template.
While it is important to learn and understand different design techniques, it is equally important to understand why certain designs work, and others are avoided. There are 6 common web design mistakes that can break your business and, if not corrected, can result in lost revenue, unhappy customers, and even lawsuits.
3. Lack of Search Engine Optimization
Search engine optimization is a great way to get traffic to your website. But for many small businesses, it is more important to focus on the other elements of good SEO, such as site architecture, content, and design.
Your website traffic and sales will increase overtime if you optimize it correctly. Improperly optimized websites are huge red flags to search engines, which means they are more likely to drop these websites without any warning. This will negatively impact your website and ultimately your bottom line as consumers won’t be able to easily find your website, meaning loss of customers and revenue.
We all want our websites to rank high in Google search results, so we make sure that they’re optimized for search engines, right? Unfortunately, that’s not enough—there are a lot of almost-trivial problems that can break your website and kill your business before you get a chance to see any results from it.
4. Improper Use of Images
Does your website need images? Probably not. However, improper use of images can still cause harm to your business. One such example is the incorrect use of text or icons in an image: this can break up the design or break a clickthrough, or even make the image hard to find. Another example is the incorrect use of an image of a person’s face. You probably wouldn’t want to see that image in your sidebar.
Throughout the years, many of us have made mistakes while using images. When creating visual content, it’s important to always consider how your images are going to be used on your site, and the consequences of using them incorrectly.
A well published blog is the first step to great web design, but it also plays an important role in business. The right image, the right marketing message, and the right design can make all the difference and lead to a successful business. When done right, they enable a company to connect with their audience and build trust.
5. Duplicate Content
Most of the blog posts on the web are unique, but there are some blogs that have duplicate content. This makes your content look repetitive and outdated can hurt your SEO rankings. Duplicate content (writing on multiple websites) is not only a common mistake amongst small businesses, but a slow and dangerous way to lose traction.
The problem with using duplicate content is that it’s easy to overlook. You may have noticed that in the past, the copy you’ve been writing has been the same as that of your competitor’s site. Or you may not have noticed it at all. Either way, it’s easy to assume that the same content is doing the trick, when in fact, it could be doing the exact opposite.
Just because you wrote a post about your business doesn’t mean that it will be a review of your business. Make sure that you give people a reason to read it, otherwise, all they’re going to see is an advertisement.
Numerous studies have shown that duplicating content across multiple websites can be extremely detrimental to your business. Not only does this lead to a loss of credibility, but it also ends up costing a lot of money.
6. Lack of Contact Information
“Your business website is your window to the world. It’s where your customers find you, and you’re the one doing the talking. If you don’t have a website, you’re missing out on the chance to engage with your potential customers. But, if you don’t have a website, you’re also missing out on the chance to potentially grow your business.
While an essential part of any website is the contact information, it’s easy to forget to include it. After all, it’s easy to spot the website for a business that has contact information printed on the front, but when you’re working on a blog, the contact information is often tucked away in the footer.
A business blog’s success is often judged by the quality of its contact information. However, many small business owners skip this step because of the difficulty of finding and maintaining good contact information. This causes serious problems in communicating with customers and making it easy for customers to contact you.
The lack of contact information is a major problem. Your site has information about your products and services, but if you don’t have contact information, it’s not going to sell. We’ve all heard how important it is, but how many of us actually do it?
Business owners and web designers are often guilty of leaving out an important piece of information on their site: a contact form. This is an important part of your site when you consider how important it is to capture your visitors’ contact information. Without it, you may not be able to contact your own clients or customers, and you could lose business.
Conclusion
Web design mistakes can happen if you’re just starting your business and are new to digital marketing. With the steps mentioned in this article, you’ll be able to avoid the common and beginner web design mistakes that can break your business before it’s even started. Whether you want to help your customers get in touch with you, or you just want to build a relationship with your target audience, it’s not a bad idea to tag your contact information on your blog as well as a call to action.
The opinions expressed here by Guest Contributors are their own, not those of Rise Marketing.