In this day and age, every business is sharing space on the internet and competing to keep their customers hooked. This means every website design and development decision you make matters. As websites are one of the most crucial parts of any business, they must meet the industry design standards of today. The last thing any business wants is having a website with technical loopholes and design glitches.
Having a website that allows for a seamless user experience, constant flow of targeted leads, and enhanced sales is a prerequisite to running a successful business.
Listed below are the most common website design mistakes to avoid to maximize conversion rate.
Mistake #1: Having a non-responsive website design
Gone are the days when a website would run only on large screens of desktops and laptops. Today, as more and more people use their smartphones to surf the internet, the need for responsive website design is more significant than ever.
Having a website that takes time to become responsive on small screens, provides poor readability, and generates low-quality images can negatively impact the user experience.
How to deal with it?
To provide a good user experience and keep your visitors hooked, create a website that readily adapts to any device the visitor is using. Create robust user interfaces for small mobile devices to keep your customers engaged.
Mistake #2: Problem with loading
A website taking more than four seconds on laptops and two seconds on smartphones to load can turn off the customers. Most visitors abandon a website if its loading time is more than four seconds.
How to deal with it?
Optimizing certain elements of the web design that affect the page loading time and, resultantly, its SEO ranking is essential. One of the most substantial elements that affect loading time are graphics, and large images slow down the loading time. So, compress the images before uploading them to the website. Furthermore, use cache plugins and steer clear from unclean coding.
Mistake #3: Too many pop-ups
While some can be helpful, too many pop-ups on the screen can be annoying. Pop-ups obstruct the view, hinder navigation, confuse the visitors, and contribute to a high bounce rate. Moreover, most visitors take them for malware, which can impact your brand image.
How to deal with them?
Having pop-ups on the website is acceptable as they bear ROI potential, but do not bombard your visitors with them. Allow only a few essential pop-ups upon entry or exit. Make sure your pop-ups are responsive and optimized for different devices. Place them strategically on the website (sticky bar for pop-ups with special offers and center of the screen for intruding pop-ups). Most importantly, provide visitors value through the pop-ups.
Mistake #4: Problems with navigation
Effortless navigation keeps the visitors hooked on the website for a longer period. If your website doesn’t allow them to quickly move from one page to another, you might not get many conversions.
How to deal with it?
Again, mobile responsiveness is the most important consideration. Secondly, be cautious while using hyperlinks. Format them in simple but different text from the rest of the body text. Create a CTA button and declutter the navigation bar. Also, do not use animation for navigation as it can annoy your guests when they are reading something or working on smaller devices.
Mistake #5: Poor visual content
Visual content or the aesthetics of your website is the biggest crowd magnet. However, if done wrong, it can be the poorest element of the website design, turning visitors away.
How to deal with it?
Do not make your website off-putting with bad-quality images, terrible color schemes, and dated styling.
Contact the best web design Frederick MD to design a minimalist and visually pleasing website for your business.
Mistake #6: Improper contact information
Properly stated contact information is essential to boost brand reliability and credibility, and acquire leads. After exploring your website, interested visitors might want to contact you and look for your contact information, and lack of this critical information can play against the business.
How to deal with it?
Make sure your website has a well-formed ‘Contact Us’ page that offers essential information like your contact number, email address, and office address. It should be easily accessible. Consider adding chatbots for live chats to engage the customers further and resolve their queries.
Mistake #7: Non-scannable content
Non-scannable content on a website can be intimidating for the readers and can turn them away. As most people read slowly on the screen, the thought of reading an entire page full of text scares them.
On the other hand, scannable content makes it easy to browse through the web page quickly and retrieve the required information.
How to deal with it?
The best way to make your web pages scannable is by writing relevant content in a simple language. Do not splurge extra details unnecessarily. Use short paragraphs, bulleted lists, sub-headings, and highlighted keywords in your content to make it easy for your readers. Add pictures or infographics and provide links to lead your readers to additional information. Look for an expert in search engine optimization Frederick MD to optimize your content.
Furthermore, space out the content evenly on the screen, and provide enough white space to make the screen look clean and uncluttered.
Mistake #8: Auto-playing videos
Of course, video content is helpful, but auto-playing videos with high-pitched sound can annoy any viewer who is not in the mood to watch it. Playing videos on the website with the visitor’s consent is always a better option because, more often than not, visitors leave the page instead of muting the video.
How to deal with it?
Instead of auto-playing a video on the website, post videos where the visitors can have the option to play it.
The bottom line
Even the smallest mistake in your website design can push your customers away. Hence, make sure your website provides an exceptional user experience to the users, compelling them to visit again.
Keep an eye out for these mistakes while designing your website and prevent your business from a negative spell.
