Does your website deliver on the goals you had when you first developed it?

Many small business owners decide to create their own websites in order to have more control over the creative process, simply to be disappointed by mediocre results. Perhaps you envisaged millions of visitors, only to see a trickle. Maybe visitors click away to competitors’ sites before they can learn more about your value proposition. Either way, it is not helping you to achieve your goals.

In most cases, you might look at your marketing strategy, your SEO, or your content. While all of those elements are important, web design also matters.

Why It’s Important to Avoid These 4 Web Design Mistakes

Good web design is an investment that pays dividends, because:

• a good first impression will ensure that visitors stick around for longer.
• a quality web design builds trust.
• it guides visitors towards the important elements of your sales funnel.

Quality web design is a marriage of beauty and usability. There’s more to web design than just the appearance. How visitors interact with your site is what matters most. Yet, usability and aesthetics often interact during the design process. Read on to find out how you can make your web design work for you.

4 Website Design Mistakes & How to Avoid Them

Let’s take a look at the most common website design mistakes people make, and how you can avoid them.

Website Design Mistake #1: Slow Loading Website

How often have you abandoned a website because it takes longer than 2 seconds to load? That’s right. In today’s world, we’ve come to expect instant gratification.

According to Kissmetrics page abandonment increases by 25% when a page takes 4 seconds to load.

Incorporate performance in your design by avoiding all the unnecessary bells and whistles. If people are abandoning your site because it takes too long to load, they won’t see the fancy JavaScript animations, so rather avoid the gimmicks and receive more visitors.

Website Design Mistake #2: Inconsistency & Clutter

We can’t stress the importance of consistency in design enough. In my previous post, we mentioned how consistency builds trust. When it comes to consistency on your website, it not only looks neat and creates trust, but it creates a sense of professionalism.

Inconsistency creates clutter – not only on your website but also in life. Remove any unnecessary content, design elements, and images to improve the content hierarchy, focus, and flow and to provide guidance to your visitors.

You can create clarity and consistency by…

• Keeping your site simple and by avoiding sudden changes to your color scheme.
• Leaving sufficient white space around elements to allow your design (and visitors) to breathe.
• Organizing your content into coherent group-pages, sub-pages, and archives, especially if you cover different topics.

Website Design Mistake #3: Hard-to-Read Content

Gone are the days when consumers used to be excited by all the free information available on the internet. Today, consumers value their time above most commodities. Instead of large chunks of text, provide them with only the information they need, and make it easy to read.

Writing for the web differs vastly from writing a book. Digital copywriters employ a different style that appeals to the characteristics of the online reader. They also use their skills ensure that your content is noticed by the search engines.

Here are suggestions from a digital copywriter on how to create effective web copy:

Organize Content Into Pages

Apart from being a great tool for SEO, having multiple pages ensures that your content is neatly organized by topic. This eliminates confusion for the reader and is easier on the eyes. Now nobody has to read information that is irrelevant to their search.

Add Graphic Elements

Images and icons are great visual elements to break up an all-text web page. Use one visual element, quote, or link per every 300 words of text.

Use Short Paragraphs

The texting era has made us resistant to reading large blocks of text. Adding space between paragraphs gives the eyes a break and helps the reader process the content better.

Use Headings

Most readers skim the text on your website, so make it easier for them by including headings, and sticking to one idea per paragraph. Headers are also a great on-page SEO tool.

Website Design Mistake #4: Unresponsive Website Design

We’ve said it a thousand times, and we’ll say it again: You NEED a responsive design if you want to be in business.

According to Comscore, two out of every three minutes spent online, happen on mobile devices. Yet, nearly a third of all new WordPress websites choose to forego a responsive theme. This shocking figure has caused Matt Mullenweg (founder of WordPress) to make responsiveness a requirement for all new themes.

Why should your site be responsive?

1. Without it, you’re losing out on the huge global audience of mobile users.
2.  It will display better across all devices.
3.  You’ll get more visitors, which should result in improved conversions.

Have you made any of these website design mistakes?

It takes years of training to become proficient at quality website design. Technology and search engine algorithms are always changing. The best way to avoid these website design mistakes is to hire a professional to create your website design.