With the increased use of mobile devices to browse the internet, as well as new and exciting design options such as parallax scrolling, business owners have focused all of their efforts into redesigning their websites over the last couple of years. This, however, has also resulted in numerous poor website design choices which prevent the visitors from truly connecting with the brand.
Let’s go over the 5 most common mistakes web designers tend to make and the different ways you can avoid them.
Poor logo design choices
The logo represents the single most important piece of branding and should be treated as such. A logo should accurately depict and reflect your business personality, as well as act as the main identifier of your company. Most business owners underestimate the true value of a well-designed logo and often bundle logo creation alongside website design, which often turns out to be a rather bad business decision. The current marketplace is flooded with numerous companies trying to sell similar products and services and it’s very important to set yourself apart from the rest of the competition.
Not making your website mobile first
Back in 2015, Google has issued a report stating that more than half of all search queries are made using a mobile device. In order to support the rising tide of mobile users, Google has actually tweaked its search algorithm to favor mobile-first websites and demote those featuring only a desktop version of their site. This can quickly result in loss of traffic and, in turn, loss of revenue. In order to prevent this from happening, make sure that your website is mobile-first, or at least responsive.
Building a slow-loading website
Page loading speeds are crucial for developing and maintaining an optimal user experience. The average internet user expects a website to load completely in under 2 seconds and will actually leave the page if it takes more than 3 seconds to load. Considering that Google has listed both the user experience and page loading speeds as de facto ranking signals, improving your website’s loading speed becomes even more important. Try to keep the amount of on-page elements, as well as the number of plugins you use on a bare minimum if you wish to avoid getting your website down-ranked or completely omitted from the search results.
Unoriginal and uninformative content
Another one of Google’s ranking factors, fresh and engaging content will not only help your website rank higher in the SERP (search engine results page) but also steer the visitors through the sales funnel and help convert them into paying customers. Stale and otherwise unoriginal content serves no real purpose and is quickly recognized by Google. Avoid using duplicate content at all costs, or you will quickly get reprimanded by the search engine. Make sure you post your content on a regular basis and try to keep it as engaging and as interesting as you can.
Poorly designed navigation
The main navigation is considered to be the single most important aspect of any website. Visitors use it to navigate through the different pages on your website and allow search engine spiders to crawl your website and index all the pages. Websites that use a clear and simple navigational structure rank significantly higher in the search results. Make sure that your website has a consistent, structured and a highly intuitive navigation menu across all pages and that the visitors aren’t burdened with too many choices. There is a great IT support in Sydney that can check everything and help it run smoothly.
These are just some of the most common web design mistakes you should definitely avoid making. Fortunately, most of them can simply be fixed with some audience research, common sense and some effort and hard work. Your website should be a direct representation of your company and should be treated appropriately. The better your website, the more time visitors will spend browsing it and the higher the chances are that those visitors will get converted into loyal customers.
I just like the helpful information you supply in your articles. I am creating my website and your article has helped me a lot to think over the layout and placement of important elements. Thank you so much.
Very helpful indeed. I am creating a simple website for my brother in law and I can’t believe that there is so much involved. This post has helped me a lot to not make common errors when designing a website.