10 Common Small Business Web Design Mistakes

As a small business owner, entrepreneur, or marketing professional, having an well-optimized website is crucial for drawing traffic, generating leads, and converting customers. Most likely your customers’ first point of contact with your business will be through your website. This means that a simple issue like a slow-loading page, or hard to read text, may cause your clients to question your business and brand as a whole.

Below are ten common web design mistakes to avoid if you want a successful website that drives results:

1. Not Having a Mobile-First Design

According to Forbes, virtually all Americans — over 95% — currently own a cell phone. A website that’s not optimized for mobile users will not only miss out on valuable traffic, but will also rank lower in Google’s search results.

2. Slow-Loading Website

If your website takes more than three seconds to load, then you are likely considered to have a slow-loading website. Internet users are very impatient, with over 70% of consumers stating that page speed influences their purchase decision.

The slower your website’s loading speeding, the higher the chance most internet users will divert away from your website.

3. Difficult Navigation

If users find it hard to navigate through your website, that is, identifying your menu or products within your site, they’re most likely to abandon your website. Don’t hide content behind a bunch of clicks, instead highlight your offerings where it can easily be found.

It is especially important for your business contact information to be easily found, preferably on a Contact page, as well as in the footer of the website.

4. Text Isn’t Styled Properly

Do your users have to squint to read the text on your website? Are the colors legible? Is their hierarchy on the page to determine the importance of information? Readability is an important factor, not only from a user’s standpoint, but it effects your SEO rankings as well.

5. No Clear Call-to-Action

CTA’s are an integral part of your website design as they give specific commands to your users. Users need to get correct and accurate information about what action they need to take and the exact information they need to provide.

Be sure to keep your CTAs precise to optimize the results, and encourage the action you want your users to take.

6. Design Isn’t On-Brand

When designing your website, ask yourself what message you intend to communicate to your users. The message your website conveys should be in-line with your brand.

Bad brand communication is one of the most underrated web design mistakes. A good website will enable your users to understand what your brand entails and allow them to make a personal connection with it. Customers that make a personal connection with a brand are more likely to become repeat customers.

7. Not Updating with Fresh Content

After including good CTA’s, images and great content, always make sure to update your website regularly. This will help your users to identify what you’re currently offering, as well as remaining topical and relevant to your customers. Small things like not keeping business hours up to date, can discourage customers and create conflicting information online about your business.

Besides, updated content helps you improve your Google ranking, which increases your website’s reach via search results.

8. Weak SEO

Old SEO tactics used to be a mix of stuffing tons of keywords, having little content, and creating a bunch of backlinks on as many sites as possible. However today, anyone making these web design mistakes can get penalized and actually lose site authority. Search engine algorithms have evolved, and now value a site based on much more than keywords.

While there is no magic formula to obtain high search engine rankings, great content is the best way to provide exceptional value and to be found organically via search engines. But, keep in mind high ranking results do not happen overnight.

9. Not Including Analytics

Websites and social media pages collect data showing you the exact details of who accessed your platform. Tools such as Google Analytics will tell you who exactly accessed your website and which pages inside your website drew them the most traffic.

Such data is important as it enables you to create targeted, relevant content for your users, and understand how your site is performing. Understanding what works and what doesn’t on your site, allows you to optimize for better results.

10. Not Secure

In 2018, According to the FBI, over $2.7 billion was lost due to internet fraud, theft and exploitation. Internet users have grown more aware of their rights and will avoid any website that is not secure.

Always ensure that your website is secure by obtaining the SSL Certificate. It doesn’t matter the nature of your website, but as long as you’re collecting data, red-flags will be raised. This will, in turn, push your site further down Google’s rankings.

For more information, please visit our article on How to Fix the Not Secure Warning on your Website.

Build a Results-Oriented Website Today

At Experia Creative, we believe an effective website isn’t created by just dragging and dropping some content together, but rather, it needs to be planned strategically from the beginning. Avoiding each these common mistakes listed above increases your brand awareness, better connects with your customers, and ultimately drives higher sales.