If you’re a business owner, your website is the central hub of your company, and it’s a pivotal part of your marketing and branding. Potential customers visit your site specifically for its content, which means that the website's appearance and usability are critical to its success and ultimately affect how those users view your company.
First impressions are crucially important! You have about 7 to 10 seconds to grab your audience's attention. Once you have grabbed their attention, your website has to maintain their attention!!
Here are 5 common web design "mistakes" you must avoid when creating your website. If you already have a website, consider evaluating whether or not it has fallen victim to these common problem areas.
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Number 1 Mistake - POOR NAVIGATION
Many businesses fail to make navigation a priority, but without careful attention to how people navigate your site, you could unintentionally be creating a frustrating experience for any potential visitor. People visit your site for specific information, and if they cannot find it they will quickly go elsewhere, leaving with the impression that your business is disorganized in more than just its website.
A good navigation structure should be seamless and will keep visitors on your site longer, which means potentially more readers, subscribers, sales or leads — whichever is your primary objective.
Website navigation affects both usability and accessibility, so it’s important to make it a primary concern.
Most websites and blogs use common navigational techniques that are expected by the average visitor. The pages and sections of the site should be easy and logical for visitors to maneuver. Don’t make your visitors think about how to navigate your site; it should be effortless and natural.
Number 2 Mistake - NO CLEAR CALL TO ACTIONS
The fundamental error of many small business websites is the lack of a clear call to action. We’ve all seen bland business brochure websites with nothing but endless descriptive paragraphs. If you are not leading users to commit to an action (buy a product, contact you or subscribe, for example), then you are losing them.
Driving traffic to your website is important, but that traffic is useless if the primary call to action is a plain “click here” link buried in a sea of text. Call-to-action buttons are a great way to grab the user’s attention, and these buttons can be the key to higher conversions. Investing time and consideration into creating successful calls to action can help guide users and address their needs while achieving your own business goals.
Number 3 Mistake - COLOUR & CONTRAST
Color and contrast aren’t usually high up on the list of priorities for a business owner when it comes to creating a website. But it should be, because if your website text does not have sufficient contrast compared to its background, people will have difficulty reading your content.
Aside from plain readability, color and contrast are important because they can be used to create visual interest and direct the attention of the user. It can equally be effective in organizing and defining the flow and hierarchy of a page, and it’s therefore an essential principle to pay attention to during the design process.
Number 4 Mistake - CONTENT CONTENT CONTENT
People visit your website for its content, and how that is structured is a huge factor in its success or failure. Unfortunately, an overwhelming number of businesses get caught up in overloading the user with information that they overlook how that information is presented.
Most people do not read unless it’s absolutely necessary, and they prefer to scan through information quickly to get to the points of interest. This is why it’s so important to establish a strong visual content hierarchy so users can quickly scan your site and sifting through relevant information. A logical content hierarchy also acts as a guide through each page and creates a more enjoyable user experience.
Content is also vitally important when considering search engine optimization. Search engines are looking for content that is relevant and regularly updated.
Number 5 Mistake - CLUTTER
We all know at least one business website that seems to include everything but the proverbial kitchen sink. Many businesses tend to cram as much as they can onto a single page — the end result is a busy, cluttered and unreadable page.
The more extraneous items there are on a web page, the more unprofessional it looks, and it becomes overwhelming, confusing and distracting for the user. A cluttered website will also affect traffic because visitors won’t return if they can’t understand or follow the content, which leads to low traffic, a high bounce rate and possibly a poor Page Rank.
Clutter also applies to images. Too many can be a huge distraction and just plain annoying. Images should be used to illustrate, capture attention and guide the user where required.
Source: Mashable 2011
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If you are interested in redesigning your current website contact Trio at 306.716.0680