Your website is the fundamental marketing tool for your business, and that is why it’s so important for it to be made and designed well. A website that is properly done is one which has the ability to attract the largest audience, as well as potential customers. A poorly designed website won’t be able to attract buyers and can lead to a loss of income. This is damaging for both you and your business. Needless to say, we know how important it is to have a complete website, which explains, in detail, what you and your company represent, what you do and what you have to offer. However, a lot of businesses tend to make mistakes that make their website less usable and user-friendly. Most of these mistakes concern the design of the website. In order to help you prevent that, today we are going to look at some of the most common ones and how to fix them.
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The first impression is crucial
In the modern world, your website usually represents the first point of interaction between you and your customers. Because of this, it also has a huge impact on the first impression people are going to form about your company. And, in the world with so much competition where customers can instantly go elsewhere to get their business done the first impression is going to be crucial to make them want to do business with you. Research has shown that it only takes users around 50 milliseconds to form an opinion about you and your website, which means you need to get this part right. A common trend in recent years has been to go for a minimalistic design which tends to draw people’s attention because of its simplicity. However, if you don’t possess the necessary technical knowledge to come up with a good design for your website, the good news is that most web hosting agencies also offer high-quality web design. You’ll already require their services to run your website and they have plenty of experience, so for a seasoned website design firm, good design shouldn’t be an issue.
Colour combination
A colour combination can make or break your website. Look around you and see how others utilize colours on their websites. Another thing to consider is to implement the colours of your company and logo into your website, which will help you build your brand. This along with research will help you determine what type of look would suit your website the best while making sure not to break the 60:30:10 rule, which recommends using 60% of your primary, 30% of your second most utilized and 10% of your tertiary colour which suits any primary or secondary colour. Your colour scheme is the key for the improvement and increased readability of your site as it will have the biggest impact on your websites overall aesthetic appeal.
Spelling and grammar
Even though you may think a few spelling or grammatical errors that slip through won’t have that much of an impact, they can make your website and your business come off as unprofessional. On top of this, Google will also rank your page lower in the search results if it finds grammar and spelling mistakes which will have a big impact on your ability to attract new customers. To make sure you eliminate any spelling and grammatical errors proofread everything you post a few times and have other people do it for you as well. Also, make sure the content you already have on your website doesn’t already contain any errors either.
No clear call to action
One of the key goals of your website is to get people to buy your products. This is usually referred to as a call to action with which you call on your users to engage with your business. A call to action on your website can also refer to filling out an online form or engaging with your business in some other way. Essentially, a call to action is a crucial function of your website and as such needs to be clearly visible and easy to use in order to ensure your users are encouraged to engage with you.
Bad content layout
The content of your website is what attracted people to it. Good quality content is essential in giving your website life and traffic. However, no matter how good the content you create is, it won’t do you much good if your website is overburdened with information and unorganized. If your users aren’t able to find what they are looking for, they will most likely get frustrated and leave your website, which means silly mistakes such as this can cost you quite a lot.
Too many pictures and animations
Another thing that can deter people from your website on top of a bad layout is having it overburdened with things such as pictures, videos or flashy animation that will distract them from what they are really there to do. Having said that, this doesn’t mean you should completely get rid of them either as interesting pictures or videos can grab a person’s attention and intrigue them about your website. So, what you want to do is find the right balance that will work in your favour.
Conclusion
When working on the design of your website some of the most important things to always keep in mind are your target audience and brand image. Both of these things should serve as your primary reference points and should complement one another in order to receive the results your website deserves.
Bily Bum is an electrical engineer, tech, and gaming fan with 15 years of experience in the technology world. He is also a contributor on site Technivorz.