Updated: July 25, 2022
Blending market-driven analytics with expert web design knowledge, New Concept Design has been creating high-traffic, results-driven websites for over 20 years.
In our experience, we’ve run into a lot of sites that aren’t so creative and which don’t use best practices when it comes to facilitating modern, interactive, and user-driven navigation. Here are some tips on how to avoid the most common website mistakes in web design, as shared by a top London, Ontario web design firm.
You have too much text
Long paragraph after long paragraph isn’t necessary in a modern world where attention spans are short. You don’t want to ask for too much from your user. Most will skim your page. Keep pages like your home page brief, direct, and CTA-driven with content broken up by sub-groupings or subheadings. But where necessary provide all content needed for the user, such as articles, instructions or manuals.
You don’t have enough content
Not every site needs to have page after page, blog after blog, but what they do need is high quality, well-written, and original content. To establish credibility, build awareness for who you are and what you’re selling, and to improve SEO rankings, a content marketing plan is a smart move.
No clear Call to Action (CTA)
When a user arrives at your site, there’s no guarantee they’ll turn into a lifelong customer. As a website manager, you need to tell them what you want from them. CTAs indicate a desired action. Whether you want them to subscribe to an email list, buy a product, share content, or whatever the objective is, an experienced London, Ontario web design company will tell you, state it clearly and decisively.
Name, Address, Telephone Number (NAP)
Your NAP – name, address, and telephone number – is key information for any customer. Unfortunately, a lot of sites overlook this detail with an incomplete or inaccurate NAP. When you make it easy for a customer to get in touch with you, you remove another barrier standing between them and making a purchase.
Underdeveloped service pages
While your home page is extremely important to London web design success, internal pages containing keyword-rich titles and content is also key. A lot of sites have service pages that don’t given enough usable information. Take the opportunity to fill these pages with strong content, images, bullet points, and a clear CTA, highlighting why a user would need your service or product and the difference it would make to them.
A web design that isn’t mobile adaptable
The majority of Internet users browse on their smartphones and mobile devices. When a site is viewed on a mobile device, a user needs to zoom in, navigation is difficult, and ultimately, they’re likely to leave because of being unable to complete a basic task. That’s why you need mobile responsive web design which will adapt your website’s appearance to fit the size of the screen it’s viewed on. This makes it way easier for users to browse a site, no matter what device they’re on.
Poor quality images and media
Low quality images and photos on a website are a big turn-off to potential customers. Photos or images should always be clear and high quality, and not blurry or pixelated. Thankfully, there are numerous online database providing excellent quality stock images free of copyright. Alternatively, employing a professional photographer to take website photos can also add a lot.
Lack of integration of analytics and tracking tools
Lack of the right integrations and extensions to help you understand your website’s traffic can also cause headaches and website issues.
The right social media and business tools will help you transform your visitors into buyers, keep track of how they end up on your website, and help you understand the effectiveness of your marketing.
Without tools like Google Analytics, you’ll be in the dark and make decisions based on guesswork, not data.
Low quality hosting
It may happen that you do everything possible to optimize your website, but still face problems such as slow loading and poor search engine rankings.
Poor quality hosting can cause various problems. Your site may also have limited bandwidth or server space, which can be a pain in the event of sudden spikes in traffic or when you need more space for content.
Incorrect maintenance of the website
Sometimes, errors on the website can also mean that maintenance have been neglected. For example, many areas of SEO can be improved by updating content on pages and improving the quality of backlinks.
Suppose your page was updated in a rush and you added call to action buttons containing links to important pages. A month later, you wonder why no one took advantage of your very advantageous and valuable offer. If there was a typo in the link in the call to action buttons (which resulted in a broken link), it’s no wonder there was no sale.
To avoid these types of problems, you should regularly check your website and carefully check all its content
This way you will make sure that:
- Your contact details are correct on every page
- There are no broken links on your website
- On-page SEO (image alt texts, all page meta tags, and so on) follows the latest practice.
- Your website looks good on mobile devices and computers
These are some of the most common website mistakes we’ve seen made by small business websites. Fortunately, these mistakes are easy to correct and with an expert London Ontario web design team like New Concept Design watching over things, you won’t have to worry about getting caught with a bad looking website. For professional, high quality, results-focused web design, give us a call today.