Building a website is easy with the right tool.
But if you’re not a designer, it’s also easy to make common web design mistakes as you try to provide your users with as much information as possible.
Your website is the online front door to your business. And you must make a good first impression.
Let’s see how you can avoid common website mistakes and make that good impression:
5. Too Much Text or Information
7. No Benefit-Driven Headline on the Homepage
10. Lack of Testimonials and Other Trust Signals
12. Lack of Email Sign-up Forms
Final Thoughts: 13 Web Design Mistakes to Avoid When Building Your Website
Web Design Mistakes
- Website is slow to load
- Lacking responsive design
- Insecure warnings
- Text is too small to read
- Too much text or information
- No clear call-to-action
- No benefit-driven headline on the homepage
- Poor navigation
- Poorly timed popups
- Lack of testimonials and other trust signals
- Irrelevant imagery
- Lack of email sign-up forms
- Lack of search form
Here are common web design mistakes that you might run into unknowingly.
1. Website Is Slow To Load
Nobody likes a slow-loading website.
Portent shares that the website’s conversion rate drops by 4.42% for every additional second of load time. Potential clients and customers abandon your slow website and go elsewhere.
You can check how fast your page loads using a tool like Pingdom or GTMetrix. These tools show you what’s causing slow loading times so you can take appropriate steps to fix it and improve your SEO.
This often involves compressing images and minifying your code — including HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.
2. Lacking Responsive Design
Statista says more than half of all website traffic comes from mobile devices.
This means that your website needs mobile optimization. You can start with responsive website design and web development to adjust the website to the screen size. But it’s not the only thing you need to take care of.
You need to include:
- Easily-clickable buttons for smaller screens
- Mobile-optimized form fields — easy to trigger the correct input type
- Text that adjusts to smaller screens — neither too big nor too small.
Be sure to test your website on your mobile device or browser developer tools. Besides that, you can use tools like Google Mobile-Friendly Test.
3. Insecure Warnings
Online security and privacy are a big concern these days.
For starters, potential clients avoid doing business with you if your website looks insecure. Secondly, search engines display an insecure warning to anyone who tries to access your website if you don’t take the measures to secure your website.
The easiest way to avoid an insecure warning is to install an SSL certificate on your website.
Many hosting companies let you buy an SSL certificate directly from them. Some even offer it for free.
4. Text Is Too Small To Read
Another common mistake that many website owners make when they DIY their website is that the text on the website is illegible: too small or uses hard-to-read fonts and typography.
Set your text size to at least 16 or 18px for body text and between 24-28px for the subheadings to prevent this from happening.
Alternatively, use Rem as the unit size for your text to ensure your text size scales nicely across all screen sizes.
5. Too Much Text or Information
Speaking of text, don’t overload your website with too much text or information.
While your website should explain what you do, who you serve, and what makes you different, you don’t need to share the entire backstory of your small business.
Users tend to skim websites, so it’s better to keep your website content short and to the point. You can always share more information through digital marketing, downloadable brochures, and consultation calls.
6. No Clear Call-to-Action
No matter how clear and concise your website copy is, it won’t convert visitors into leads and potential customers unless you tell them what they should do next.
Without a clear call to action (CTA), they may hit the back button in their browser.
Instead of relying on visitors to figure things by themselves, make sure your webpages have clear calls to action that take them to the next logical step in their buying journey.
7. No Benefit-Driven Headline on the Homepage
Your homepage or landing page is one of the first pages your visitors see when they land on your website.
Ensure they immediately know what you do, who you help, and how you do it. This tells the visitors they are in the right place and highlights the benefit of working with you.
It also weeds out incompatible leads and clients.
8. Poor Navigation
Your website menu should make it easy to navigate your website. It should contain links to your website’s main pages.
Typically, you should include up to seven links in your main navigation. If you need to link more pages, consider using a drop-down menu.
Make sure that the menu items in your navigation bar have clear names and you have enough whitespace between each item. Try to stick with familiar instead of far-fetched as unusual menu names may confuse your visitors and push them away.
9. Poorly Timed Popups
Pop-ups can do wonders for growing your email list and sales. But you have to time them carefully. Otherwise, you risk losing your audience.
Avoid triggering a popup the second a visitor lands on your website. Let them see your content marketing efforts. Sleeknote shares that pop-ups that appear after eight seconds convert better than pop-ups that appear earlier or later.
10. Lack of Testimonials and Other Trust Signals
As a business owner, you may have heard this popular saying: People buy from people they know, like, and trust.
Your website should incorporate several trust signals throughout all the pages. Include testimonials, trust badges, reviews from third-party websites, SSL certificates, and similar.
As you include these trust signals, you show potential clients that they can trust you with their sensitive information and rely on you for results.
11. Irrelevant Imagery
Images go a long way towards telling your brand story and evoking an emotional response in your website visitors. But your website imagery needs to be relevant.
In other words, it needs to appeal to your target audience and offer relevant content related to what you offer.
Suppose you sell children’s toys. You need to include pictures that depict children having fun with their toys. Similarly, if you cater to business owners, use corporate imagery instead of nature photos.
12. Lack of Email Sign-Up Forms
According to Statista, Customers visit a website two to four times before purchasing. Try to get their email address on the first visit so you can nurture the relationship and establish trust.
You can also include email sign-up forms where the visitors can enter their email address in exchange for a gift such as a checklist or a discount code.
13. Lack of Search Form
Your visitors may want to search your website for additional information. They may look for a certain product or check if you offer a particular service.
Make it easy to do so by including a search bar in the header area. You can also add a search form to your sidebar to improve user experience if you have a blog.
Final Thoughts: 13 Web Design Mistakes To Avoid When Building Your Website
You need a good website design to support your business goals and help you achieve them. You can do so by avoiding these 13 common website mistakes.
Our website builder makes it easy to avoid these mistakes. You can customize your website as you see fit without depending on anyone else.
Are you looking to make your first business website?
Check out our pricing plans and start today.
