Web Design is a complicated part of building out your company’s online presence and assets. Many confuse design only with what we see, but the design is also how a website works, flows, functions and converts.
Yes, we want our websites to look good, but we also need to find the sweet spot where looks meet functionality and conversions.
Any website aims to warm up visitors into leads and buying customers to increase revenue and sales.
Many businesses find it difficult to get a balance between the parts that make up a good website design, and neglect to turn their focus to their visitors’ needs and problems.
With that said here are 5 mistakes commonly made on web designs:
Users don’t know your value proposition
When a new visitor to your site opens the page, it takes 10 seconds for them to decide if they are staying or leaving.
They need a clear direction of what you are about and what value they can gain from staying on your site.
According to Marketingexperiments.com, this is because “people need to be led”. Visitors need you to show them where to click to get the most value from your website.
Put your call-to-action on the top section of your home page, visible to users without having to scroll, and clear enough to not be confused but know exactly what your value proposition is.
Lousy CTA
Your CTA is the pathway to your value proposition. It entices your visitors to make an immediate decision and take an action. Your CTA needs to clearly tell your visitors what they need to do to get the most value from you. Give enough information for visitors to want to know more, and know exactly what they will be getting from you in return for taking action.
On Point Branding
Your website branding should not be confusing to the eye. Make sure to keep fonts to 2, maybe 3, at a maximum, the font pairings should go together and complement each other. Make sure the fonts you pick are easy to read, this will make your visitors navigate your website easier. Instead of using multiple fonts, play around with the weight and sizes of a single font to create accents.
Branding colours should be kept consistent, stay within your colours across all pages, and keep the number of colours in the 3-5 range.
Clutter
Finding the balance between too much information, which is difficult to consume, and too little information, which leaves a visitor with questions, is critical in any website design.
If you are not careful, your website will over-deliver on resources and create a cluttered, hard-to-navigate website.
By dividing the information in easy to navigate pages will help your visitor not feel overwhelmed, and they will know exactly what to expect on each page, about, products, contact us, and so forth.
Bad copy
Copy refers to the words on a website. Your website copy should be customer-focused and not express how great you are as a business. Your copy should be revolve around the desires, goals, fears, and problems your visitors face and then showing them how your business can solve those issues for them.
Highlighting the greatness of your business will make it hard to convert visitors into customers, by not addressing their main areas of concern.
Make sure the text in your website design is easily scannable. Add descriptive sub-headings, keep sentences and paragraphs short, and use bullet points to highlight the benefits your company offers.
Responsive design
In the smartphone era, mobile-friendliness and responsive design is the most important feature of all website designs. Responsive design refers to a website’s layout being able to change as the device size changes. Your website design should support wide screens that can house many columns, and also a mobile design that can only house a single column.
Ensuring your website design is optimized for mobile, or responsive, will make your website accessible to more users despite the size of their device.
Having a responsive design is favoured by Google, and may help with SEO.
Conclusion
Creating a profitable website starts here, there are many other driving factors for a great website design, but these 5 listed above will be a great place to start.
Many businesses struggle with creating a design that is both good-looking, functional and creates good conversions.
Creating a website that is nice to look at is an important bit if it doesn’t drive sales, it is useless.
Keeping your focus on your visitors, their wants, needs, and problems is most definitely the best place to start.