Your website is a vital part of your business, but if your website suffers from common website design mistakes, it could be costing you revenue and customers. The best business websites attract visitors and efficiently convert them into customers. They are purpose-built, focusing on business goals. If you’re not seeing the results you expect from your business website, it may be due to website design mistakes that interrupt the conversion process.
At VAUX, we offer a FREE Website and Digital Marketing Review where our team of experts review a website and recommend ways that it can achieve better results. As a part of these reviews, we encounter various website design mistakes – some are costing businesses thousands of dollars in revenue annually. We focus our reviews heavily on website conversions – how well does a website attract visitors and how well does it convert those visitors into customers. Depending on the business, these conversions may represent new business leads, e-commerce sales, newsletter subscriptions, or contacting the business of more info.
In our years of experience helping business get better results from their websites, here are a few of the most common website design mistakes that may be hurting your business.
1: Not Mobile-Optimized
Currently more than 50% of all web traffic comes from mobile devices. If more than half of your potential customers are browsing your website from a mobile device and your page is difficult to browse or navigate on these devices, you’re losing customers.
Websites that are not mobile-optimized suffer from disrupted content flows, unusable navigation menus, and impossibly tiny design elements as the website attempts to load a desktop formatted design on a smaller screen. These errors can greatly affect your website experience from users on mobile devices. If your mobile website experience is unpleasant, users will quickly move on to other sites or tasks. As users move on from your website, you lose the opportunity to share your products and services with them.
If your website isn’t optimized for mobile, we’re not here to shame you, but with more than half of all web traffic coming from mobile devices, it’s time make the change.
The Fix:
If your website is not optimized for mobile devices, you’ll probably need to have it redesigned. The best mobile-optimized sites are built using responsive-design – meaning your site content will adjust automatically to various devices.
2: No Call-to-Action
Your website should have clear goals. Those goals are measured in conversions – when a user completes a desired action on your website. A Call-to-Action, or CTA, highlights the desired actions on your website and invites your users to “convert”. If your website doesn’t have a clear Call-to-Action, you’re missing out on business that would be generated as your site visitors become customers.
CTA’s invite users to fill out a contact form, signup for your mailing list, purchase a trending product, and more. They should be shaped around the business goals for your website, should be clear and repeated throughout your website to be most effective.
The Fix:
First, start by setting few goals for your website. Make sure to prioritize them by importance to your business. Create a website CTA around your top website goal and add it in a prominent place on your site. CTA’s are typically buttons and should be designed in a way that stands out from the rest of your content. Remember, you’re trying to let users know the ideal pathway you’d like them to travel on your website – so make CTA’s clear and obvious.
Bonus Tip: Less is more with CTA’s. Having too many CTA’s on your website can create confusion for your users.
3: Business Description is Unclear
This is one of the more common website design mistakes we see when completing Free Website Reviews at VAUX. Your website should let visitors know what your business does immediately upon coming to your homepage. It should be primary in the design of your website – or you risk your visitors leaving quickly. Your visitors don’t want to spend unnecessary time searching for what you offer.
You know your business well – what services or products your provide, who you serve, and your competitive advantages. Visitors to your site don’t know these aspects of your business. In fact, it’s best to assume that your website visitors know nothing about your organization. Having a clear description of what your organization offers will help engage those who are looking for what you provide.
The Fix:
Add a headline and a bit of text to the top of your home page (above the fold) that lets users know what you offer and who you offer it to.
Bonus Tip: Just below this text is a great spot to include your primary CTA to help drive conversions.
4: Lack of Contact Information
People looking for your products and services want to get in touch with you. You want people looking for your products and services to get it touch with you. Your website should make it as easy as possible for your website visitors to call or email you with questions, to learn more about your business, or to talk about their needs.
Don’t hide your company contact information away on your contact page. For best results, place it at the top and bottom of all of your pages. This lets visitors know that you welcome their call or email.
The Fix:
Add your business phone number and your email address to the top of your website. Top bars are great places to place this contact information. They provide enough space to also include your social media links – another way visitors may choose to contact you.
Bonus Tip: Make your phone number a link to allow mobile users to click on your phone number and call you immediately.
5: Confusing Navigation
Your website contains information that allows visitors to make a decision about your products and services. It’s important to organize that information in ways that allow your users to easily find what they are looking for. Your website’s main menu plays a vital role in letting visitors know the information you provide and how they can quickly access it.
A common navigation mistake is using a mobile “hamburger” menu on the desktop version of your website. The hamburger icon hides away your menu offerings only displaying them when clicked. Using this type of navigation on desktops prevents users from being able to quickly identify the pages your website offers. Since desktop users are used to seeing menu navigation across the top of the page, your site will perform best presenting your menu this way to them.
The Fix:
If you have more than 5-7 top-level menu items, look to restructure your content using sub-menus to keep things focused for your users. Only use the hamburger menu on mobile devices and use a more traditional menu design for desktop users. Good responsive design of your website will adapt your site content to the device visitors are using. Your navigation menu should adapt as well.
These 5 website mistakes are the most common websites mistakes we see at VAUX. Most of them are easily fixed and when corrected will help your website perform at it’s best. You work hard to ensure your business succeeds. Your website should work as hard as you do to drive results toward your business goals.
Not getting the results you want from your website? We can help identify areas of opportunity in your website to help you attract more traffic and convert more visitors.
Request your FREE Website and Digital Marketing Review and our team of marketing experts will review your website and provide a report that includes recommendations to increase your website results. Our reviews are no-cost and no-obligation. You can take our recommendations and implement them yourself or choose to utilize our affordable website and digital marketing services to carry them out.
Feel free to reach out if you have questions regarding VAUX digital or our digital marketing services.