Maintaining and operating your own website can be a hectic task. It is time consuming, requires investment and effort, but even after all of this mediocre results leads to disappointments. Visitors who may surf your website perhaps leave without taking any action.In a situation like this, most of us would draw their attention towards their content, marketing strategy, or SEO. However, one just might not look to the other side of the coin that is crucial but is often left due to negligence is your site’s web design.
Minor designing effects can lead to huge impact on your efforts. In today’s article we will lead you through 7 web designing mistakes you must avoid in 2018 and also guide you how can you avoid them.
Too Much Clutter And Inconsistent Web Design
“It’s the little things that make a big difference”. While creating a web design on must not deviate from the main purpose of the website that is to provide guidance, focus, and a content hierarchy.Dozens of things lying haphazardly, here and there, to draw viewer’s attention leaves an exact opposite image of what you are trying to achieve. Users prefer usability over the fancy web design. Therefore, when visitors don’t know what to click on or look at, your web design has effectively failed and you have lost a visitor to the competition.
Instead of thinking what should be included in your website, try focusing on what to eliminate. Look at your goals and compare what meets the criteria and then include appropriately. Keep it simple.
Consistency is the key to success. Abrupt changes in color scheme, layout, or sidebar positions should be avoided. Consistency is very vital for effective brand management in your website.Leave white spaces around the design element. Your web design should be allowed to breathe. There should be lots of space left and the content should not be clustered, it should be divided.
A Slow-Loading Website
Web design is not just how the website looks or how fancy it must appear, it is about the interaction between a visitor and the website. For instance, loading speed; larger images and different type customized fonts may cause a lag in the loading speed of the website making it slower. This will have an impact on your visitor bounce rate and will influence your website’s search rankings. Having a separate budget to speed up your website is a good idea.
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Ignoring SEO Rules.
SEO helps your website appear on the search engine so that it is accessible to a large number of audiences. SEO optimization will make sure your website appears on the top search results and therefore gains higher traffic. Nobody likes to dig up information hidden on the 12th page of Google search.
You can also use long keyword sentences. These will lead the user search towards your website. Longer phrase keywords tend to gain SEO ranking easily as compared to short words. These are also more specific and will also target those specific populations that tend to wander elsewhere. For example:- instead of “branding agency Dubai” or “brand management” you can try “how much does brand agency charge for brand management in Dubai” .
No Mobile site experience.
Most people are using their smartphone browsers for internet surfing compared to desktop use. According to a data from Google Mobile Playbook, 40% of users have gone to competitor’s website after a poor mobile experience, while 57% of users say they will not recommend a business with a poorly designed mobile site. 67% of the users say they are more likely to buy a product from a mobile friendly site. Mobile sites are reportedly to attract 50% more traffic compared to those website that are traditionally designed for desktop experience. 21% of the business are converting to a mobile friendly site.
It is 2018 and the days are long gone where people used would have to go long way in search of a desktop computer for minor searches. Therefore your design should be responsive on all devices if you want your business to flourish.
Call to action
What opinion would you form of a website where you go and find yourself with a trouble of understanding what, where and how?
To save yourself from the chaos, you would simply choose to close your browser instead. This is where call to action plays a key role by letting its visitors know what there next step is. Often the call to action is hidden too far down the page or too unremarkable to notice. Call to action should be prominent and needs to be clearly visible and also specific. Examples of strong call to action include:
- Add to Cart
- Get Started
- Contact Us Today
- Sign Up Now
Bad Site Navigation
In a restaurant also it is the menu that guides the diners to the desired food they want. Similarly your site navigation menu is very important guide for your visitor. Website navigation affects search engine rankings and traffic to your website.
- Avoid navigation in non-standard location
- Drop down menu = bad usability / bad SEO
- Limit your website navigation to 5 items and avoid too many navigation items
- Always links, void buttons (buttons are not SEO friendly)
Missing Sharing Options
I cannot emphasize on anything more enough than the fact on how important social media has become in the era of 2018. Social media are alternative search engine these days. Sharing obviously is an essential option in your site.
Add sharing options in important locations.Be sure to add buttons and calls to action to all important places (such as at the end of your posts) and make them prominent and easily reachable.