August 10, 2018
Let’s face it, outdated websites are boring, and not having one at all is business suicide. Therefore, it’s essential you know exactly what to avoid when developing your site and where things can go terribly wrong. Every metric on the planet can be affected by a poor set up so paying attention to design is the key to increasing traffic and conversions.
An important study has demonstrated that the design of a website has an incredible influence on the trust of online users. Confidence is critical to further business. Poor website design is like misspelling your front sign. Can you blame anyone for not entering your store when your signage has grammatical errors?
Sometimes, in order to know what you are doing right, you need to be able to recognize the things you are doing wrong. Here’s a brief list of a few ways in which your website could be holding you back from more revenue:
The only thing worse than not having a website, is having one that is outdated. If your site looks like people still need a dial-up connection to use it, it’s time for a refresher. When your site looks ignored and outdated, it sends a very clear message to visitors: you simply don’t care. That may not be the case, but that is what you are putting out there in the world.
Potential customers visit your website because they are looking to you for solutions. You may not always be available, but a fresh web design and updated information will go a long way when you’re not. When people have pain points, they turn to the web for help. Be the first brand that pops up, with a website that has the newest information out there. If you appear neglectful in the digital space, people may start making assumptions about where else you drop the ball in business.
You need to immediately state your value proposition on the homepage. A value proposition is simply the argument you are making to people as to why they should purchase your product/service. It should be a clear statement that includes the following:
Having a strong value proposition means the difference between the user visiting a second page or clicking the back button immediately. It is that important.
When it’s hard to navigate your website and the design is confusing, people won’t be giving you a second chance. Illogical navigation will most certainly lead to high bounce rates and low page views. In other words, people will get frustrated and search for their solution elsewhere.
The world is a competitive place and your best shot is when consumers land on your site, so don’t blow it with pathways leading to a million places.
Providing a good experience is a formulaic tool for improving digital revenue. Streamlining navigation can include:
The logic is simple. The easier it is to get around your website, the longer people will stay. Studying navigation bounce rates is a more advanced way of looking at visitor satisfaction and user engagement.
The old saying “less is more” is definitely applicable in the digital space. If there’s too much happening on your homepage, people will just give up. There are certain elements to your site that can detract from the overall value of your message. A few examples of where you can go wrong with busy design include:
You get the idea. Your audience has an average attention span of 8 seconds. That’s less than a goldfish. Make sure you use the time to showcase your product/service and not your advertising. Companies typically get only one shot to make a first impression online.
The best way to design your site is to optimize your message in short and powerful snippets of content. Applicable photos and icons should be sectioned off with clear headers and dividers. Don’t be afraid to segment your site for easier legibility. If your call-to-action (CTA) buttons are hard to locate, that’s a huge problem. How will people move through the funnel if they are lost at the very top? When it comes to making visitors feel welcome, white space is your friend.
Design also involves color and you can really turn people off if you choose the wrong palette for your website and brand. Ask yourself if your color scheme could be giving the wrong impression to users. Are you going for trendy or practical? Consider your audience. If your bounce rate has been slowly climbing, you may want to play around with your color structure to see if that has an effect.
Minimalist design is typically the trend these days in website development. That means up to 5 different colors used appropriately is more than enough to get your brand image across. Dealing with too many colors can overwhelm the reader and detract from what you’re truly trying to say. This is one of the main reasons why people choose to leave (resulting in a high bounce rate) rather than stick it through to the next page. It’s almost assaulting to their senses.
If you are a tad jammed on how to choose the proper palette, there are a ton of sites out there for inspiration. Coolors is a great place to find color patterns and Color Supplyyy can help you choose shades for your banners and icons. The free app even gives you the proper Hex codes for easy integration with web hosting sites.
A monochromatic approach typically works best, leaving your CTAs a separate color. Play around and see what your audience responds to. Just remember, it’s a lot harder to change branding down the road, than to make the proper color scheme decision in the first place.
Although this may seem like a given, poor grammar on a brand’s website is more common than you would think. There’s really no excuse for a webpage filled with errors, and nothing will make visitors bolt faster than poor communication. Grammarly is an app (starts at free) that can give you a second set of eyes to any content you write. If you are still unsure, your best bet is to hire a professional editor to ensure your site is error-free.
The first typo people come across will cause them to click away. It lessens your authority, credibility, and status in the industry. It increases your bounce rate by four-fold. According to SEMrush, bounce rate is the 4th most important ranking factor on search engine result pages (SERPs).
So, if you want to be seen, you need to keep people on your page. The best way to do that (and the easiest) is to ensure your language is direct, free of errors, and grammatically sound.
The eternal curse of the digital lands is a page that is slow to load. Call it trauma from the early stages of the internet, but people really do not have the patience anymore for the web to catch up to their questions. If your page is slow to load, you are practically dead in the water competitively.
Site speed is actually included in Google’s ranking algorithm. What that means is that the more stuff you pile on your page and the slower it is to load, the more likely your page won’t return to page one on Google search results. It buries you. Google wants to promote the best and most effective content possible to consumers. They will straight skip you if your site speed is not up to par.
Slow site speed equates to poor user experience. Plain and simple. Fixing site speed can be tough. You need to work closely with your web developers and designers to determine where the hang-ups lie. A variety of things can slow your page, including:
Sites like Google PageSpeed Insights and Pingdom can help you pinpoint the exact problems with load speed. To resolve the issue, consider common solutions like compressing your images, leveraging browser caching, and reducing third-party scripts.
Web design can go drastically wrong in a bunch of ways but as long as you are aware of the common pitfalls, you can avoid them like the Dickens. Consider your webpage like making a first impression on customers. You wouldn’t have a storefront that was disheveled so why would you present yourself online any differently? The key to successful web design is staying up-to-date, keeping it simple, and respecting your readers to the point they are motivated to buy.
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