Don’t Let a Bad Website Ruin Your Business – Tips for Avoiding Common Mistakes

Don’t Let a Bad Website Ruin Your Business – Tips for Avoiding Common Mistakes

Don’t Let a Bad Website Ruin Your Business – Tips for Avoiding Common Mistakes

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About two out of three people prefer reading beautifully designed content. In fact, your website’s design has a 75% influence on your brand’s credibility. A bad website can hurt your credibility before scaring away potential customers. 

Before that can happen, read on to discover the top tips for avoiding common mistakes found on bad websites. Making these changes to your custom website can help you appeal to new customers.

You can stand out from competitors in the best way before generating fresh leads and sales. 

Read on to learn how to improve your custom website today.

Give Each Page a Purpose

One of the easiest ways to confuse website visitors is to try and cover too many concepts on a single page. Instead, make sure each page on your website has a unique, singular purpose. 

As you audit your website, you might come across pages that make it difficult to determine the purpose. If you can’t understand a page’s purpose, consumers who visit your site won’t, either. In fact, they might leave without exploring additional pages if they feel overwhelmed. 

Each time someone leaves (bounces) your website without exploring other pages, the bounce rate will increase.

A high bounce rate can hurt the rest of your digital marketing strategy. For example, your digital advertising cost-per-click (CPC) will increase. Your quality score will drop, hurting your ad rankings.

A high bounce rate indicates a negative user experience (UX), which can encourage Google to drop your organic search engine rankings, too. Lower rankings can hurt your brand’s online visibility.

Before that happens, define the purpose of each page on your site. Align the content by communicating that purpose through the page’s:

  • Imagery
  • Title
  • Headline
  • Call to action
  • URL
  • Body text

Communicating the page’s purpose through these design elements can help the visitor maintain focus. You can leverage that focus to direct them to complete a specific action on the page. 

Boost Load Times

Run your website through Google’s PageSpeed Insights to determine if page elements or bad hosting are causing your site to lag. When page load times increase from one to three seconds, the probability of a bounce increases by 32%. 

If your site is slow, visitors could leave without converting. You’ll miss the chance to generate leads and sales. Improve your site load times by:

  • Choosing better web hosting
  • Adjusting video and image attribute sizes
  • Condensing images
  • Removing unnecessary third-party scripts
  • Using browser caching

If your site still isn’t speeding up, consult a website design and development agency to improve your load times. Slow load times can hurt your search engine rankings, too. 

Maintain Brand Consistency

A consistent brand can help awareness grow into recognition. Over time, consumers will begin remembering your visual brand.

If pages on your website display different branding, visitors could feel confused. They might think they landed on a different website. Follow your brand guidelines document, which should outline your:

  • Logo design
  • Color palette
  • Font styles
  • Voice
  • Tone
  • Personality
  • Imagery styles
  • Vision statement
  • Mission statement

Avoid bad website design by maintaining consistency.

Remove Clutter

Website visitors won’t know where to look if your website is cluttered and messy. You could overwhelm the visitor, encouraging them to leave, too. Add more negative space to your pages to give content room to breathe.

You can use white space to your advantage to direct the visitor’s eyes toward specific page elements. For example, you can help your call-to-action buttons stand out. Removing clutter around the call to action could help you generate leads.

Another indicator of a bad website is the lack of strong call-to-action language. 

Think about what you want a visitor to do on each page. Should they call you, complete a form, or make a purchase? Make sure the CTA aligns with the page’s purpose and your marketing goals.

Write CTAs that are clear, concise, and urgent to generate immediate leads and sales.

Help your CTA buttons stand out by using contrasting colors between the page background, button, and CTA text, too. If you’re still not generating conversions, work with an experienced web design and development agency. They can add multiple conversion opportunities across your site to boost your conversion rate. 

Improve the User Experience

A negative user experience (UX) could encourage visitors to leave your site before they convert on the page. If your website is messy, difficult to navigate, or confusing, visitors won’t convert. In fact, 88% of shoppers won’t return to a site after a bad experience. 

About 70% of online businesses fail due to bad usability. However, only 55% of companies invest in UX testing to improve their websites.

A negative UX can hurt your search engine rankings and digital advertising efforts. A positive UX, on the other hand, can benefit your customer service efforts. Visitors will have an easier time finding the information they need.

They might feel more inclined to convert into a lead if they recognize how helpful you are.

In fact, better UX design could yield conversion rates of up to 400%. About 74% of businesses say UX is vital for increasing sales. 

Improve your custom website by investing in UX design services this year. Otherwise, run your website through Google’s Core Web Vitals. Following the Core Web Vitals can help you improve the user experience based on Google’s parameters.

Audit your website to search for broken or outdated links. Make sure your site is easy to use on all devices. Add an SSL certificate to boost your site’s security, too. 

Optimize With SEO

Though almost 70% of all online experiences begin with a search engine, 75% of search engine users never check the second page of results. If your website doesn’t appear on the first page of a search, clients might not find your website. Search engine optimization (SEO) can improve your organic rankings.

Over 50% of all website traffic comes from an organic search. With SEO, you can attract more traffic before generating fresh, quality leads.

SEO will help you target your ideal customers. You can appear as they search for your products or services. Leveraging their initial interest could help you generate leads and sales.

You can learn more about the importance of SEO here.

Optimizing Content

One of the biggest signs of a bad website is the lack of search engine optimization. Without SEO, your rankings will drop. Potential customers will find your competitors’ websites instead. 

Before that happens, take the time to research your target audience. Determine what search terms they use to find your products or services online. Use tools like Answer the Public, Google Trends, and Keyword Planner to build a list.

Then, optimize each page on your website for SEO. To optimize each page, add the target keyword in the:

  • Page title
  • URL
  • Opening and closing paragraphs
  • Body text
  • An H1 header
  • SEO title and meta description
  • Image file name and alt text

Pay special attention to the SEO title and meta description, which will appear on SERPs. A strong, relevant title and description will encourage clicks. Improving your clickthrough rate can benefit your SEO rankings.

Avoid stuffing a single page or post with a lone keyword, though. Instead, sprinkle secondary keywords and synonyms throughout the content.

Your website’s design and development can affect your SEO rankings, too. Consider working with an experienced agency to improve your website performance and rankings.

Stay Mobile-Friendly

About 57% of users won’t recommend a company with poor mobile web design. If your website isn’t mobile-optimized, you’re neglecting a large customer group. On-the-go consumers will struggle to explore your content.

As more people rely on their cell phones for information, mobile-friendly design is becoming more important. In fact, Google checks the mobile version of your site first to determine your search engine rankings.

Run your site through Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test to confirm you’re appealing to mobile devices.

Simplify the Navigation

Remember, people will leave if your website is difficult to navigate. Instead, simplify your navigation bar. Display the most important pages on your site to give visitors more direction.

If your main pages have subpages, add sidebar navigation to the page. 

You can also improve your website’s internal structure with internal links, which direct visitors to other pages on your site. 

Use Custom Photography

Consumers are finding it easier to recognize stock photography, which could make your brand look ingenuine (or even cheap). Upgrade your website with custom photography this year.

High-quality photos can help you show off your team, products, and services. Transparency and authenticity could encourage brand trust to grow. As more people trust your brand, they might feel more prepared to give you a try. 

Improve Readability

Most people skim-read website content in search of the information they need. Improving the readability on your website can benefit the user experience.

Organize your page content into headers and subheaders. Shorten long sentences and paragraphs. You can also organize complex thoughts with numbers or bulleted lists.

Don’t Let a Bad Website Hurt Your Business: Hire an Agency Today

Don’t let bad website design hurt your business. Instead, avoid these common signs of bad websites by hiring an agency this year. With their experience, you can improve your custom website to generate more leads and sales.

A strong website can function as the backbone of your entire digital marketing strategy. Boost your website performance with these tips today.

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