Do These Web Design Fails Drive Your Customers Away?

The difference between just having a website out there on the Internet and having a robust, well-designed web presence is enormous. 

There are real-world consequences to neglecting your website. Visitors crave stability, experiences, and content, and a failure to provide it to them can seriously affect a business’ bottom line.

Here are the most common web design fails that can drive your potential customers away and what you should do to avoid them. 

Lack of quality content 

When it comes to your business website, high-quality content should be your top priority. 

Your site needs appealing visuals and graphics, but you need to answer your prospective customer’s problems or needs first. 

Ask yourself what information do the customers need to make their buying decision. Use that question to help guide quality content for your site. If you aren’t sure what to write, consider working with a marketing consultant or hiring a website design and support team to help promote your business.

Slow loading time

While visiting websites, people don’t have to wait even for a few seconds for the page to load. Peoples’ attention span is shrinking, and most are not ready to wait more than two to five seconds for the website to load.

Speed up your site and improve your SEO ranking by eliminating autoplay videos and pop-ups. You should also optimize your image sizes, enable compression and browser caching, and eliminate plugins you don’t need.

Hard-to-find contact info

To put it simply, if your website doesn’t make it easy for visitors to contact you, they won’t. Small business websites frequently lack easy-to-use contact forms, and many don’t even display a phone number.

Suitable contact forms have only a few required fields and include a privacy statement to reassure prospects you won’t sell or give away their email address. It’s also imperative to send visitors a confirmation email after they submit a form.

Poor navigation 

Users must be able to easily navigate through the content of your site. Issues related to navigation create friction, causing users to become frustrated and make their way back to the search engine results page.

The only way to convert a prospect into a customer is to guide them to the right destination. Use calls-to-action whenever possible to move your visitor towards the next step.

The content on your site must be appropriately structured. Use clear categories that make it easy for users to access the information they need as quickly as possible.

Your site must be mobile-friendly

In the age of smartphones, people are consuming content and making purchases using their mobile phones. As a result, it would be a big web design mistake not to have an optimized website that works and looks good on mobile phones. 

Both Google and potential customers like a mobile-friendly site. Responsive web design involves creating a website with screen size and user behavior as the main driver. This includes a small smartphone screen.

Let visitors know they can trust you

When users visit your website, they want to feel safe. They want assurances that your business is a professional and reputable one. There are several ways you can make sure this is the case. 

Firstly, make sure your website is well-designed and has an expert feel to it. Secondly, include a privacy policy and terms and conditions. In the age of rampant spam, it is essential to give your users a sense of security.

Finally, include trust badges and user reviews if possible. This should put all visitors at ease, ensuring they don’t leave your website and look elsewhere.

Do not use too much text 

Your website pages must be scannable. That means using concise, straightforward language and including plenty of bullet points, headers, subheaders, and icons. Your average customer doesn’t want to pore over paragraphs of complex, wordy text to understand your business and learn the benefits of working with you. Keep the text short, sweet, and to the point.

Add Google Maps location 

Research says that nearly half of all searches are related to local or location-based content. This means that people are likely in the mood to get in their cars or walk to your store to make a purchase or book an appointment.

Including a Google Map on your site boosts your likelihood of showing up in local search engine rankings and makes it easy for your customers to find you.

Grammar matters

Spelling and grammatical errors will make your website look sloppy and show carelessness. It’s a bad reflection of your business. Poor grammar can give customers the perception that you don’t care about the website at all. 

There are specialized tools such as Grammarly out there that can help you catch most of the mistakes, but no AI can see all human speech nuances. That is why a writing professional should be the one to make the final judgment.