In today’s digital age, there is no denying that having an impressive website is critical. It needs to be quick to load, easy to navigate, and designed to boost conversions. Despite this, if you do a quick search online, you will see that the Internet is littered with poor quality websites.
Does your business’ website fall into this category? You will soon find out! Read on to discover more about the common website errors that need to be avoided.
A lack of analytical data
It does not matter what sort of business you run, you need to know how to learn from your mistakes if you are to achieve success. You need to access valuable data to begin with. You then need to know how to read it and evaluate it effectively, so you can improve your business.
Having KPIs and analytics in place is a must. This is the only way you will discover the true performance of your website and where improvements need to be made.
Your website is difficult to navigate
Get one of your friends or someone you trust to give you an honest answer to use your website. Did they find it easy to navigate and use? Or, was it a challenge?
It is wise to gather the opinions of several people that you trust. After all, the more opinions you can get, the better! Instruct people to do different things on your website, for example, place an order or get the contact details.
How easy did they find it? A simple task? Or did they get a headache?
If it is the latter, it is time to use a web site builder to make some changes to the navigation of your website.
Information on your website is out of date
An outdated website hurts your brand image. It shows a lack of professionalism and it will frustrate your customers too. You should dedicate a small amount of time on a regular basis to making sure that everything on your website is up to date.
Your website is too confusing
This is another mistake that a lot of people make with their websites. They want to include as much information and as many graphics as possible. In the end, they have one big mess on their hands!
Yes, there are lots of great typefaces and images out there, but you do not need to use them all. Simplicity and brand identity are your two objectives.
Make it easy for your viewers. If something distracts from your overall goals, don’t use it!
Your website is not responsive
In the world of web design, this is a sin you do not want to be making. So many people access websites via their smartphone or tablet today, if your website is not optimised to be viewed on these small devices, you will miss out on a huge number of potential customers and you will frustrate in the process too.
Think about when you access websites via your mobile phone. You don’t enjoy using the dread pinch-and-zoom, right? A lot of websites today are impossible to use and even view on a smaller device. Make sure your site does not fall into this category. This is so important when you consider smartphones are the most popular devices for accessing the Internet.
Your website is not optimised for SEO
You have spent hours and hours creating an incredible-looking website. But no one is coming to it. All your efforts are wasted, and this is because you have ignored SEO.
It is of the utmost importance to have a search engine optimisation strategy in place so that your site climbs the search engine result pages for increased visibility.
There are lots of tactics you can adopt to achieve this. This includes everything from incorporating searchable long-tail keywords naturally into your content to putting together a blogger outreach strategy.
Lack of contact information
It is so critical to display your business’ email address and phone number on your website. Plus, make sure it is easy to find. If you do not do this, it will hurt your brand image and you will come across as untrustworthy.
A bad CTA
Your call to action is the gateway to your business. It tells your users to take a specific action. This could be to sign up to your newsletter or place an order, for instance. Your CTA needs to be simple and tell users exactly what they need to do. Remember, there is a fine line between being helpful and being annoying. You definitely don’t want to be the latter.
If you are committing one of the mistakes that have been discussed above, there is no need to panic. However, there is an urgent need to make some changes. Follow the advice above to get back on the right track.