8 Common Mistakes to Avoid while Designing a Website

8 Common Mistakes to Avoid while Designing a Website

Building a website can be considered as an intersection of art and science. Aesthetics is important to attract visitors, while good user experience is vital to ensure they stay there. More importantly, your website should prompt visitors to take the action that you want them to take. There is a lot of work that goes into designing a website; don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. A lot of factors need to be taken care – but here our web development team from Perth tells you what are the common mistakes you must avoid while designing a website.

1. No goal setting

Many business owners commission a website, but have no goals or are unsure of what they want for the website. This is one of the most common mistakes you must avoid while designing a website. A website is your virtual salesman and part of your digital identity. A clear goal is crucial for the success of your website. You need to have a clear idea about the key areas that need attention. This will help you to give a proper project brief to the web design company on how you want the website to be designed and developed.

Most professional web design companies will provide you with a demo of your website. If you find a website that is similar to what you want, you can give the reference to the web developers. This will help them get a clearer idea of what you want to achieve with your website.

2. Not following your brand identity

Your customers should be able to identify and connect with you across platforms. Your website should represent your brand and values the same as other mediums. Your message and customer experience should be consistent in the physical as well as the digital world.

3. Not building the website from the customer’s perspective

While knowing what you want from the website is crucial, it is also important to know what your customers want from your website. A website is a very effective marketing tool; ensure that it doesn’t end up just being a tool. Your website should be functional, provide value and align with customers’ goals. For that, you need to understand who your target customer is and what they need from your website.

4. Ignoring mobile-first

This is a mistake that must be avoided at all costs while designing a website. We’ve already spoken about Google’s mobile-first indexing and its importance. Mobile usage has surpassed desktop usage. If your website doesn’t have a good user experience on hand-held devices, you will be losing customers. Most local searches are done on mobiles, with a clear purchase intent. If your business has a local presence, you cannot afford to ignore mobile-first design for your website.

5. Giving importance to aesthetics over functionality

It is important that your website is eye-catching and attractive. But if customers find it difficult to interact with or navigate your site, they will bounce off fast. It is crucial to give functionality equal importance as design. One over the other will cause you to lose traffic and potential leads. Your site must have a good speed, and users must be able to find what they are looking for easily.

6. Design over content

We never tire of saying Content is King. A fabulous design is ineffective if your content cannot communicate effectively to the target audience. Your content should be relevant and updated. Your website content should be able to tell customers how their requirement will be met by you; how your business will solve their pain points.

How your display the content is as important as what you say. The fonts and layout of content should be attractive. Ensure there are no huge unbroken chunks of text – this is a common mistake you must avoid while designing a website. Use visual elements to break text blocks and make content more interesting.

7. Not optimising Call-to-Action

It is not just enough to have great design and interesting content. Your website should also gently persuade the user to take an action. CTAs should be tactfully placed to prompt a visitor to interact with your site.

Your call-to-action (CTAs) should clearly state what the user can expect when they click the button – what to do and where to go. You must also ensure that your CTAs are optimised and work well on mobile devices.

8. Ignoring Contact Information

This is a strangely common yet easily avoidable mistake while designing a website. Your audience must be able to easily contact you the moment they decide they want to do so. They should be able to contact you in one or two clicks at the maximum. Ensure you don’t miss a Contact Us page in the main navigation. You can also add contact details at the top or bottom of the web pages. Give as many options as possible for customers to contact you – contact forms, phone, email, social media, WhatsApp.

There are a lot of ready-to-go themes that you can use for websites. But if you are looking for a professional and optimised website, you will need to engage with skilled professionals. Ready for a glitch-free and fully optimised site? Contact us or email at  sales@computingaustralia.group for a customised solution.

Jargon Buster

User experience (UX) – It is how users feel when interfacing with a system. The system can be a website, a web app or desktop software.
Local search – A search for services or information that is limited geographically to local providers.
Purchase intent – When a customer exhibits a desire to purchase a product or service
CTA – Call-to-Action – a clickable button or link to prompt a website visitor to make an immediate response. For example, ‘buy now’, ‘contact now’, ‘subscribe now’.