Usually, website visitors can immediately see the typical website mistakes because they negatively affect the flawless user experience. These mistakes always create a consistent chain that leads the whole website to failure. These tiny mistakes make it inconvenient for the visitors to use your website, and they leave it for the competitorsâ websites, so the company loses its potential customers.
Read these tips on how to avoid the most popular mistakes that website owners make, be careful and always make sure to analyze your website before you start!
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Incorrect structure and imperfect navigation
Problem: the website structure should be correct both in terms of SEO and for visitors. If the structure of the site is incorrect, then it may be a trouble to redesign your website.
As for the website navigation, the visitors should not thrust their way to find the things they are looking for.
Tip: create a simple, logical, intuitive site structure. Keep in mind the rule of three clicks!
Bad domain name
Problem: the domain name should be short and easy to remember so that potential customers can remember the name of your website (and your companyâs name!). How do you think, which one of these two variants you would like more – edu123-ff-qw-12.com or edu.com? Thatâs it.
The same thing with the email linked to the website.
Tip: choose an easy-to-remember domain name that is consonant with your companyâs name.
Design and usability mistakes
Problem: for some of the website owners it seems that the more creative is the design, the better. Therefore, they try to combine flash-animation, various colors, fonts, photos and videos on the same page. In fact, it turns out a real mess, which critically affects usability.
Tip: website design should be harmonious, colors should be combined, readable fonts, bright and high-quality photos in the required quantity. Only in this case, the site creates a holistic picture, forms the user a correct impression of the company and becomes a motivator for surfing the pages.
Lack of cross-browser compatibility
Problem: if the website is incorrectly displayed in various browsers, it forces the visitors to close the tab and find another one. As a result, you get a high bounce rate and lose your potential customers.
Tip: it is necessary to «cover» all popular and somewhat not very popular web browsers in order not to miss a single targeted visitor!
The site does not meet the expectations of the target audience
Problem: a professional developer will discuss the website promotion long before the project is launched. This helps to ensure that the site is designed for the selected type of promotion, taking into account all the requirements.
Tip: in order to avoid wasting your time and money, think about how you are going to attract the targeted traffic to the website and discuss its functionality with the specialists before the website development process begins.
Lack of adaptive website layout
Problem: adaptive layout or mobile version of the site is crucial for the improvement of the company’s image and retaining the websiteâs top positions in search engines.
Today, if the website has no adaptive layout or mobile version it loses up to 60% of traffic.
In 2018 Google introduced a mobile-first index, due to which the overall ranking of the site will depend on the websiteâs rankings on mobile devices.
Tip: pay attention to every little thing like the responsive images, the simple navigation, the responsive site layouts, the adaptive tables, the lazy loading images, etc.
Website content issues
Problem: content is the basis of any site, regardless of its purpose. What is this about:
- incorrect, unattractive content layout with a continuous sheet without headings, lists, and paragraphs;
- non-unique content, frank copy-paste (which, by the way, may affect the SEO-promotion of the site);
- outdated and irrelevant information (which will also affect the promotion);
- excessive or missing content;
- text errors.
Tip: write briefly and to the point, select logical subtitles, use readable fonts and compatible colors, bright high-quality images.
Poor load speed
Problem: of course, itâs great when the images on the website allow you to examine the product in the smallest detail, but this is not always appropriate âcause it will critically affect the website loading time.
The user usually waits for several seconds before the page is fully loaded, so it is extremely important to optimize the pages and achieve a high download speed.
Tip: as a workaround, you can create an interesting page load visualization to keep the visitor engaged while he is waiting for the webpage to load. You can upload the optimized image to the site, and show a detailed photo in high resolution in a pop-up, or in another tab after the visitor clicks on it.
Also, you can reduce the number of loaded pages and graphics, the number of browser requests, enable data caching, reduce the size of the CSS code and JavaScript.
Technical errors on the site
Problem: broken links can disappoint and even annoy the visitor when he searches your website for information or product of interest. And if there are a lot of them, then the website pages may be ranked poorly by the search engines. Therefore, it is necessary to get rid of broken links using the analyzing services.
There are other technical issues that you should avoid:
- duplicate content;
- indexed search pages;
- lack of CNC or their incorrect setting;
- generating of 404 pages and redirects;
- inconsistent server and site encodings, etc.
Tip: check out the performance of your site on different operating systems and in different browsers before running it. Donât forget about conducting periodic testing.
No website search function
Problem: any online store, even the one with a limited assortment should have a search function.
It is a matter of fact that the website should have the advanced search option so that the visitor can find the item of interest by typing in some specific parameters: the brand, the color, the size, etc. Also, the visitor should be able to search for the product by its name or category.
Tip: create a search function on the site with detailed filters and make it convenient to use so that the visitor can find the exact product in no time!
Online ordering is too complex
Problem: the lack of a currency converter, a complicated order procedure, too huge registration forms, and errors in the feedback form â all these things increase may lead your website to failure.
Tip: take care of creating simple and clear filling-in forms on the site, place the currency converter, place the feedback form in the most prominent place on the site.
Poor functionality
Problem: itâs bad when the online store website is limited to standard features only. And it is even worse if these functions are not enough for the convenient website usage.
Tip: «add to favorites» feature, the ability to compare several products, the ability to add search filters and sorting products by individual requests (for example, searching for a dress according to its length) will simplify your visitor’s life! In addition, the filtering function can be useful for SEO and contextual advertising, which is important for the further promotion of an online store.
The number of third-party advertising
Problem: if there are too many advertising banners on your web page, this will negatively affect indexing and other parameters that help the search engines to evaluate your website.
Tip: advertising on the site should be shown in places where it will not bother the visitor.
No call to action
Problem: CTA is an important element of communication that can turn a potential customer into a real one. If you want to build an effective marketing communication, you canât ignore Calls To Action: they can be used everywhere, significantly increasing the conversion.
CTA informs the visitor about the steps he needs to take to purchase a product or subscribe to a newsletter. Due to this, the visitor will not leave the site without completing the actions that you expect from him.
Tip: provide bright CTA buttons on the site that will encourage the visitor to take action: buy the product, order the service, etc. Keep in mind that if you want users to subscribe to your newsletter, the registration process should be easy and shouldnât have many unnecessary fields that will only annoy your subscribers.
All the suggestions in this article come under the umbrella term online marketing, Internet marketing, or digital market.