With any small business or startup, the website is one of the most critical tools to introduce the services and products to the desired target audience. Website visitors come to a website to learn more about the company, brand, products, services, and want to get answers to their questions. A successful website provides all of this for the visitors.
Companies that incorrectly or poorly get their website design and development executed, experience lack of results, sales, leads, search engine rankings, brand awareness, and market gain. A bad website can have a vast amount of negative impacts on any size of business and industry. To assist, here are 5 worst website design mistakes by small businesses.
5 Worst Website Design Mistakes By Small Businesses
1. Low quality and busy website design.
Website visitors want to figure out what to do next when landing on a home page within a couple seconds. Website design that is too busy, complicated, and low quality can confuse and annoy website visitors. Low quality and busy websites often loose potential customers quickly. Consumers and people in general like cleaner and easy to use websites.
2. Not taking the time to understand the audience.
Rushing a website project is never a good idea. Starting a website project prior to taking the time to understand the target audience is also a bad idea. Website design has to be aligned with the desired target audience demographics such as gender, age, and so on.
3. Lack of clear call to action on key pages.
Websites that lack clear call to action elements on the home page and key site pages are much less effective. Visitors need to be given incentives to submit their email, fill out the form, buy the product, sign-up and so on. These call to action elements should be strategically positioned throughout the website.
4. Paying too much or not enough for quality.
This is a tough one for so many companies and entrepreneurs. How much to pay for the right website? It is not a simple question to answer. Businesses often hire cheaper website designers and end-up with poor websites that do not produce results. Other times, a company hires a better-known agency to pay premium prices to still end-up with a website that does not produce. The answer is simple. Find a agency that knows the industry well and is moderately priced.
5. Outdated site information and content.
Websites that have outdated and old information that may not be relevant anymore often perform less well, rank in search less, and convert poorly. Customers and consumers expect to see relevant and quality content on the website. When this is not the case, customers often assume negative things and move on to a more updated website.
