6 Website Design Mistakes That Hurt Your Business and Brand

In today’s highly competitive environment, it is unrealistic to conduct business without considering the prospects of using the Internet as a sales channel. A website, pages on social networks, and various types of online advertising have become integral parts of marketing campaigns. An online platform can serve as a basis for building a reputation, a full-fledged business card of a company (all information is collected in one place), a resource for attracting customers, a permanent advertising channel, a place for direct interaction with a consumer audience, and more. But for your site to work successfully and benefit you, you need to avoid some mistakes when creating it.

Inappropriate Design

Even before clicking on a link leading to your site, users already have some ideas of its design based on the business area. Therefore, it is very important that the overall appearance of the platform meets the expectations of potential customers and matches their vision of the services your business offers. For example, if a company organizes children’s parties, the palette color, as small customers can say, on the site should be bright and colorful rather than austere and monochrome. So, a nice way to achieve harmony in your design would be to look into сolor names and hex codes which are structurally delivered by some designing apps like VistaCreate. A designer needs to develop analytical, critical thinking that will help create a product beneficial for the customer.

Keep in mind navigation. While a horizontal navigation bar is best placed at the top, a vertical menu is expected to sit on the left. Since most attention is drawn to elements located at the beginning and the end, place all important information at the top of a page, and let your contact details be the last item.

Forgotten Branding

Website branding is a powerful tool to help you promote your business on the Internet. It is aimed at creating a brand identity in the online market and forming brand awareness among users. As there is fierce competition between businesses on the Web, a company should strive to emphasize its uniqueness and stand out among other representatives of the industry. You need to carefully think through a combination of various corporate identity elements to build a brand design. Adding details like a logo, slogan, and corporate colors helps users remember your company and find you faster.

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Poor Quality of Information

This paragraph applies to all information provided on a site. Firstly and most importantly, a site owner must immediately change inactive contact details, hours of operation, and other information related to the business’ activity so that customers can easily get in touch with the company. You also need to constantly add fresh and informative content to your site to maintain the credibility of your web resource and increase its ranking in search results. The publications can include blog posts, breaking news, corporate events, product launches, etc. The content should not contain spelling or grammatical mistakes, and it should be useful and valuable to users. It is best to update the content on your site at least once a month.

Bad Visual Materials

The visual component of a web resource adds charm, attracts the attention of users, and works as an additional advertisement for products. All visual materials you upload to your site must be consistent with its content and checked for quality. It is recommended to stick to one style throughout the visuals. Of course, you can use a few bright and even unusual accents, but they should fit into the overall design and not confuse users. For instance, a product article might include images and videos in different sizes since it is necessary to show several properties of one product.

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No SEO

Your site may look perfect, and the content may be interesting and relevant, but it can be difficult for the customer to find it on the Web without SEO. Actually, you need to start working on search engine optimization even before publishing some content. Keep in mind that promotion goes far beyond keywords, although they are essential, especially those with a long tail.

Lack of Mobile Optimization

Every day, more and more people prefer looking for products and services via portable devices. If your platform is not optimized for smartphones and tablets, you are depriving yourself of half of the potential customers (or maybe more, depending on your business). In addition, a mobile-unfriendly website hurts SEO. The best option is a responsive design, which allows automatically adjusting your site to display on any screen size. Thus, the user will be able to learn more about your products and services and become your client in a couple of seconds.

Final Thoughts

Never underestimate the power of the Internet. Finding specialists in a particular industry can be quite problematic, and therefore, thanks to the World Wide Web, you can establish yourself as a real professional who will be of interest to people from different countries. After analyzing your target audience, you should take into account the possibility of cooperation with foreigners, so it would be nice to provide your site in other languages.