Despite the 21st century being well underway, new websites are launched daily carrying several of these mistakes which will result into usability nightmares for your future customers and ultimately loss of business. If you’re about to launch or commission a web design for your business, ensure these mistakes are not featured on your new site. Ultimately they will cost you money.
Ensure you understand your Customer/Client Base
To make sure your website serves its purpose and your customers, ensure it is targeted towards the right audience. Ensure that it has the right look and feel that your customers and clients will expect to find, and ensure that all of the content will be at least useful to them, and that your business sales message comes across.
Lack of Responsiveness
All business web designs have to look good when viewed on a smartphone, tablet or any computer of any sized screen. If they do not, then it’s fair to say you will lose business. Not only do they have to look good, they have to be able to be interacted with in a user friendly way on any sized device.
Recent research by Ecommerce Week shows that online purchases using mobile and tablet sales are accounting for one third of all purchases. Search engines now also “punish” sites that lack responsiveness. That is how important such a feature is.
No Visual Content
Today’s web requires good visual content. Videos and images should be used where possible to bring your USPs to life. Where you need copy to sell a product or service, you should break the content up into chunks to make it easier for your customer and client base to digest. If you look at this blog for example, you can see that each section is broken down into sections to make it easier to read. You should ensure this approach runs through your site.
Also, consider using infographics where you can. This is highly shareable content.
Avoid Automatically Playing Videos and Sounds
Always avoid automatically playing videos and sounds on a website. It distracts from your sales message and many find this disorientating when they first land on your site. If it is too much they close your site straight away.
Poor Call to Action
Call to actions are highly important for business websites. Your call to action should be clear and prominent and easily understood by your customers and clients. If you can, try and avoid using click here on your product and service pages and use professional forms and buttons to make bring your call to actions to life and USPs to life.
A good call to action is not just a very good navigation aid, when they work in conjunction with compelling content; they are a powerful sales tool.
No Analytic Tool in use
Some business websites do not have a way of measuring the amount of traffic that comes to their site. This is a mistake and surprising, considering Google Analytics is free and provides you with the following information:
- Amount of visitors your site receives
- Where in the world they come from
- Traffic sources
- What pages they look at
- What pages perform/fail
- Key touch points if you set up goals/events and sales funnels
And this just scratches the surface. With this information you can make changes to your business site with confidence. The alternative is to have no information to make a good decision.
And Finally
Your business website is a sales tool so make sure you use it as such. To that end don’t say ‘welcome’, say ‘50% off with your first purchase’. Which one do you find more appealing?
This Makes Sense… What Next?
Get in touch with us and let’s discuss your business website or upgrade to your existing site.