With the massive number of website choices, consumers have the ability to easily discard your site and navigate to another if there is something which does not meet their expectations. Customers have become spoilt for choice and expect nothing but the best out of their online experience. If your site is not engaging, respectful, accurate and consistent, it will lead them to doubting your business capability.
Below are some of the most common mistakes made by businesses.
1. Elaborate fonts in attempt to look original
Unfortunately, not all fonts look the same on all computers, and some won’t load at all. This is especially an issue if you seek international customers.
2. HTML created with tables when not required
Except where your site is displaying tabular data, tables should not be used on your website. Using CSS and accessible HTML standards is the way sites are meant to be built. If your site’s layout is created using tables, you’re limiting the functionality, flexibility and accessibility of your site.
3. Not built for SEO
Search engines scan your site and use headings and subheadings to help gather a list of your pages. Therefore your page headings should contain text that helps consumers find your site (and make it more useful). Simply using bold and italics to format page headings doesn’t cut it.
4. Login frustration
Ever been to one of those annoying sites that endlessly prompts you for login information? Your site can still be easily accessible to your target market while adhering to the necessary security standards.
5. Dependency on Flash
Adobe Flash is a browser plug-in that allows advanced animation and sound in your website. However, it can cause your site to load slowly and severely limit your search engine ranking. In addition, in future web browsers will be limiting their use of plug-ins, so not all customers will be able to view Flash-based websites.
6. Navigation issues
You never know how or where a user lands on your website. They may land on your home page or any subpages through search engines or a link from someone’s post in a forum, and so on. All pages on your website should therefore have a clear and concise navigation menu to help users find what they’re looking for. These navigation links should also stay up to date; nothing frustrates a user more than broken links and not being able to navigate your website.
7. Too many advertisements
Website owners sometimes fall into a trap of trying to generate a little extra revenue by displaying advertisements on their site. This can result in a website that looks jumbled, messy and unpleasant. Depending on the purpose of your website, it’s likely that it would be much more useable and attract recurring customers if visitors were not bombarded with ads.
These are just some examples of common mistakes used in many websites today. Even websites created by experienced web designers are being published with these and will more than likely harm the business in revenue and continued consumer business.
Does your website have any of these issues? If you’re not sure, contact us for a free SEO analysis report.
