A Good Website Design is Essential for a Business Site
The Importance of Web Design
In business, your website’s design is a key component of your brand’s online presence. For this reason, it needs to be functional, practical and appealing to users. To get the most benefit from your website, avoid these common web design mistakes.
1. Too much text.
When visitors are confronted with large amounts of text, they become overwhelmed and frustrated, and they are unlikely to read all of it. In fact, too much text can even cause some users to leave the page altogether.
Instead of covering the pages of your website with unbroken blocks of writing, keep your design scannable by using bullets, headings and fonts that are easy to read. To keep the amount of text to a minimum, don’t include “fluff” or nonessential information.
2. Lagging load times.
Life in today’s world is fast-paced, and no one wants to wait for a webpage to load. In fact, Econsultancy reports that up to 40 percent of users will leave a website if it takes more than three seconds to load. Test your load times regularly to keep them as low as possible, and make changes immediately if you notice load times approaching three seconds.
3. Blatant advertising.
Visitors will notice blatant advertisements in your web design immediately, and they will quickly leave a web design that contains a lot of them. If you must advertise on your site, limit the amount of promotional material that you place on each page, and check your site activity to be sure your ads are not impacting your website traffic or any other key metrics.
4. Cluttered pages.
Pages cluttered with images, videos, graphics and text are confusing to users. When designing your site, avoid the temptation to fill every empty space, and keep the layout as neat and clean as possible. “White space” is good.
5. Confusing navigation.
If users can’t find where they need to go quickly and easily, they’ll become frustrated and leave your site in favor of a competitor. Keep your web design navigation simple and intuitive to prevent traffic loss.
6. No search function.
In some cases, a user simply wants to find something specific without browsing through page-after-page. To accommodate these needs, you need to offer a search function that can be accessed easily from all pages of your website.
7. No marketing strategy.
It doesn’t matter how impressive your web design is if consumers don’t know where to find it. In addition to designing and launching an excellent website for your business, you also need to have an effective marketing strategy in place in order to drive traffic to your site and maximize results.
8. Lack of a mobile-friendly site.
With so many users accessing the internet from mobile devices, a mobile-friendly version of your website is more important than ever before. Failing to offer this option may end up costing you a significant amount of business.
If you want to build a successful online presence for your brand, a properly designed website is essential. As you design or redesign your site, make sure that you avoid the pitfalls listed above. In addition, remember to test your site regularly for problems and resolve them quickly when they occur.
