10 Mistakes People Might Hate About Your Website

Having a bad website can cause you to lose customers, ultimately losing you money. But, you’d be surprised how often this happens. Oftentimes, businesses will design their websites without knowing what goes into a great site. From our experience, these are the 10 most common mistakes businesses often make when creating a website.

1. People Don’t Know What They Get for Clicking on a Link

A call-to-action (CTA) tells your visitor exactly what action to take and how to take it. It could be as simple as “Buy Now” or as complex as “Trying to learn how to market your business? Subscribe now so you don’t ever miss a post!” But, sometimes you’ll come across a website with CTAs that are unclear and don’t make sense, or even worse – there are too many CTAs at once.

Here are some great examples of CTAs for your website:

• Add to Cart
• Get Started Now
• Contact Us Today
• Buy Now
• Sign Up

Be clear and simple – tell your visitors exactly what to do. Also, make sure your CTA matches your offer. You don’t want them to be surprised by your actual offer.

2. Your Messaging is Confusing

From your ‘About Us’ page, to your CTAs, everything on your website matters. Being unclear in your messaging makes it a frustrating experience for a visitor who wants to learn more about you. The best websites can clearly explain who they are, what they do, and what products and services they offer.

Also, when you think about your messaging, think about the message your images are conveying. Do they match your copy? Are your titles too clickbaity? You don’t want to mislead your visitor – it might cause them to close out of your website and go to one of your competitors.

3. You’re Not Optimizing Your Website

Have you ever visited a website that isn’t optimized for mobile? You’re forced to scroll from side to side or pinch-zoom to read copy. Since 2016, Google has strengthened search rankings for mobile-friendly websites. So not only is it an annoying user experience, you’re also losing out on organic traffic to your site – which is something most businesses cannot afford to miss out on.

Speaking of search rankings, take some time to audit your search engine optimization (SEO). Google’s search algorithms have gotten technically savvier in the past few years. So, stuffing your content with a ton of keywords isn’t going to work. It’s just going to make it overwhelming for your visitor and Google will penalize you for keyword-stuffing. Instead, think about focusing on long-tail keywords in your titles, create content regularly, and build a great user experience. Add keywords to your titles, descriptions, headings and content, image titles and alt text, and your URLs.

Have someone go through the entire user experience on your website to see if navigation is a breeze. If it isn’t, it’s time to reevaluate your visitor flow and optimize.

4. There’s Too Much or Too Little Going On

There are two ends of the spectrum – you either have too much, or too little happening on your website. Visitors often decide your business within the first few seconds they visit your website.

Some businesses will put too much content above the fold. Websites that have videos that autoplay, excessive pop-ups, and tons of images will make the website take a while to load, and confuse your visitors. Avoid these busy designs because people will hate them.

Other websites have next to nothing on them. Your visitors want to know what you do, and who you are. If you’re leaving it up to them to guess, that’s probably not a great thing.

Rockstarr Tip: Stay away from these other website mistakes we commonly see:

• Hard to read fonts and colors
• Cheesy or generic stock photography
• Disorienting animations

5. You Don’t Have a Blog

It’s a big mistake not to have a blog. Not only are you missing out on the opportunity to provide people with tons of relevant information, but you’re also missing out on the search ranking opportunities.

In today’s day and age, people are more likely to perform their own research about companies. Content is what is going to draw them in and if your information is valuable, visitors are more compelled to become life-long customers.

Remember: Don’t forget social sharing buttons.

6. It Takes Forever to Load

According to Google, 53% of consumers expect a page to load in two seconds or less, and 40% will leave a website if it takes more than three seconds to load. A one-second delay can decrease customer satisfaction by 16%. So, you must monitor and improve your page load times. Page load times can be impacted by image sizes, code, video, etc.

7. Your Customers Don’t Know How to Contact You

Put your number clearly in your header. People don’t want to work to find out how they can get in touch with you, so minimize the number of clicks for them to get vital contact information.

Other tips to make it simple are:

• Add a ‘Contact Us’ page link in your main navigation
• Allow your customers and clients to contact you in multiple ways – phone, email, contact form, etc.
• Reply as soon as possible – it’ll increase your customer satisfaction

8. You’re Not Measuring Performance

Don’t make the mistake of not measuring your website analytics. This will provide you with valuable insights into your visitor’s behaviors. Use this information to your advantage by creating a digital marketing campaign that targets, and retargets, a seeking audience who needs your products or services.

9. Double Check Your Internal Links

Something that can cause a headache for your website visitors is bad internal linking. Internal linking – if done correctly – is super helpful for your visitors and your website alike. Not only does it provide more valuable information to readers, but also helps with your search rankings.

Here are some common mistakes you’ll want to avoid:

• Pointing users to irrelevant pages
• Linking strange phrases within the copy
• Overdoing it so it’s hard to read

Make sure your internal links open into a new tab. You don’t want your visitors to navigate away from your page.

10. Don’t Overlook the Details

From typos to pages that are under construction, it’s important to fine-tune the details because it adds to the entire user experience.

Throughout the process of designing your website, keep your audience and brand in mind. If you can build it, they will come.