Death by Website: 5 Website Design Mistakes to Avoid
Death by Website: 5 Website Design Mistakes to Avoid
Your website is your #1 marketing tool. Use it wisely.
A good website design will grow your business; a bad website design will kill it. It is definitely possible to create a website and then watch it suck revenue right out of your company. We wouldn’t like that to happen to you.
1. Design for Google as well as people
2. Pay attention to the basics
A smart consultant came to us once complaining that, although he had plenty of excellent content, he just wasn’t getting traffic. Turns out his incorrectly configured “robots.txt” command was basically telling Google to ignore his whole site (this can be due to a “disallow” command). Go to Google Search Console, paste the page URL in, and click on URL Inspection in the left nav to see if your site is being indexed. But there are other basics. Here is a sampling:
3. Don’t overdo plugins
Plugins have some obvious advantages. They give you specific functions without a lot of custom programming. But if you overuse them, they can cause a number of serious problems:
Security issues. Plugins are basically small applications, often created by a single developer. But even larger plugins can get hacked, spreading cyber injury to all who use them on their sites. Plus, sometimes a plugin can get old; the developer can get involved in other things and let it go. In any case, the more plugins you have, the less control you have over security on your site, even if you update them regularly to make sure you are taking advantage of the developers’ latest security patches.
Bloat = slow speed. Google doesn’t like slow pages—and people don’t like them either. Every plugin comes with its own surrounding code “infrastructure,” which adds bloat to your site. The plugin and all its code needs to be loaded, and loading takes time. Your Google rankings and time on site will both be affected by slow load time.
Conflicts with your CSS, other plugins, or WordPress itself. We’ve seen one plugin update mess up the entire “cascading style sheets” (CSS) structure, which determines how the text on your site is displayed. Every time you introduce a new plugin, and every time you update your plugins to make sure they’re as secure as possible, you open yourself up to these conflicts. This is one of the reasons we have a human being checking all of our clients’ sites every day. One good move in one part of the site can mess up other parts of a site. The goal is to find the problems before your customers do.
4. Give them what they want the minute they come to your site
We’ve been talking a lot lately about “Data-Driven Marketing,” where you understand and market to your customers’ persona. A persona consists of their personality, desires, concerns, and questions when they set out to buy. The very first thing they see when they come to your site should not be boasting about how great you are. It should instead address their most pressing desire, concern, or question. And the rest of the copy on your home page and other pages should continue to do that, providing proof wherever possible via such tools as comparisons, pictures, testimonials, use cases, and reviews.
5. Don’t trust your website to amateurs, including yourself
Offense, but creating a successful website is important and complex. People coming to your site can tell in seconds if it was designed by a professional or an amateur. I’ve even seen sites designed by a professional who then left the updates to an amateur, and even the most casual customer would be able to tell who did what. The amateur parts always look like someone tried to make repairs to a well-built house using cardboard and packing tape.
Only if you design sites for a living is it ok to design your own. Otherwise, find a website developer who:
Summary…
Your website is more than a digital billboard. Your website is also your store and your salesperson. It’s literally the digital version of your business. It should generate high quality traffic and create revenue for you, rather than something that literally repels both Google and customers.
If you pay heed to this advice, you will shoot ahead of competitors who are still unaware of the common pitfalls.
ThePixel is a website design, seo and digital marketing company located in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Our website designs are custom designed for your unique brand and online presence. Since 2008, ThePixel has worked with hundreds of businesses to design, develop and launch their perfect website that lasts for years.
All Pixel websites are backed with a powerful content management system, search engine optimization and a modern mobile-friendly design. Let’s start building the website of your dreams – one that generates traffic, leads and conversions. Contact ThePixel and one of our representatives will guide you through the website phases and how the process works either by a Zoom Meeting or phone.
