They say “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger”. Unfortunately, that doesn’t apply to your website. In your website’s case, “what doesn’t kill it immediately, slowly scares potential clients away”.

As a business owner, you expect your website to do three major things:

Without any further ado, let’s get right into it.

• Generate more qualified Leads
• Increase Awareness
• Improve Lead Conversion

If your website is not delivering these three key results, then something is wrong somewhere and, no, it is not from your village.

You might want to send this post to your web designer (except you’re one and will be building your website yourself).

Without any further delay, let’s dive into the ten web design mistakes that will destroy your business(if ignored).

1. Information Overload

Okay. We understand that you need visitors to know about your business and all but don’t you think having so much information flying everywhere would be a turnoff?

Imagine going to a supermarket to buy your favourite candy. The cashier tells you about this new candy brand they have. Excited, you get to the candy section. The first thing you see is a big sign saying “Have you tried our new candy?”.

That might pass as a means of getting your attention. But then you begin to see stickers and fliers hanging everywhere in the candy section saying “Buy our new candy today!”. That will be annoying right? Well, guess what? That’s how visitors feel when they visit your site, and all they see is a truckload of information about your product with zero attention to what their problem is. If you wouldn’t go back to that supermarket for candy, why should they come back to your website?

2. Slow Loading Time

Humans are not as patient as you think. If you doubt it, observe their reactions in traffic. We want everything fast. So we go for fast foods, fast cars, fast-everything!. What makes you think people would want to tolerate a slow website?

It’s on record that the attention span of a human is eight seconds, meaning that your website needs to load in about two to three seconds and pass valuable information in at least five seconds. If you achieve that, you can keep the visitor longer.

3. No Clear CTAs

A Call To Action (CTA) button is supposed to enable visitors to take specified actions on your website. When a CTA is unclear or even unavailable, it becomes difficult for a visitor to know what to do. For instance, when you provide a brief description of a product, your CTA could be ‘View Reviews’ or ‘Learn More’ or even ‘Shop Now’.

In this case, visitors can easily click on your CTA to either learn more about your product or make a purchase. On the other hand, if you only have descriptions without a CTA, they would gladly leave without taking any action.

4. Ugly or Irrelevant Images

If you must use images on your website (we think you should, by the way), ensure that it is clear and relevant. Since a picture can convey complex and sometimes multiple ideas effectively than a mere verbal description, it is advisable to stick to relevant images.

Making use of a picture of a cat when you sell baby products is misleading and wrong. Ensure that images on your website match your brand message.

5. Poor Navigation

Except you plan to play hide and seek with your website visitors, please make your navigation easy and visible. There’s no point making people go round and round in a bid to find your navigation bar or search bar

The navigational aspects of your website need to be easily understood and even easier to notice. Help people find what they are looking for without breaking a sweat on your site.

6. Lack of Contact Info

As surprising as this may sound, some websites lack contact info. As a business, you want people to reach out to you with inquiries or complaints. When you don’t make that available, how do they reach you? Wait, let me guess, they’ll ask Google!. But doesn’t that defeat the purpose of having a website in the first place?

Your ‘Contact Us’ page should always be just one click away, or your information should be at the bottom of every page.

7. Zero Responsive Design

People no longer depend on their computers to access the internet. Other devices are now in use. If your website is not designed with that in mind, then you can kiss an approximate of 60% of global website traffic from mobile devices, goodbye.

Now that’s a lot of money not coming to your business. If your website is not optimized for those users, you are automatically alienating 60% of your possible customers.

8. Self-Focused and Hard to ScanContent

Putting out contents that focus more on yourself and your business, and ignoring visitors’ desires, goals, fears, frustrations, and problems decreases credibility and makes it harder to convert visitors into customers. People will always scan through your website instead of reading word for word at first. It is, therefore, advisable to have:

• Descriptive sub-headings
• Short paragraphs (two or three sentences)
• Bold, italicized and highlighted formatting
• Bullet points and numbered lists.

9. Not Answering Visitors Questions

Every person that visits your website has a question and expects to find answers even before he gets in touch with you. This is why you need to have an FAQ section where some of the questions you know your visitors will ask can be answered.

These questions vary depending on your industry but here are a few common questions your visitors may have:

• What is Idea Validation?
• What are the benefits of validating my ideas?
• What will I get?
• Do I need a website to start?

10. No Social Proof

Want to gain some trust from your visitors, prove to them that other people have used your product or service. Show them real testimonials (not some story you create in your basement while reading some motivational book or listening to your favourite radio show).

Ensure that your social proof is authentic. Like they say “seeing is believing”. If people endorse your brand, the possibility of more people wanting to give it a try will increase.

Now that you know the mistakes to avoid, don’t settle for whatever any web designer throws at you. If the website they build has one or all of these mistakes, ensure they make corrections. Your website should be making you money not helping you lose some.

In case you haven’t found a web designer for your web site project, we’ll be more than willing to help you build one. Tell us about your project and we’ll set the ball rolling.

Validate your tech or app idea quickly & cheaply today —> FIND OUT HOW

Charisol is a User Experience(UX) Focused Design & Dev Agency with a team of Product Designers & Developers based in Africa.

We help innovative companies bring their ideas to live!