Although making sure that a business has an attractive online presence is part of website design, that’s just one aspect of this practice. One of the most common mistakes that businesses make is only focusing on the aesthetic aspects of web design. At Big Red SEO, plenty of Omaha business owners have brought us existing websites that look nice. However, the owners are frustrated because their website isn’t helping their business grow.
Since we deal with website design on a daily basis, we can quickly spot issues that are preventing designs from being as effective as possible. But because we know that most people don’t have time to dive deeply into the practice of web design, we understand that many of those issues may not be as obvious to others.
Because our mission is to help businesses harness the power of the Internet to grow and ultimately increase their bottom line, we want to highlight some of the most common business website design mistakes that we see:
Font That’s Too Small
Even though the size of the font on a website may seem like a minor detail, the reason it’s not is because visitors quickly get frustrated when they can’t read what’s on their screen. And when a visitor gets frustrated with a website, it generally takes less than a second for them to either close that window in their browser or hit the back button.
More businesses are learning the importance of regularly publishing high quality content on their sites. Unfortunately, far too many businesses in that category are being held back because the font of their web designs is too small for people to easily read. This is not only a problem on desktops and laptops, but also on smaller devices like phones and tablets.
A Website Design That’s Not Responsive
It’s hard to believe that it’s been less than a decade since the iPhone was introduced to the world. The reason is because we all now take a great mobile Internet experience for granted. But just because people expect to be connected wherever they go doesn’t mean that all businesses have kept up.
Whether they have a stripped down mobile-only site or don’t have any kind of mobile strategy, businesses with websites that don’t load quickly on phones are missing out on a lot of visitors. In fact, mobile has become such an important source of traffic that Google is actively reducing the rankings of sites that don’t have mobile-friendly designs.
If you’re concerned that optimizing your site for mobile is going to be too much of an ordeal, you’ll be glad to know that there’s a straightforward solution. By utilizing a responsive website design, your site will have a consistent look across all devices. This consistency also extends to its functionality. So if you haven’t updated to this type of design yet, you should contact Big Red SEO as soon as possible.
Confusing Navigation
As we previously mentioned, people generally aren’t patient when they’re online. What this means for businesses is if a visitor can’t easily find what they’re looking for on a site, it’s almost guaranteed that person will leave. And since the chances of a visitor returning to a site they didn’t like are slim, the business likely lost that potential customer for good.
One of the reasons that navigation is so often a website design issue is because there’s a fine line between too much and too little. Additionally, certain sites are best served by the presence of a search box, while others don’t really benefit from that element. Since making these decisions can be a major challenge, it’s very helpful to have expert design guidance like that provided by Big Red SEO.
Unnecessary Clutter
This issue ties into several of the points we’ve covered. When a visitor comes to a website, they want the page to load quickly. They also want to be able to find the content or page they desire without wading through a bunch of unnecessary elements. While that’s a reasonable request, a large percentage of business websites don’t reflect what visitors actually want.
A common reason that existing designs have lots of unnecessary clutter is because these elements are built into content management platforms by default. Even though elements like a dozen social buttons on every page may seem harmless, not removing them can hurt a site’s performance, turn off visitors and ultimately cause a business to miss out on revenue.
No Clear Calls to Action
While visitors usually have a general idea of what they want to do on a site, they don’t automatically know what step they should take next. For example, if someone reads a blog post, they may be interested in reading more content from the business. But unless there’s a clear call to action that makes it easy to sign up for a newsletter, there’s a good chance that visitor will simply leave.
When you choose to work with Big Red SEO on a design or redesign for your Omaha business website, we will ensure that you don’t miss out on these kinds of opportunities. We will take the time to ensure that every page of your site is properly optimized in a way that turns as many visitors as possible into new leads or customers.
Get a Website Design That Will Help Your Business Grow: (402) 522-6468
As you can see from the above list, there are a lot of issues that can prevent the design of an Omaha business website from being as effective as possible. Whether you need a website for a new business or want to redesign an existing website, your top priority should be having a site that converts as many qualified visitors as possible into leads or customers.
If you want to ensure that your website design accomplishes that goal and helps your business to move forward, Big Red SEO can help. Thanks to our experience and the amount of data we’ve had the opportunity to analyze, we know exactly what a website needs in order to be as effective as possible.
So if you’re looking for a new website or want to redesign your site so that it will start helping your business thrive, give us a call at (402) 522-6468 to discuss your web design needs in detail.
