Designing and building a new website can be fun and exciting, however it’s important to keep the purpose of the website front and centre at all times. What’s the product, or service? Who’s the website for? What do they want and need? How’s this website designed to give it to them?
At times, websites look attractive, but they’re not actually fit for purpose. When a website’s clear about what it does, why it does it, and who it does it for, then it’ll be fit for purpose. In most cases, a website exists for site visitors, which means the whole experience from end-to-end needs to be designed, so it meets (and even exceeds) their wants and needs, while eliminating uncertainty and stress. So, what are the 4 most common mistakes made when building a new website?
Using a Non-Responsive Website Design: Did you know that more than 50% of website traffic comes from mobile phone searches? A non-responsive website is hard to see on a small screen, so many readers will simply hit the back button and look for another website that’s designed to be viewed on a phone. A modern mobile responsive design ensures your website’s easy to use on any mobile device, plus it ensures your site doesn’t get deprioritised by Google for being out of date.
Complicated Navigation: Can people find what they want quickly and easily? If website visitors get stuck, or they can’t find what they want, they’ll leave the site. Poor website navigation is likely to drive potential clients towards your competitor’s websites. Considering the user-experience (UX) is critical when designing and building a website that’s easy for customers to use. If your website’s difficult, or stressful to use, more than likely, people won’t choose you.
Difficulty Finding Contact Information: Can visitors find you when they need to? Is it easy to see your contact information? These details should be easily accessible in the header (at the top) of every page with full contact details on the footer (at the bottom of the page). In addition, a clear link to an up-to-date Contact Page in your site’s menu will make it simple for customers to reach you, or your team with ease.
Unclear or Non-Existent Calls-to-Action: What do you want people to do on your site? It’s critical that your website communicates with the reader. Prominent calls-to-action (CTA) buttons politely invite visitors to take action, whether it’s clicking through to another page, buying a product, or requesting a consultation/estimate. Whatever steps you want visitors to take, calls-to-action should appear on each page to remind them to do so.
At Sky Media, we keep the user-experience (UX) front of mind, by always considering what it’s like to be a site visitor on each website. Is it difficult, or easy? Complicated, or clear? Pleasurable, or stressful? What is the user seeing? Is it helpful? Is it useful? Are people getting what they need from the site? Are they taking the actions we want them to take? Our down-to-earth digital marketing team designs and builds websites that create a positive user-experience from beginning to end. If you’d like a website that’s fit to fly online, speak to us.