The 7 Worst Mistakes You Can Make With Your Website
This post has been updated August 12, 2020 with new info!
SEVEN Website Mistakes Companies Make With Its Website
While everyone wants to make a great website that drives traffic, there are many mistakes that business owners make when creating one. Business owners have several choices in getting informed about web design and hiring in-house web designers, or contracting web design out to a freelancer. Here are some of the common mistakes to avoid when creating your website.
Not Optimized For Mobile
One of the worst mistakes a company can make (especially today) is not to optimize their websites for mobile phone use. According to a recent study by Smart Insights, 51 percent of Internet usage per adult per day came from mobile devices, with 42 percent coming from a laptop or desktop. This means you should find a web design that looks great on mobile. However, don’t ignore the laptop or desktop segment; many websites have a desktop/laptop version and a mobile version as well.
Style Over Substance
The days of flashy websites are long over—customers expect the important information to go on the company’s website, such as product or service information and contact information if customers have questions or comments about your products and services. Flashy websites also don’t translate well over to mobile devices—keep it informative.
Bad Font Choices
Is there such a thing as a “bad font choice” for websites? The universally despised Comic Sans MS comes to mind, but there are other fonts that some people consider a bad font. However, some less obvious fonts come to mind. According to some web designers, Courier New is another bad font—this is the same font that typewriters use, and is only useful in certain situations. Even the ever-popular Times New Roman (the very font college professors swore by when you wrote term papers) also gets some criticism because of its overuse. One should consider using fonts that are outside of the mainstream and are easy to read.
Poor Hosting Choice
There are so many options out there for web hosting but I can say, speaking from over 15 years of experience, the bigger the company, the bigger your problems. Putting your site on a shared hosting behemoth will only slow your server down and take more time for your website to load. Many hosting companies will put your website on the same server as thousands of other websites. At Route 7 Media we work to ensure server crowding is minimized for optimal performance.
Secure It – Lock it Down!
One of the biggest issues that comes up with web hosting are hacks, spam, malware and all sorts of malfeasance. There are thousands of bots and bad-actors around the globe that are constantly trying to access your website. Putting proper security measures in place like WordFence, limiting admin login attempts, using strong passwords, strong, unguessable login names are all ways to strengthen your website’s security.
Lack of Information/Content
Customers want to reach out to companies they’re interested in, so have all pertinent contact information available on one section of your company website—social media accounts, telephone numbers, email numbers, and if you have one, a physical address.
One should also consider using a content management system (CMS) such as WordPress—maintaining a blog highlighting what your company does, what your products and/or services do, and profiles of the company’s key executives should give customers more information about what the company stands for and allows you to develop a relationship with your customers.
Using Flash
Flash is impractical for a company website. According to Robert Fisher of BPWrap, it takes too long to load, it consumes bandwidth (which is especially precious if you’re doing business in emerging markets), and it also affects your search engine optimization (SEO) efforts, namely because Flash pages do not contain specific keywords. Search engine algorithms are cracking down on websites that have no relation between meta data and actual content, and this could get you blacklisted from search results. HTML5 is the main method used to deliver quality Flash-like animations, these days. If you could do it with Flash, you can do with HTML5.
Conclusion
While getting a presence on the Internet is not as cost-prohibitive as marketing on billboards, TV and more, you do have a lot of competition. You should avoid common mistakes in your website’s design and this will keep customers coming back and driving traffic.
