7 Mistakes That Make Bad Website Designs
Like any other art, a website design seeks to give visitors a great user experience. As such, website design needs to be aesthetically appealing and functional at the same time. It should be interactive, user-friendly, enjoyable, and easy to navigate. Having a bad website design may cause your business to lose customers, which can result in lower revenue in the long run.
Sometimes businesses want to save money by building their own websites design. Even though this idea makes business sense, this move can either make or break your business. This is because even a minor mistake in the website design can reduce website traffic to your page. It’s advisable to research online and see for yourself some bad website examples to help you determine the mistakes that you shouldn’t do when making one. If you’re planning to build your own website or have it made by professionals, here are some mistakes that you need to be aware of:
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Terrible Or Unclear Call To Action (CTA)
Where and how you place your call to action is crucial in building good website interaction. A CTA is like a map giving your customers directions on what, how, and where to go next. Accordingly, it should give clear information on what the customer should expect upon clicking the CTA. Otherwise, it may create confusion, and directly impact your conversion rates.
In addition, you should allow little interaction time with your website before a CTA prompt. There should be brief information regarding your products or services that’s just enough to pique the client’s interest before the CTA. Make sure your CTA is simple, concise, and clear so that your customers understand the direction that you want them to take.
Simple wordings like sign up, add to cart, contact us are some examples that you can use. You don’t need a complicated CTA, as long as it converts usual browsers to potential customers, then your call to action has done its job.
Not Mobile Friendly 
In this day and age of digital technology, the majority of the customers will visit your website via mobile devices. That being the case, you need to ensure that their user experience on these devices would boost your potential business.
Mobile users are growing every minute which means that more people will likely use their smartphones to access your website rather than on their laptop or desktop. However, if your website design doesn’t support mobile access, this may lessen your chances of increasing your website traffic. In short, you need to optimize your website to be accessible across all devices to prevent limitations.
Too Many Ads Or Wrongly Placed Ads
Some website visitors find advertisements distracting as well as annoying, which oftentimes leads to a loss of interest in the website. As a result, it affects not only traffic but also your expected revenue.
Although, having a few ads on your website to earn extra is okay. However, be careful not to overdo it, keep in mind that you build this website not to earn money from ads but to generate website traffic and thrive on your business.
Hidden Navigation Panel And Poor Navigation 
Even though your website may have interesting content, hiding the navigation panel can frustrate your website visitors and opt-out of further exploring it. Your search bar should be easy to locate to ensure that your visitors can easily look up their interests.
In addition, you should also avoid a website design that seeks to provide too much content on one page. This can be a navigation nightmare to your visitors and can make them abandon browsing quickly. To prevent this, you can provide categories and sub-categories that easily lead the visitors to what interests them.
Too Many Links Opening In New Tabs Or Windows
Every new tab or window that opens can easily slow down any device. For this reason, you should keep links that open on new windows or tabs minimal. For instance, if the content on the link closely relates to the current window, then you can have the link open as a continuation instead. This can ensure that your website visitors don’t have to go back and forth, creating confusion and frustration.
Long Loading Times
Research suggests that a typical visitor will exit a website that takes more than three seconds to load. With that being said, you can ask your website developer to check on things, such as graphic resolutions and java scripts that may affect the long loading time of your website. Additionally, avoid the urge to calibrate your website to give out too much information within a short time. This can lower load speed and can end up losing visitor interaction.
Lack Of Or Hard To Find Contact Information 
Another characteristic of a bad website design is the lack of contact information. Don’t make your customers exert effort just to get your contact details. You can place your contact details on the header or footer of your website. Doing so can easily enable your customers to reach out for purchases or other relevant details.
Alternatively, you can also provide an easy-to-reach contact button or a ‘contact us link on the navigation panel.
Conclusion
When providing content and information on your website, you can easily make the above mistakes. However, you can avoid a bad website design by taking a critical look at your brand image and focusing on user experience. This can result in increased website traffic and business reach.
