Bad website design can be a silent killer to your business. Your website can be the very first impression you make or be used as a tool to help support communication. In both respects, bad website design can turn people off and turn people away. You may not even know that you are repelling instead of attracting!
You have no clear headline
Within seconds of visiting a website, you should have a clear idea of it’s purpose. Are you selling, educating, establishing credibility, sharing information ? Any internet marketer knows that your headline is the most important element on your page because it’s the thing that MOST impacts conversion rate. Be clear. Be concise.
Your design is so TWO THOUSAND and LATE
It takes just a few seconds to make a first impression so you don’t want to present a website that is looking dated. It tells people that either A: Your business may not be very active or successful or B: you are kinda lazy or let things “slide”. The average person spends – so we are a pretty web savvy bunch and we are pretty aware of what a modern website looks like. Avoid bad website design by sticking with current website trends so you can give potential clients a better first impression.
Your Imagery Sucks
Imagery is a design essential for your website. Most modern websites have imagery front and centre to help communicate, set a tone and define your brand. You should have a clear idea on the images you’d like to use on your website and then be consistent with their aesthetic. Take a look a look at these imagery trends for inspiration!
You didn’t SEO optimize your pages
Having a website that is SEO optimized is a game changer. SEO (Search Engine Optimization) can make all the different in your traffic – glorious FREE traffic. Ideally you should have several pages or a blog that target specific keywords in your niche. Then, there are a number of factors that determine the rank of your website but the first place to start is optimizing on page SEO – making sure those pages are targeting your keywords as best they can.
For your WordPress website, the best tool for this is to use the Yoast SEO plugin.
You have no call to action
Every page of your website should have a purpose. If you have been in the game for a while, you know that generally that purpose is to collect leads via contact form, phone or email signup. Bad website design is not having clear calls to action. Make sure your calls to action are visible and present on every page!
You aren’t Mobile Friendly
We have reached a tipping point with mobile: more people are NOW accessing the internet with their mobile phones (smart insights). Your website HAS to be mobile friendly otherwise you could potentially be excluding MOST of your online traffic.
You don’t use Analytics
Not only should you be using analytics to keep track of your traffic numbers, SEO efforts, social media efforts but analytics can certainly help you identify bad website design. What pages are most being accessed? How long is someone spending on the site ? What are they searching for / What can’t they find? Analytics will give you important clues about what’s working and what’s not with your website design.
Your pages are too cluttered
This is maybe the number one sure sign of a newbie web designer – pages have TOO much and TOO much close together. Remember how every page had ONE purpose. Start there and edit your pages so they don’t distract from that. It’s especially hard to not put EVERYTHING on your homepage but you will loose your purpose and your message if you add to much. Prioritize what’s most important. Put secondary information in submenus, use concise headlines with “find out more” buttons. Don’t be afraid of white space – people are used to scrolling and not everything needs to be above the fold.
Your site is too slow
We are an impatient bunch. If your site is taking too long to load, people will give up and move on. Any more than a couple of seconds, is too slow for the average person. Also, google can factor in page speed for its search engine ranking. Use Google’s page speed insights to get some direction on how you can improve your load time.
You hide your Personality
Marketers try to personify brands (give them human traits) so consumers can better identify with the brand so that it resonates. If you are a solopreneur or small company, this can be one of your biggest competitive advantages over large companies because it can be very easy to reveal the people behind the screen. Show some photos of yourself. Infuse some personality. Share some behind the scenes information. People love to know you are human!
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