Every top performing website on the internet currently did not become a success overnight. A high ranking site would need weeks or even months of error fixing, designing, careful content strategy making, SEO planning, and continuous development in order to rank on first result pages of popular search engines like Google or Bing.
As it’s not possible to get it all right the first time around, there may be a good number of faults or mistakes that may occur with your website during its development and even initial launch stages. Here are a few of mistakes you need to watch out for on your website.
1. Dated Content
Don’t remember the last time you uploaded a blog post on your website? Well, then the first website mistake that you are making is keeping dated content on there. Your website visitors aren’t going to read the same dated content every time they visit your site. Moreover, if you don’t offer them fresh content, then they might stop visiting your site entirely.
The solution here is to keep giving your audience some fresh new ideas or content related to your business, by posting them in the form of blogs on your website. Or better yet, go one step further by providing some timeless content that is so unique and interesting that it never loses its value. Anything would be better than keeping dated content on your site and losing all of your visitor traffic.
2. No Privacy Policy or Terms and Conditions
A website’s privacy policy highlights how you (as the website owner) collect, store, and use or distribute personal information that is collected on your website. Having such a policy on your site helps to build trust with visitors. It’s important to ensure that you not only HAVE a privacy policy but that you and your staff also actually adhere to the principles outlined in it.
Another crucial piece of paperwork that should be on your site is the terms and conditions. These outline the “rules” of your website. It highlights how you can use the site, who the contact of the site is, if there are fees associated with the website, information on cookie use and storage, etc.
3. No Call-To-Action (CTA)
When you get visitors to come to your website with good content and SEO strategy, don’t make the mistake of allowing them to leave without taking any action.
If have a website, and even if you are NOT selling something through your website, then ensure that you give website visitors clear CTA’s or call to actions. Some examples are including buttons like Click here, Subscribe now, Buy now, etc. Often these buttons lead to areas of the site, such as landing pages, which require the visitor to leave some personal information with you (usually an email address), which you can then use to follow up with the prospect.
By not using good (OR ANY!) call to action buttons, you are allowing your audience to leave your website and miss out on the opportunity to convert them into buying customers.
4. Not Mobile-Friendly
One the biggest website mistakes that you should avoid is making only a desktop version of your site. Chances are that a majority of your target audience do most of their internet browsing on their mobile or smartphones. If you only have a desktop version and most browsing occurs with mobile devices, you can bet that the user experience lacks in effectiveness and functionality.
Moreover, Google’s mobile-friendly update last year made it very clear that those websites that are mobile-friendly would get a better rank than those that do not have the mobile-friendly update.
5. Bad Navigation
The fastest way a website loses visitors is if it has a bad design. A poor website design limits visitor activity on a website as they might find it difficult to navigate through the site or they may land on an error page.
When a visitor finds it difficult to navigate or find some specific information on your website, then one the main reasons for it may be because the site is not easily navigable. All you need to do here is improve the site information architecture and website design a bit and you will improve the user experience of your site.
6. Long Forms
The majority of websites nowadays have certain forms that visitors need to fill, if they want to make inquiries about certain things like prices, company contact details, and other general questions. However, some website owners make the mistake of having too long forms which require visitors to fill in more details than what is actually required of them.
So try to keep the details to a minimum when you are making forms page of your company website. Whenever a visitor tries to fill a form, it should not take them more than a few minutes MAX to complete it!
7. Inconsistency in Look and Design
Many websites have lost a lot of visitors due to inconsistencies in their site design. Offering useful content on your site is a great way to get people to visit, but the only way to keep them on your website is by giving them an amazing user experience. This can only be achieved through a professional website design or developing it by removing inconsistencies.
Oftentimes site visitors question the authenticity and trustworthiness of a site when the design changes unexpectedly within one browsing experience. For example, sometimes people are a bit weary about different payment gateways on their site because some of them do not open in a branded fashion.
8. Slow Load
The brutal truth when it comes to internet browsing is that no one is willing to wait for a website to load if it takes longer than even 6-8 seconds. This is because, internet users are so used to their browsing being super fast, whether is comes to surfing online, listing to music or downloading videos from the internet.
So as they are used to such high speeds of performance, it would be a big mistake for you to leave your website with a slow load speed.
9. No Social Media Integration
As mostly every internet user is logged on to some social media network whenever they are online, it would be a huge mistake on your part if you don’t integrate your website to any of the popular social media accounts.
When you do this, your visitors will have the opportunity to share your website content or articles directly on their social media channels, thereby promoting your web pages and driving more internet traffic to your website.
10. Dead Links
Sometimes the external links used as references or citations on your website, “rot” or become broken, irrelevant and dead over time, as the linked website changes and the resource is no longer available.
These links are no longer valuable to site visitors and can actually hurt your reputation online as the resources are unreliable. Chances are, visitors won’t return to your site. Removing or repairing these dead links helps keep your website fresh and up to date.
Conclusion
These were just the top 100 website mistakes to avoid while managing your company site.
Do you know of any other mistakes that need to be avoided? Well, then please tell us about them in the comments.
