10 most common mistakes of website development

When creating a website there are so many things to consider that is almost inevitable to make some mistakes. Some of them can be small enough to easily be corrected after the implementation of the finished website. However, there are some aspects of the site that can have a major impact on the user experience and the overall performance of the website. By paying the attention to sometimes obvious things from the very beginning can help you save money and time afterward.

1. Main focus on the homepage.

Did you ever visit a website where the homepage was beautiful with all the effects and interesting fonts, but when you go to the subpage it looks much poorer than the main one? It still can be designed in the same style but there is less content and visual elements are not that appealing. While it is true that some users are only visiting the homepage and you need to design it to keep them on the website longer, but it’s the subpages where users will look for the information about your company, products, and services. Fill out those pages with relevant content and include some visual details to make the website look integral.

2. Poor navigation.

Your website navigation can be obvious and simple for you but the users can have some troubles finding the information they need. The users usually are visiting the website with a clear goal and navigation should help them reach it. You can’t possibly predict the path of every single user because most of the time they are distracted by other things and can act impulsively and illogically. That is why the navigation should be as user-friendly as possible.

Poor navigation can cause your potential clients to leave the website without taking any actions. Users want to have easy access to the information about your company and products and if they can’t find it they will be annoyed and unwilling to engage with your brand anymore.

3. Lack of or unclear Call to Action.

When users land on your website they already are somewhat interested in your company or products. Including the Call to Action button on the homepage encourages them to take some action. Whether you want them to purchase a product, join the newsletter subscription or leave the contact information, the users should be aware of it. By not adding the CTA you are missing the opportunity to take users further into their journey.

4. Ignoring mobile traffic.

Almost half of all traffic comes from mobile devices. That is why it would be unwise to not optimize the website for smaller monitors. People usually are using their smartphones even when they’re hanging out with friends or watching TV. Besides that when they need quick access to information they would just grab their phone instead of looking for a computer. It makes the mobile device the perfect place to catch potential clients. But if your website won’t load on a small screen or the elements won’t display properly the users would leave and won’t come back.

5. Lack of blog.

Blog is a place where you can shape your brand with well-written and engaging content. Publishing articles is one more way to attract potential clients and interact with them. Interesting content gives users the reason to come back for more updates. Besides that because the posts on the blog are growing constantly the website gains more pages to be ranked by search engines. Blog is a perfect tool both for the traffic generation and for SEO.

6. Poor visuals.

Visual elements play an important role in the overall website design because they have the most influence on the users. During the first couple seconds on the website, people won’t read much text (except maybe for the couple words of the header) but the images and videos, in general, are being perceived faster than text. If you decide to include some visuals make sure that they are coherent and of high quality. Choose short videos over longer ones because the attention span of internet users nowadays is not that high. Images, videos, and animation are supposed to encourage users to interact with the website and low quality and lengthy visual content would just make them leave.

7. Long load time.

It is widely known already that the website load speed is very important. Not only it affects the site ranking in search engines but also is a decisive factor in users behavior. Long load time is the main reason why 46% of users don’t like to browse the web on their phones. People nowadays expect that websites would load in a matter of seconds because when they are using their mobile devices they want immediate results. Adjust the website elements to speed up the loading. If you are using large high-quality images and videos it is better not to include them in a mobile version as well as other elements that can slow down the load speed.

8. SEO and over-optimization.

You should think about SEO from the very beginning of the website development because a lot of factors have an impact on the search engine ranking. Your website can be perfect for users but if you would not optimize it the search engine won’t let users see it. On the other hand, overdoing it (like including too many keywords) can cause more harm than good. Search engines avoid websites that have too many keywords and can even remove them from results altogether. SEO is the perfect way to reach users in search engine where they are looking for the information, so it is very important to do it right to achieve the best ranking.

9. Under-planning.

When creating a website you should have a clear pass for it in mind. Without that, it is very easy to end up with the site that won’t serve the purpose of your company. When growing your business there always will be the need to add things to your website. It may be a new product category or functionality but the website supposed to be ready to implement various changes. Failure to plan can lead to the development of a new website from scratch instead of improving the existing one.

10. Lack of regular updates.

Every website should be updated. By that, you are making sure that your potential clients always have access to current information such as contact and company details. Regular updates make the users trust the website more because they know that the content of the site is always up to date. Besides that, search engines would treat the website as more relevant than those that do not refresh their content regularly.

At first, those things can seem unimportant or that they can be implemented later. But frankly speaking, if you won’t pay attention to such small things (on a scale of the whole website) like images and buttons they will cause some problems in the future. It is relatively easy to avoid such mistakes at the beginning but during and after the implementation of the website the change can be very difficult to introduce.