Your website is your storefront – does it impress your visitors or turn them off? If you don’t know the answer to this, then you’re at risk of having a site that’s displeasing to your audience.
It’s very important to pay attention to the design of your website so that it does its job efficiently. And that’s to entice visitors to stick around, learn more and potentially become paying customers.
This is done with a combination of an exceptional design and quality content. Together, you can have a site that potentially converts visitors into customers. But to get to that point, you need to avoid the following custom website design mistakes.
1. Not Having a Responsive Design
This makes it to the top of the list because it’s still fairly common to see. Now, this is surprising, especially given a number of users that are using both desktop and mobile devices.
Catering to the mobile market is the key to boosting your website ranking. After all, Google rewards sites with a mobile-friendly design.
And why shouldn’t they? Just look at the stats – from 2013 to 2019, mobile users have increased by 222% in the past 7 years. Yes, mobile devices have surpassed desktops as the tool of choice for surfing the net with 52.2% of online users visiting sites from their mobile devices.
Source: https://www.broadbandsearch.net/blog/mobile-desktop-internet-usage-statistics
What’s even more telling is that it’s not just websites that can perform better with a responsive design. Even emails with a responsive design received 24% more clicks on mobile devices.
So in a nutshell, don’t overlook the importance of a responsive design when you’re creating anything on the web.
2. Building a Flash Custom Website Design
Sure, a Flash website sounds like a great idea and may even look amazing. But when you look at the pros and cons of one, you’ll see the bad outweighs the good.
For one, not everyone has super high-speed internet, which means your site may act slowly for some users. And second, not all devices have Flash enabled, which means your site won’t work at all for these visitors.
That’s one too many issues that could cause a high bounce rate and reduce conversion rates. It’s also worth mentioning that Google doesn’t really like Flash sites, which could hurt your ranking in the SERPs.
3. You Have No Cross-Browser Compatibility
Let’s face it, everyone has their own preference for web browsers. Some like Chrome, while others opt for Firefox and Explorer.
So why should they be punished for exercising their right to choose? If your site doesn’t work on every browser, then you’re going to lose people at the gate.
To avoid this, make sure your site is cross-browser compatible. And make sure to check that it is by visiting your site from different platforms and browsers.
4. Creating Excessive Pop Ups
There’s nothing more annoying than visiting a website with too many pop ups. One is enough – which should be strategically timed and placed.
If you want to use a pop up to entice users to sign up to your newsletter, then do it after they’ve scrolled down a bit, been on your page for a certain amount of time or are about to leave the page.
You can test out different timings and placements of the pop up to see what yields the best results. Just get rid of the excessive pop ups, so you don’t run visitors away.
Also, make sure the X is visible, so users can opt out easily and quickly.
5. Bouncing Away Your Own Traffic
Social media buttons are supposed to help build your loyal customer fan base. But if you’re placing them in the wrong areas, you could actually be cannibalizing your own web traffic.
Look at it like this – if you spend hours and money on content that drives people to your site, why on earth would you place a YouTube or Facebook link on the same page to send them away?
It may have seemed like a good idea at first, but when you see the traffic leave, never to return, then you’ll see why it was the exact opposite.
Social buttons can be used but in a more strategic way. For example, you can have them open up in a new tab or window. Or you can use share and like buttons instead of profile page links.
6. Embedding Videos the Wrong Way
Video content is an excellent way to attract the attention of most audiences. A billion hours of video is being watched on YouTube (most of which is on mobile). So this is telling of how useful video content can be for your traffic building.
But this isn’t going to be the case if the videos are embedded poorly. For instance, including the suggested videos setting. This can potentially drive them away from your site, like with the social media button dilemma mentioned earlier.
So to embed the videos correctly, just do the following:
- Copy the embed code for the video
- Choose the “shore more” option
- Uncheck the box “show suggested videos when the video finishes”
- Copy and paste the code into your website
And that’s it!
7. Including Only One Call to Action (Or None)
Once visitors make it to your site, what should they do next? If you don’t tell them, then don’t expect them to convert.
Calls to action are very necessary for your conversion rates, so it’s important to have more than one. And we’re not talking multiple of the same CTA. Diversify it a bit.
For example, you can have a link that says “buy now.” And another link that says to “sign up to my newsletter.” Then you can also have a “contact us now” link for those who aren’t quite ready to purchase but want more answers.
Think of the different customer journeys and try to accommodate them with multiple CTAs.
Get a Custom Website Design that Converts
Have you already built a custom website design, but have had no luck with generating leads? Or maybe you have yet to start building one. Whatever the case may be, the web developers at Bear Fox Marketing can help.
We’ve worked on custom website design projects and with great success. Our digital marketers can also assist with landing pages, A/B testing and site optimizations.
Contact us today to start designing a site that actually converts.