4 Common Mistakes You Are Making on Your Website

Your website is your most vital online tool. When users visit your website, it’s often their first opportunity to interact with your brand. If you’re not getting results, you’ve probably made some major, though pretty common, mistakes on your website.

Fortunately, it’s often easy to fix these mistakes. By employing a few simple measures, you can turn a website misfire into a recipe for higher conversions and enhanced brand awareness.

Here are 4 common mistakes you are making on your website and how to fix them.

1. Information overload

Inundating visitors with data, especially on your home page, doesn’t help pitch your products or your brand. People get overwhelmed by too much information and the more of it you cram into one space, the more your call-to-action gets buried under trivial details the consumer doesn’t need to know.

How to fix it

Less is more. Provide simple bullet points of information that get the point across and make an impact. Lead quickly into a clear call-to-action. Make it easy for your visitors to see what you’re about, what you’re offering and why they need to act now.

2. Your design doesn’t reflect your brand

You had the best of intentions when you asked your cousin to splash slick designs all over your home page. It’s artsy and cool and that draws a crowd, right? Sure it does, if you’ve got an art display on the sidewalk. People will stop and glance at it, but they won’t know what it means and they won’t really care.

How to fix it

Hire a professional service to design a website that’s simple, concise and makes every element cohesive and reflective of your brand. Design is the most powerful element on your website. To make an effective first impression you need to make an impact.

Work with a professional web designer to paint a picture of your company that ties into your brand and resonates with your audience.

3. Your content is stale

Search engines love fresh content. Why? Because users flock to it. If you’re not updating your content, people have nothing new to look at. Stale content can drop your website’s search engine ranking and your visitors will stop caring because they’ll assume you stopped caring too.

How to fix it

Updating your website content is a simple and inexpensive fix.

• Host a blog or post fresh articles daily or at least twice a week.
  
  
• SEO is important and should be incorporated, but don’t stuff content with keywords until it’s unreadable.
  
  
• Keep your content interesting, relevant and tied to your brand and keep adding more. People will read it, grow familiar with your company and care more about your brand and your offerings.

4. You missed your target market

The internet is the only venue that grants you immediate exposure to virtually the entire world. So it may be tempting to try to reach everyone with an unfocused website that targets, well no one. By being too broad, you’ll miss the mark, miss your target market and miss out on conversions and business growth.

How to fix it

You need to cater to your audience. If you’re an apparel store that sells clothes targeted at women in their late 20’s to early 40’s, that’s the market you need to appeal to by using all the elements of your website, including design and content.

Making mistakes on your website can hamper business growth and drive away visitors. Fortunately, the most common errors are easy to fix.

Build a website that delivers on brand awareness, clean, focused design and relevant content and watch your business and consumer base grow.

SOURCE: Web Design Ledger