Having a great website means more than just uploading content to it and hoping for the best. It requires a keen eye on the technicalities such as hosting and regular maintenance, as well as a good idea of how to make a good first impression to new clients. It also requires attention to the overall design of your website, from its usability to ease of access.
That being said, mistakes can be made with web development and usually the ones we’ve come across are made unintentionally. These are the top ones you could be making in terms of your website’s design.
Your Home Page Doesn’t Look Good
We’re talking about featuring images chopped off midway on that nice photograph of your staff member, or the pixelated, squished version of a puppy that you need to squint at in order to see properly. We’re talking about colours that just do not mix well with one another. We’re talking about having too much text and no imagery, or too many images and no context as to what they mean or who you are. We’re talking about animated mice graphics, comic sans font, and flashy animation that just. Doesn’t. Work. We’re talking broken images and links that lead to nowhere. We’re talking about one heck of a bad home page, aren’t we? If your home page or the entire website has any or all of these issues, now is the perfect time to really take a second look at it and get it updated.
Your Content is Confusing
It’s really annoying when you only see text and nothing visually interesting, isn’t it? How about when you only feature content in jargon? How about when you write your content as if it’s to robots as opposed to humans? How about when you refer to yourself as the company and not as the individual on your about page? Let’s not forget about the page after page you click through to find information you need only to find out you have to go back to page one where you started. Talk about frustrating and confusing.
We can’t stress enough that ease of access and content written for humans and not machines is key to finding and getting the people you want using your website. Take a really close at your content next time; if you can’t understand what you’re saying, odds are your audience won’t either.
You’re Present and then…Not
Erratic and spontaneous updates, whether on your website itself or social media, really doesn’t actually say a good thing about you so much as say “I couldn’t care less about my audience.” Likewise, too much presence online can be a negative thing too; too many updates could drive people away unwittingly, especially if they feel the content you’re posting to them is irrelevant to their lives.
Finding the right balance of time well spent online is tricky, but manageable. A constant, steady schedule of updated information should suffice. It will help if the content is relevant to both your company and your audience as well, such as a change of hours in operation if there’s a holiday.
Where’s Your Social Media?
Seriously, if you’re not present on social media, then where are you? Lost in the void of the Internet, according to search engines. If Google can’t find you online, whether it’s on Facebook or a listed directory such as on Google+, then odds are your audience can’t find you either. That being said, it’s unwise to simply set up a social media account and then leave it be without using it, just for the sake of having social media list your website. If the platform isn’t useful to you, don’t worry about it. If finding you online is a problem though, that’s when you need to revisit those accounts and get them more notice.
This is only a small portion of the mistakes you could be making with your website’s overall design. If you’ve taken a closer look at your website lately and you see any of these mistakes and more, it’s high time to contact us at V3 Media and get those issues fixed.