You’d have thought that these days, pretty much anyone could spot a bad website – and they can, if the things that make that website bad are obvious.
You know the things we’re talking about: the dated animations, the wacky fonts and the cluttered layouts, among so many other blatant blunders.
However, the very fact these errors are easy to pinpoint means they aren’t necessarily the mistakes you may be making with your own website design. It could be these three problems affecting your site…
1. Leading to ‘dead ends’
Of course, no web design company builds a site with the intention of leading potential customers to dead ends. But those dead ends do happen, nonetheless.
By ‘dead ends’, we mean such things as content opened in a new window, pages that have no obvious ‘next step’ for the casual visitor, and pages with unintuitive internal links.
- Don’t leave your site visitors stranded like this. It’ll just lead them to take their interest and potential business to a better-designed rival site.
2. Hidden content
You already know that people don’t generally visit your site just for a laugh or to waste some time. They’re there because they want to quickly obtain some vital information about a product or service you can offer them.
However, there are so many ways in which otherwise well-designed websites can frustrate visitors by making their content difficult to find.
In your site’s case, maybe it’s because the search function isn’t very good, the navigation system is confusing to use or some pages seem to overlap in purpose – for example, you might have both a ‘services’ and a ‘what we do’ page.
- Keep the navigation simple, preferably without secondary level menu items, which makes mobile browsing much easier.
- Remember that most users now begin browsing on their smartphones and continue researching on a larger device, so keeping smartphone users happy is vital.
3. Not answering the big questions
Of course you don’t necessarily want to give your prospects every single detail about your product or service straight away, or at least not until they’ve provided you with some useful information or signed up for that free demo.
- If the visitor needs to open an account with you to even find out the basic price of the service they’re interested in, you might end up wasting a lot of your own time, as well as theirs.
It’s frustrating for a buyer, after all, to have to jump through such hoops. It also increases the likelihood that you’ll receive a lot of enquiries from visitors who then discover from the information you provide that your solution isn’t the right one for their needs.
Are you keen to work with a web design company that you can trust to put the customer first, and avoid classic usability mistakes like these? If so, get on the phone now to the PENNInk Productions team, by calling 020 8144 7931.
Edward Solomon has over 30 years’ experience in project management, technical education, computer networking, web design and development and is a Digital Business Consultant for PENNInk Productions Ltd.
