Each month, Google rakes in 100 billion searches. Searches like this are what millions of Americans use to find businesses online — and nearly 93% of all online experiences begin with a search. If you currently own a business, searches like this can be beneficial for you… but only if you’re able to keep people interested once they click on your website.
Website design is incredibly important, but many businesses either overlook or underutilize it. Through the use of visual assets and intuitive design, you can use the traffic garnered from searches and create new customers. However, there are many common mistakes that businesses make when it comes to web design. These mistakes can end up costing then potential customers. To help you avoid making these mistakes yourself, here are five of the most common mistakes businesses make and how you can avoid them.
1. Under-Planning
No business is able to run without a carefully crafted business plan and the same is true for your company’s website. From the very beginning, you need to have a plan for marketing your website online while also taking care to construct your website with both originality and credibility. This means utilizing web design services that can customize your website for improved quality and search engine rankings. You want to design a website that is both aesthetically pleasing and geared towards usability so that visitors will enjoy their time on your site.
2. Lack of Visual Assets
Visual assets are another important factor when it comes to constructing your website. You want your website to be a good first introduction to your company. Low-quality images and early-2000s-style interfaces are not going to do it. Professional web design services know how to utilize visual assets and high-quality imagery to create a visually pleasing site. Without these visual assets, you can risk visitors becoming turned off buy a bland and boring page. Furthermore, high-quality assets can help promote a more professional appearance to your website, allowing you to increase your credibility and appeal.
3. Forgetting SEO
SEO — or search engine optimization — is another highly important step that many businesses overlook. Regardless of how good your website looks, without SEO, you’ll make your page harder for customers to find. Because online searches are one of the top ways potential customers find businesses, this can seriously impact your ability to draw in new clients. An SEO expert can help you increase the discoverability of your site by building the optimization into the design. Without the knowledge of how to do this correctly, you can risk losing out on customers and falling behind the competition.
4. Omitting a Blog
Adding a blog to your website is another thing many companies overlook. However, it is a good way to differentiate you from competitors and personalize your website further. It also gives you a chance to engage with customers and keep them up-to-date with the latest happenings in your field. For instance, if you run a home improvement business you might wish to update your blog with style trends and information on the home improvement process. Some businesses can benefit from hiring an outside writer to help them manage their blogs and ensure that they can produce high-quality content regularly.
5. Unintuitive Design
Lastly, the design of your website needs to be intuitive and user-friendly. If visitors have to spend long amounts of time searching for information that should be easily available, they will most likely become frustrated and turn somewhere else (most likely, a competitor). To prevent this, a website design company can help create a website that is easy to navigate while still being aesthetically pleasing and optimized for search engines.
If your company’s website is falling behind and you would like to improve its ability to bring in customers, consider partnering with a web design company who got to help you get a leg up on your competitors online. While it may seem like a small step, overall it can help increase business and customer engagement, something every business should be eager for.