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5 Common Website Mistakes That You Need to Avoid
You might not know it, but you could be making simple website mistakes, turning off thousands of users in the process. Here are ways to correct these common website mistakes. These days, virtually everyone and their sister have a website. But, maintaining a website, that's a different story. When done right, websites give you a powerful platform to attract followers, market a business, and provide helpful information. Creating a website is more than just getting the design right and populating it with content. It has to be maintained or updated regularly – mainly if you depend on your website for sales. Just like anything in life, you might be making several website mistakes, and you might not be aware of it. Mistakes, no matter how little, has to be corrected immediately; otherwise, Google might end up penalizing you for it.
If you're making these common mistakes, you might also end up attracting the wrong crowd, fail to meet customer expectations, or fall short of relating to your customers through your marketing messages. The bottom line is, you will lose followers or customers unless you do something about these mistakes. To create the best website for your business, avoid these website blunders:
Forgetting About Mobile Optimization
Did you know that about 5.15 billion people all over the world are active mobile phone users? And the number of mobile phone users has grown to 121 million in the past year. People use their mobile phones to access the internet, and if your website does not look right on a small screen, you could be putting a lot of potential customers off!
Mobile optimisation is a massive part of a successful online marketing strategy. It's a must for startups and small businesses because an enormous chunk of the global website traffic originates from mobile devices. Optimising your website for a small screen ensures that the site looks exactly the way it should on all mobile devices. It isn't just about elevating the user experience, the design should also fit the dimensions of the digital devices, including the text size, image, video size, etc. This helps your followers or customers interact with the website in the smoothest way possible, so they stay longer on your website and ideally, take the desired action (hitting that “buy now” button).
Slow Loading Speed
Does your website take forever and a day to load? Online users are an impatient lot, most users are unwilling to spend more than 3 seconds waiting for a website to load. In fact, most users expect a website to load in 2 seconds or less. At Google, websites that load in half a second are prioritized in the searches, that's how crucial loading speed is! To speed up your loading time, be sure to remove massive files that take a long time to load, including large pictures, heavy graphics, etc. We suggest compressing the images into smaller sizes for quicker loading. There are free services that let you compress images without affecting the image quality like tinypng or tinyjpeg.
Next, remove codes or deactivate plugins that are slowing your website down. You can do this on your own if you know how to code or get a professional to do this for you. If your server is too slow, find a service that gives you the fastest loading time at a price that you can afford. It also helps if you could get someone to audit your website before doing any of these steps so you'll know exactly what to prioritize.
Outdated or Inconsistent Design
An excellent presentation is an essential marketing tool too! Most online users won't spend more than a few seconds on a website with an outdated design. Outdated design affects user experience, it can make the interaction between the website and the user difficult or downright frustrating.
Your website should be easy to use on both desktop and mobile devices. The design should reflect your brand, it should create an immersive experience. Remove elements that are only distracting people or causing user experience or user interface issues. The text size should be readable in all screens and use only a modest number of pop-ups.
Cohesiveness and consistency built trust. Keep your brand consistent throughout the website. Your website design should be consistent with your branding or marketing materials as well.
Ignoring SEO
A beautifully designed website with great content and all the trimmings are nothing if your website is nowhere to be seen on the searches. Search engine optimization or SEO remains one of the best ways to market a website on the internet. Your website has to be search engine-friendly, so every time users search for your content or product, your website will land the first page of the searches.
The thing with SEO, however, is that it's not a one-time thing. It will take weeks or months to see positive results. If you're willing to learn the science of SEO, you can do the optimizing on your own, starting with keyword researching and internal/external linking. But if the process is way over your head, it makes sense to let an SEO professional handle the SEO for you.
Forgetting About Social Media
As of January 2020, there are about 3.80 billion social media users in the world. This number is expected to increase next year, especially now that everyone's quarantining at home. Now imagine if your website is not social media-friendly, you could be losing thousands upon thousands of viewers and you're not even aware of it!
Social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok, attract billions of unique users every day. And if you are an aspiring influencer hoping to market your online business or a veteran entrepreneur with a physical store, creating a social media friendly website is one of the easiest and most effective ways of attracting more people.
Make it easier for your readers to share your content on various social media channels. Add social media sharing buttons on every website page. Keep your content relevant, engaging, and updated to encourage readers to share your content. Best of all, create your official social media accounts so you can share your content and interact with your readers on a more personal level. This helps put a face behind the brand, something that will make you relatable to more people.
Creating a website for your business is only the beginning. With these tips, you can establish a website that attracts the right people. Avoid these mistakes at all costs to make your website even more appealing to readers.
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