10 Website Design Mistakes Ruining Your Online Traffic

Hamper Your Brand Reputation

“75% of consumers admit that their judgments for a company’s credibility are based on the company’s website design.”

Yes, it's true! Brand reputation is the public’s perception of any brand. 

Did you have any idea about how a few common website design mistakes can cost your brand reputation? Users can abandon their shopping cart after having a poor experience and incur significant credibility loss that can impact your future sales graph. 

It's concerning, right? Looking to shape your brand reputation, get professional web design services to help you with the right strategy for overall business growth.

Customer Experience is at stake

88% of online customers declare that they never prefer to return to websites after having bad experiences.

What's the difference between the biggest profitable companies globally and the ones that deliver services in the same domain but are not that successful? The answer is "User Experience." If you want to make a mark in your niche and gain a competitive edge, you cannot ignore user experience. 

A bad web design makes the customer criticize the website's usability, hurts the purchase intent, and motivates them to check out the competitor.

Poor Conversion Rate

“57% of internet users say they won’t recommend a business with a poorly designed website.”

Did you know how a few common web design mistakes can ruin the customer experience and make them refuse to make a purchase decision? Have you optimized your site with the right CTA, navigation tools, mobile-friendly, and many more elements that hold visitors throughout the sales funnel? If “No”, it's worrying!!

If you are struggling to get optimum conversion and looking to improve it, get conversion focus web design services and boost your conversion with the right conversion optimization strategy.

Low Return on Investment

“88% of online customers are less likely to return to a website after a bad experience”

If your website fails to turn visitors into paying customers? There must be something wrong with it. If your website is not designed and organized logically, it ends up your customer journey with a bad experience. This means the user is more likely to leave the site and spend their hard-earned money elsewhere. 

High ROI is ultimately what any business needs to stand. looking to improve it? Get ROI-driven web design services to get potential conversion and uplift ROI.

Low Engagement Rate

“38% of people will stop engaging with a website if the site layout is unattractive”

If your website design/layout is user-friendly enough to hold the visitor and get them to find the information easily they are looking for?

Website design mistakes such as cluttered navigation, busy layout, too much text, and a boring design and use of colors, could make your visitors uneasy. It could hamper user experience to a great extent and make them bounce back immediately thus lowering your site user engagement rate.

Want to overcome low customer engagement issues? Get custom web design services to get a website customized to your business needs ensuring great user engagement.

Higher Bounce Rate

94% of visitors would reject a website based on its design-related aspects. 

What is your site bounce rate? If it is more than 70%, it's an alarming call.

A high bounce rate is a great indication that either you’re not attracting the right site visitor or the visitors coming don’t have a good user experience. Few common web design mistakes like inconsistent basic design elements, and cluttered navigation could be a great cause of a higher bounce rate. 

Want to improve bounce rate? Get professional web design services with promising expert designing capabilities to hold visitors for long and smartly drive them through the sales funnel. 

Competition gets the Benefit

89% of consumers shop with a competitor post facing a poor user experience. So investing in your website user experience will yield $100 against $1 you spend, or else competitors will keep gaining 88% of traffic that use gradually loose.

So, if you're looking to gain a competitive website design that doesn't let your users move to your competitors, get leading website design services that solidify your grip on existing customers and attract new customers.

Let’s move on to the next section to see critical website design mistakes that can ruin your online traffic.

Looking to gain a competitive website design?

• Grip on Existing Customers
• Attract New Customers
• Improve Online Organic Traffic
• Reduce Bounce Rate

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Unresponsive UI

Did you know how much traffic you can lose if your site UI is unresponsive? It's no longer enough to design a website for a single device. The majority of website traffic comes from mobile devices, accounting for more than 51%. Ideally, your website design should be responsive & flexible enough to fit across different screen sizes.

Please check your site responsiveness for different devices, and if found a compatibility issue, it's good to fix it soon.

How to fix it:

• Follow a Minimalistic design approach
• Use responsive breakpoints
• Formulating the rules of fluid grid 
• Use Responsive imagery
• Define Typography
• Test responsiveness for different devices

Pro tip: Leverage responsive design checker to check how a website looks responsive and compatible enough to deliver an excellent user experience. Take help from professional web design services to get the job done for you.

Poor Content Strategy, Quality, and Placement

A visitor will never stay on a website with outdated and unrelatable content. Instead, they will immediately browse other search results pages. Therefore, you need to have a content strategy and framework in place. 

How to fix it:

• Discover Which Content Will Get You Inbound Links
• Find Content Your Readers Will Share
• Make Email Signups, and Subscriptions a No-Brainer
• Create SEO-optimized content That Ranks Better
• Create content that resonates with your audience's interest 
• Have a content outline in place before coming up with the website design

Pro tip: Content that solves the visitor's pain points will also solve the business pain points as well.

Having Clumsy Navigation

A study by Stanford University found that ‘sites that were easy to navigate are more credible.’ But unfortunately, most site owners and web designers ignore the fact. Clumsy navigation will motivate your visitor to bounce back from the home page, which means they will never spend any quality time on the website checking over the product and services.

How to fix it:

• Plan navigation with a sitemap
• Prioritize your pages
• Stick to conventions
• Use a sticky menu
• Limit the number of items
• Add a search bar

Pro tip: Keep navigation bar consistent across all pages of the website. You can hire professional web design services, get the job done for you.

Not Embracing Enough White Space

White space is crucial to a website's UI layout, it improves readability, drives attention to the correct elements, and creates a well-balanced, clean image that significantly improves UI and enhances the page's UX(User Experience). 

How to fix it:

• Remove all elements around the object you want to emphasize.
• Use both micro and macro white space
• Manage visual hierarchy with white space
• Pay close attention to the white space around CTAs
•  It doesn't have to be white always

Pro tip: Avoid too much whitespace that can make your website look lazy and bland.

Inconsistent Design Elements

A website with consistent design elements helps visitors get familiar with UI patterns and components. Having consistent fonts and text arrangement can improve scanability, legibility, readability, and even site navigation.

How to fix it:

• Have menus in the same position on each page
• Have the same fonts, logo, and colors throughout the site
• Have a clear visual hierarchy
• Optimize interaction elements- like button labels
• Do optimum use of animation, videos, sounds
• Don’t overload your website with too many elements

Pro tip: Use Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) to achieve the same look and feel of all web pages that use the same style sheet. If you need any technical assistance, it's good to outsource expert web design services.

Neglect SEO Friendly Design Prospective 

SEO is a backbone for any business to stand online, but many don't realize that search engine optimization needs to be built during the web design process. A poor SEO strategy will never let your website rank well on the search engine.

How to fix it:

• Create SEO-optimized content
• Maintain optimum keyword density.
• Optimize header tags
• Use internal linking
• Optimize meta descriptions
• Use a readable URL structure
• Use image alt attributes
• Use minimalistic web design
• Avoid heavy media files

Pro tip: SEO ranking is more confined by user experience on your site, focusing more on usability and aesthetic feel inlined with basic SEO guidelines, will automatically boost your SEO & business performance.

CTA That is Not Action-Driven

When did you last optimize your website CTA? Is it performing well to direct the visitor to the sales funnel? Are they visible or tempting enough to drive conversion? CTA design that is misleading will never accelerate your conversion rate.

How to fix it: 

• Make CTA look like Button
• Customize CTA with Clear Messaging
• Get CTAs highlighted
• Leverage white space for effective placement
• Avoid vague button text or no text at all
• Avoid too many calls to action for one page
•  Don’t forget to test the CTA button for (color, copy, size, and placement)

Pro tip: Get a CTA copy that appeals emotionally to the user.

Unattractive Website Color and Theme

Will you stay on a website that looks messy and unattractive? Definitely “NO,” and the same applies to your users. “First impression is the last impression” if your website is getting traffic but not able to hold visitors or struggles with low engagement, your site color theme could be a possible reason.

How to fix it:

• Color should emotionally connect with the visitor
• Understand color phycology based on geographical location 
• Website color should uplift your brand logo
• Consider gender while choosing a color for your website
• Follow the 60/30/10 rule to come up with the right color
• 60% dominant color, 30% secondary color, 10% accent color

Pro tip: Keep the theme elegant and straightforward as it enhances the aesthetics of the web design. 

Slow loading speed

40% of customers will abandon a page if it takes three or more seconds to load. If your site is getting low traffic, this could be a possible reason. Hit back to check your website loading speed; it might be affecting your online traffic and the engagement rate.

How to fix it:

• Enable Caching
• Eliminate flash files
• Remove unnecessary heavy Plugins and Add-ons
• Optimize and compress images
• Minimize your code. 
• Use a content delivery network (CDN) for better loading of content.

Pro tip: Use a minimalistic design approach to leverage light design elements. You can take the help of professional web design services.

Lack of visual hierarchy

When was the last time you paid attention to your website’s visual hierarchy? 

Visual hierarchy plays a vital role in planning your information architecture to help your users navigate in an organized manner. A site with a poor visual hierarchy adds uneasiness and friction to the user experience. So if your site is facing this issue, it's recommended to fix it soon.

How to fix it:

• Consider reading patterns.
• Consider visitor behavior while designing elements.
• Use size, color, and contrast to draw the eye fast.
• Use optimum white space to create emphasis.
• Use Proximity and repetition to create unity.

Pro tip: Leverage color to draw attention and evoke emotion. 

Get more web design and development insights, and a must-read difference between web design and development.

By now, you are well aware of the critical issues your website is facing and why is your conversion rate constantly declining. However, this is half the battle won; you need professional services or an expert to fix these issues for your website and get your online presence scaled up.