It’s a given, the internet is huge – and it’s growing. Every day new start-ups pop up. Only last year Vine joined the online giants alongside Facebook & Twitter. Have you ever asked yourself, of all websites ever to exist, how many have been visited by you? If your answer is along the lines of, ‘I’m not that net-savvy’, or ‘I’m sure others visit them’, then you’re mostly wrong. Over 50% of all new websites are never visited by anyone! Surprised?
Why do you ask? Well, read on because we’re going to be going through the do’s & don’ts of creating websites. You see, most new websites hardly get any traffic at all, and when graded by internet marketers less than 40% launched are high scoring.
Website Mistake #1 – Avoid Big Websites
Less is more. The size of any website is very important in its success. If a website has too much unnecessary data on it with irrelevant pages this can often reduce the number of regular visitors.
The design is also equally as important. It must be suitable for the content, and easy access to any data on the website will encourage visitors to stay much longer. Your research is important in finding out current trends in UI (user interface) but also the basics in how to navigate around a website.
Finally, personalization is key here. Don’t copy everyone else in the way you layout or distribute your content. Make it personal, think outside the box, and you’ll most definitely attract traffic.
Website Mistake #2 – Ignoring Mobile Users
This is a big one these days. Nowadays more than ever people use their phones, tablets, and phablets to browse the internet. But that begs the question. How do we make the content fit on such a small screen? The writing would be too small? And the navigation more difficult?
Mobile Optimization is the process of coding your website so that no matter what size screen your visitors view your website on, the content and the UI are rich, clear, and easy to use. Like we said earlier, suitable UI will encourage visitors to stay! Research suggests that websites that are mobile-optimized can attract unto 62% more traffic! Wow!
Website Mistake #3 – Use of Bad Animations
Do you remember the days in the school of PowerPoint and its endless cheesy animations that you could customize for each slide? Well imagine the same overkill of animations but used in a professional website. Not so professional now, aye?
Sites, where the fancy animations are not relevant to the content or distract the visitor from the content altogether, are a big no-no. They can be seen as cheap, unprofessional, and sometimes a bad excuse for lack of quality content.
Always remember, less is more. Carefully used animations on websites can be a big attraction for some visitors. People can be easily attracted with simple tricks, however, overdoing this will do the opposite.
Take for example having a 3-second animation every time the home page is reached. Every time the visitor returns to the home page, the one place that every other page links and relates to, they’ll have to wait 3 seconds before moving on. The first time it’ll look fancy and cool. The second and third maybe a little boring. By the fourth time, they’ll become impatient with the unnecessary waiting and maybe even leave your website. Not what we want.
Less is more.
Website Mistake #4 – The Single-Page Trend
A recent trend in web design has been single-page websites. Of course, everyone is jumping on the bandwagon so let’s clear something up.
This trend is not for everyone! If you’re trying to create a personal portfolio or design a website purely around promoting a product then the idea works fine. The content will flow nicely if the effect is used correctly.
Any other kind of website? Don’t do this. Even with the most concise data, it will begin looking cluttered and too long of a page. People will leave after a while.
If you need help and want to find out more about designing a website, visit https://www.bmj.com
Website Mistake #5 – Using Look-At-Me Elements
‘Look-at-me’ elements can be described as design gimmicks.
People tend to visit websites that feel comfortable for the user. On the whole, most successful websites (Facebook, YouTube, or MusicMagpie) all make the user feel comfortable using the website. The colors and designs aren’t too professional. They don’t use unnecessary imagery that excludes certain audiences, such a flowery concept.
Website Mistake #6 – Being Vague
Ever visited a website where its purpose wasn’t that clear? Were you unsure what they actually did? Being vague can be as bad as having too much data. Think about the successful websites; what do they do? What is their primary purpose?
- YouTube: watching video content
- eBay: selling/purchasing of anything
- Huffington Post: news stories
If you lose clarity on your website’s purpose, visitors will lose interest.
Website Mistake #7 – Your Business Website is Centered on You
Now we are not talking about portfolios, although they can be somewhat related to this advice too.
Any website that is centered around one person who only uses “I” will not succeed. People are not interested in what you get up to at the weekend or who’s your favorite footballer. Websites are going to succeed much more easily if they are built upon delivering a service or product or allowing the visitor to do something, like watch videos or connect with their friends. This relates back to #6; having a purpose for your website.
Website Mistake #8 – No Sharing
Once you have encouraged a visitor to view your website, and not scared them off with any of the mistakes (Mistakes When Creating Websites) we have already mentioned, they may decide they want to show their friends or family. How do they do this? They share it. Facebook & Twitter are the two largest websites that are responsible for the growth of other websites since everything popular is dependent on one thing.
Being viral.
The biggest mistake you can make in terms of preventing your website’s traffic growing outside of your own friend circle is not providing the visitors with a way to share the content. Look at any successful website? Can you see a ‘like’ button, a ‘tweet’ button? Of course, you can!
Website Mistake #9 – Websites with Incorrect Info
This one is simple. If you read a website where you expect to find out something important. The moment you read something that you know is incorrect, your faith is instantly completely lost. The same for spelling mistakes in news articles. It can be a costly mistake to allow information to be visible on your website if it’s not true?
Think about Wikipedia? Would it be as well-known and trusted today if when it first began it was full of incorrect information?
Website Mistake #10 – Duplication of Famous Websites
There are millions of websites on the internet, and some of them are simply duplicates of other famous websites. This should not be done. Not only is it unoriginal, but since the idea has already been done, it’s likely people are going to keep using the original website that had the idea since it’s already well established and trusted. For example, your potential customers would lose their faith if they find that the base of your business is totally copied.
Hence, be original!
