Website design options are a dime a dozen, and we all know that you have a lot of choices indeed when it comes to the overall design of your site. But this is also where it can get a bit tricky; with too many choices and options, it can be more difficult for you to decide what you should really focus on and what you should do if you want a website that works. The goal of most – if not all – websites is to attract visitors, and hopefully retain these visitors long enough so they can get leads and, eventually, sales and profits. But if your website isn’t really effective, you could well be wasting your time and your visitors’ time, and this will have drastic consequences on your online presence as well. If your aim is to have more visitors to your website and if you want to attract as well as retain your visitors, here are the top mistakes to avoid.
Slow Speeds
For those who browse the net on a regular basis (and most of us do), nothing is worse than visiting a website and having to wait so long for it to load. Before you know it, your visitors will have already abandoned the page and your site, and this can definitely affect your audience engagement not just in the short term but in the long term. The speed of your website can have a dramatic effect on audience retention and impression, and more customers expect a page or site to load in as little as two seconds – or less. Also, if you have an ecommerce website and your shoppers have difficulties with the performance of the site (i.e., its speed), they will not return. If you want to know how your site is performing when it comes to speed, use a tool such as PageSpeed Insights from Google, so you will find out which areas need improvement.
An Unfriendly Experience
For this, you may want to imagine the last time you visited a brick-and-mortar shop. How were the décor, the layout, and the ambience and atmosphere of the shop? Did it attract you and give you a good impression? Or did you feel overwhelmed or was the atmosphere too cramped for your liking? Was the setup too complicated for you to find what you needed as quickly as possible? All this is true for websites as well. You, therefore, need to focus on the user-friendliness of your site.
The experience your visitors have on your website as soon as they arrive will have an effect on how they decide to engage with you – if they actually do. If your website has poor navigation and unattractive elements of design coupled with lousy performance, your visitors will not stay.
To make their experience more positive, make sure your drop-down menu and navigation are intuitive, allowing your users to easily find what they need, a fact confirmed by the web design experts from Expre. You should also follow this with aesthetically-pleasing design and make sure your operations are smooth and finely- tuned. If visitors enjoy their time on your site, then they will be more likely to do business with you again.
