What Are The 5 Biggest Web Design Mistakes?

The number one mistake in web design is to create your website using Flash technology. Your visitors will not be that impressed with your beautiful Flash site so don’t waste your time and money with this. They want information about your products and services and most couldn’t care less that you have a Flash site – many will leave without even seeing what you have to offer.


Not all of your visitors will have mega broadband connections and what will appear quickly to some will take an age for others and will more than likely have them clicking the back button through frustration. People expect instant responses these days and most web sites provide this so why would you want to be any different? For all your UK design needs go to web design UK.


The second mistake is trying to make your website look like a catalog with hundreds of links to different products on the front page and subsequent pages. This is normally done due to the fear of missing out on a sale or offer and people believe that they have to display everything. The total opposite of this is true.


Many Internet marketing studies have revealed that where the visitor is presented with too many choices they end up making none. The problem here is that the visitor feels overwhelmed and looks for an escape route which normally means leaving your site. A better solution is to create categories for your products and a good search facility so that your visitors can find what they are looking for.


The next big mistake is not to have your site optimized for search engines such as Google, Yahoo and Bing. There are a lot of people who will tell you that you need just write for visitors and not for search engines. It is true that your visitors should be your priority, but it is also fairly easy to optimize your content for the search engines as well.


If you are offering plumbing services in London then you need to think about what people looking for your service will type into the search engines. Let’s assume that the majority of people are searching for “Plumber in London". So it makes sense t o optimize your site for these keywords. You need these keywords to appear a few times in your site and in the description and title of the web page. Search engines are just machines and they need all the help they can get in understanding what your web site is about.


A very common mistake, and number four in this article, is loading your site with too many pictures. The more images you have, the more likely you are to avert your visitor’s attention from your core message and your page will be slow. Google are now penalizing web sites with slow load times. It is well known that you have around 7 seconds to engage your reader. If your site takes longer than that to load they will hit the back button faster than you can say “too slow".


Getting inexperienced people to create your site and its content is the fifth mistake. The point of having a web site is to get your visitors to take action such as buying your product or service, joining your email list or picking up the phone and calling you. A better solution is to hire a professional copywriter for your sales message or write it yourself while letting your web designer create a nice looking design for you.