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Common Mistakes to Avoid When Building Your Own Business Website
One of the first things everyone thinks about before setting off on a business venture is the website. This is the official online hub of your company.
The way a customer reacts to your products or services is going to largely be determined by how they react to the website – how does it make them feel, what does it tell them, and how does it tell it? This is why choosing the right website builder and including all the necessary pages is so important.
But not every business is savvy enough to put in the right amount of effort. According to a recent study, nearly 50% of all US small businesses didn't have a website, and for many that do, only a handful of hours are put into perfecting it.
In 2024, this is not a strong sign of future success. For those who have built a website – but have not spent enough time researching successful websites in their field – there's every chance they will come across pitfalls and make mistakes that hamper its effectiveness.
In order to avoid this, you need to take the time to visualise the perfect business website and know all of the mistakes to avoid. To help you in this endeavour, we've listed out 5 of the most common mistakes that people make when building a website, with a few words on how you can bypass them.
Sticking to the Past
In a study undertaken in 2023, it was found that the average age of startup founders is between 35 to 45 years old. Without wanting to assume, this might just be why so many websites evoke the 2010 era of website design!
If you're a startup founder, the most important thing to ensure is that your website has its feet firmly in 2024, with regular updates to ensure your chosen templates don't slip into yester-year.
A modern website suggests a current business, so anything that takes on the stodgy, content-heavy form of those older web designs will only make the business feel outdated.
Too Much Content
Speaking of content, loading a website full of text and information may have been a trend fifteen years back, but a more minimalist and delicate approach is taken today.
Yes, content is important – especially from an SEO standpoint – but overloading a website with content will only alienate the user and make the platform far more confusing than it needs to be.
The best way to avoid this is to make sure your design is sleek and modern, and any content is trimmed down to its most important factors. What is your business? What are you selling? What are goals and hopes from an e-commerce perspective?
If you answer these questions in an engaging, concise manner, users are far more likely to buy into the website as a whole.
Poor Navigation
Another issue that many business owners run into is a complicated, confusing website from a navigation perspective. On average, users will leave a web page they have clicked onto in 10 to 20 seconds if their attention is not held, and this drops even further if the navigation frustrates them.
You need to make sure that your layout is simple and intuitive, with clear labels for menu items, a search bar for easy access, and with links that are checked regularly. This will also help with loading times.
For websites that have a complex navigation system – or interactive elements that don't add anything substantial to the experience – the loading times are often a lot longer, which ultimately drives away users and increases the bounce rate.
With concise navigation, optimised images and a minimal use of heavy scripts, you can easily avoid this.
No Mobile Optimisation
When we're talking about optimising a website, it's important to note that we're talking about mobile websites, as well as browsers.
While there are many businesses that put a lot of effort into building their website, it's easy to forget that the same site needs to be optimised for mobile, both in terms of design and usability.
To do this, you will need to build a responsive design that adapts to different screen sizes, ensure buttons and links are easily clickable, and optimise the content layout for readability.
If you've created videos for a website, make sure their file size is appropriate for both devices, and remember to test at every step of the process.
Bad CTAs
The last mistake that many businesses make is either failing to include CTAs – call-to-actions – or creating ones that are weak. While a website might be visually appealing and engaging, it will be worth nothing if it doesn't tell the user exactly what they should do next.
This includes using clear, compelling language for CTAs and ensuring they're prominent and easy to find. Action-oriented verbs should also be used, and the sentence itself should be unique and interesting enough to spark a reaction.
This isn't something you'll necessarily get right first time – A/B testing is specifically important to determine which ones perform best – but if you don't implement a CTA, you'll never know how many customers you might have had.
Main image by KOBU Agency on Unsplash
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