5 Website Design Mistakes That Are Killing Your Social Media

By Amy Moczynski at Social Fresh:  

We spend all this time and capital on social media. Creating wonderful content. Producing engaging campaigns. Responding to our communities and creating a groundswell of support.
But what happens after sometimes can ruin it all.
You might have an amazing social media presence, and then the customer sees your website, and all that momentum is lost.

Bad Web Design Is Killing Your Business

While there is no limit to the amount of cringe-worthy design elements you can find online, these are some of the biggest mistakes businesses make on a regular basis.
What makes most of these mistakes even worse is the fact many of them can be easily avoided by planning ahead and implementing a simple design strategy.

1. No clear call to action

What do you want users to do once they arrive on your website?
Are you looking for them to contact you?
Do you want them to buy now?
Do you want them to request more information?
When you set up your website, you likely established it with a purpose in mind (or at least you should have). You should make it incredibly easy for visitors to complete the desired action once they arrive at your website.
Having a clear call to action, whether it’s a request for proposal in the margin or a “Contact Us” button in the upper right hand corner of your site, will help ensure you don’t leave visitors wondering what they should do next.

2. Confusing navigation

No one should ever wonder, “Where am I?” when they’re on your website.
Make it easy for people to find their way around your website, as well as ways for them to go back and forward from their current location.
Think about the feeling you get when walking through a big department store: There are always signs letting you know where you are and pointing you in the direction of where you might want to go.
Make sure your site visitors get the same feeling. Don’t just place them on a landing page and leave them wondering, “How did I get here?” and “Where do I go from here?”

3. Not testing different browsers

Sure your design might look great in Internet Explorer, but how will it look in Chrome or Safari?
Before launching (or relaunching?) your new website, make sure you test how the design looks from several different browsers.
Your home page might look fine to anyone using Mozilla, but what happens when there are design breaks when Chrome users visit your site? Those visitors might leave your site and head right to your competition – your competition that tested their site across all browsers and devices.

4. Poor readability

While orange and red might be your business’s signature colors, how will they read online?
Will people be able to read the text on your website if you choose those colors?
When thinking of color choices, make sure you are incorporating colors that provide enough contrast to make your words easily legible. Also avoid using small font sizes or using text over images that might results in white text on white space, which eliminates readability entirely.

White text on a white background is hard for anyone to read. By either changing the background image or selecting a different color for their text, this issue could have been avoided.

5. Incorporating way too much Flash
Sites that use a lot of Flash, or that feature important information within Flash elements, will likely run into several problems.
Kind of like dinosaurs trying to make it out of the Cretaceous period.
The first problem is the design will be harder to read.
Using Flash elements will also slow down your site’s load time, which could cause people to leave before the page is done loading.
Another negative aspect of using Flash is it’s not good for SEO purposes, so anything you include in there won’t be indexed by search engines.
Also, they are rarely as mobile friendly as other, more modern options.
While this doesn’t mean you should never use Flash in web design, if you decide to incorporate Flash elements into your site, just make sure you use them wisely.
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While this represents a small sample, all of these issues can be avoided by taking a proactive approach and carefully planning out both your web design and online marketing strategy.
By utilizing some common best practices, you can increase the traffic to your website, as well as improve your chances of obtaining more online conversions.

Amy Moczynski is a marketing associate for digital marketing and web design company 352 Media Group. She enjoys running; her dog, Lola; Gator sports; and is a self-proclaimed Tim Tebow super fan. Follow her on Twitter @amymoczynski ... View Full Profile →