7. No Blog or Social Media
Having a social media presence in today’s online-saturated society is essential. This is not only a key means of communicating your message and disseminating information, but allows for better customer relations through genuine engagement and ease of reach.
A blog also helps give insight into a company’s values whilst also giving customers free knowledgeable advice. In doing this, your target market can see the way you operate and which services are on offer. This is the perfect opportunity for them to gauge how beneficial your services may be and could lead to them opting to use your services.
A content calendar targeted to the correct audience on social media raises your profile, generates referral traffic and offers a great source of qualified leads.
8. Irrelevant Choice of Images
Photography should be used to enhance the visual impact of a website. Images are often the most effective way to communicate a brand’s message so using irrelevant images are completely counter-intuitive to good web design.
9. Bad Colour Choices
The use of colour in visual communication is a complex matter. Having the right colour scheme is crucial and can be used to relay the very ethos of a company. Colour can have a strong psychological impact on people’s attitudes, therefore making these kinds of decisions highly important. Ultimately, it should be used with purpose whilst also carrying an underlying meaning.
Some colours are often best avoided. Red for example is an intense colour connoting anger, heat and danger. Although this works well for businesses associated with heating and building, using red in branding for companies to do with something like healthcare is counterproductive.
10. Poor Navigation and Ineffective Menu Structure
Ineffective navigation and bad website structure makes usability unnecessarily hard. In the age of online communications people are tending to scan as opposed to reading information so there is a limited window of time to retain their attention. Pages should have a well organised top-down design to aid an easier user browser experience.
An ineffective web layout correlates to an ineffective website.
11. Interface Inconsistency
Consistency is key as it helps eliminate any potential confusion. When navigating a website you don’t want to feel like you are on an entirely new site with every page you open. Keep everything from typeface, colours, navigation and writing style consistent to ensure a unified website design.
12. Not Optimising Images
Delivering high-quality images in the correct size and resolution with relevant tags whilst also retaining the minimum file size is the aim of optimisation. Having file sizes that are too big make for a slower and less efficient site meaning that users are much more likely to abandon attempts of accessing it. A slow site also leads to lower SEO rankings; therefore, underlining the importance of optimisation for business.
13. Not Updating your Blog and Content
Not updating and refreshing your site, content and blog can give off a bad impression to visitors as it suggests a lack of care and attention to detail. There is nothing worse than going onto a business blog and finding that their last post was 3 years ago.
Aim to have rotating news items which push through to your social media outlets at least 2 days a week. It is very difficult to successfully sell your services and goods to potential clients when your own website lacks care, consideration and maintenance.
