5 Web Design Blunders of Small Businesses

You’ve decided to invest a lot of time and money into building a better web presence for your company. The last result you want to see from all this hard work and money is no growth in traffic or business from the new website. Before your company can reap the rewards of releasing a new website, you should take time to consider some of the key factors that lead to a more visible and customer friendly website. Here are a five major design blunders and what to do about them.

1. Site Is Too Busy, Spacing Is Key

Everybody loves bells and whistles, but when all the bells and whistles cause your site to load slowly and cover up your content you are at a serious disadvantage. For every flash animation or widget on your web site, your site’s loading time will increase while your screen real estate decreases. Your site should ultimately draw focus to the content, not what’s surrounding it. When there’s not enough
room on the screen to cleanly display your content you need to go “back to the drawing board”.

2. Confusing Navigation

Your website is first and foremost the digital representation of your company. The site provides a user experience for any potential customers that come across it. If your potential customer has to spend their time trying to learn how to use your website to find the information they need, they may grow impatient and decide to move on to the next company’s website. Remember to have clear, concise and
easy to use navigation for your website. It is key to a rewarding user experience.

3. Spelling & Grammar Errors

When you see “Were the #1 dog Food company in the wrld!” does it inspire confidence in you to buy that dog food for your beloved pet? This may seem obvious, but both spelling and grammar are CRUCIAL to your credibility online. If a company can’t take the time to proofread their work, what does that say about their products and services? Something as trivial as a typo can have a huge lasting impact on your
online business.

4. Using White Space To Your Advantage

Just because there is a little white space on your page does not mean you need to fill that space in. Use “white space” to your advantage in reading web copy. Allow surrounding images and colors to pop. Always remember, the focus of your site should always be drawing people to your content while offering a pleasing design surrounding said content. A bit of white space can help to distinguish the separation
between the design and content.

5. Keep SEO In Mind

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a major component of any good web strategy. When designing your new web site it pays to spend some time on your SEO strategy and how exactly you want to fit that strategy into your content and site design. Quality content with legitimate mentions of key words and topics related to your business will help to bring more business your way.