Knowing more about these 10 mistakes will help you maximize the effectiveness of your website. Your site is often people’s first impression of your business, so it needs to capture users’ interest and encourage them to dig deeper into your product or service.

The definition of “User Experience” is the total takeaway a customer gets from their time spent with your business or an aspect of your business. It is most often used to refer to the experience customers have with your business’ website. Their experience and the feelings they have as they explore your website and will determine the likelihood of them buying your products or services. When an aspect of your website does not resonate well with a customer, this is called friction. Below we have put together a list of the top 10 mistakes businesses make on their websites that cause friction and chase customers away.

1. User’s needs are neglected

Quite often, people tend to put the cart before the horse. In developing your business site, this can happen as you design a website and try and plug in the customer’s perspective. When designing all the website’s features and capabilities before considering the user’s point of view, lots of problems can arise. Many of the items on our list of UX mistakes result from this problem in one form or another. It can be easy to be caught up in all the bells and whistles. Others decide to put all their content and information up front and center. This is a mistake. When designing your website, you need to see things from the user’s perspective throughout the design process or lots of friction will arise. 

2. Poor use of visual design

While we all have differing opinions on what looks good, there are still standards in the field of design. Your website’s purpose is to help your business grow by engaging potential customers and drawing them in. You need to be careful that things are not distracting from the point of your website. Bad visual design can be anything from distracting visuals to ugly color schemes. It is very important that you design your site so that is appealing and easy to digest. This means that you need to consider how the colors compliment one another, if the fonts are easy to read, and if the graphics are of good quality. There are a lot of things to consider. Be sure to read up on some of the guidelines for good design. 

3. Too busy

It happens sometimes where there is just too much going on and it gives users a headache. It can look similar to the old yellow pages ad section. The problem is that we are in the modern age of technology and with so much innovation, we are not in a crunch for space. Things don’t need to fight for space and be crammed together like that anymore. Too much can be overwhelming and turn people away. It is important to put the main points you want to share up front and center. The rest can be kept elsewhere. Simplicity and spreading information and content on your website will help people to digest the information and look for what they need.

4. Inconsistency throughout the site

Consistency means a lot for developing your brand. Your website contributes to your business’ image as it gives people a source of information and lets people connect with your business online. When your website is inconsistent from page to page or there are things that do not reflect your brand, this can confuse people or look bad.  This means that your font, color schemes, and layout should be consistent across your website, on your social media, and offline.

5. Information is too complicated

Along with avoiding causing friction with design and the visual aspects, it is important to be weary of friction caused by the information on your site. The information or copy on your site needs to be clear and consistent. If people can’t understand what they read from your site, they could misunderstand things that are important to know or get upset and turn away. Concepts you explain or information you provide needs to be written with your target audience in mind. More complicated concepts need to be simplified and unusual vocabulary may need to be explained. 

6. There are too many errors

Your site needs to reinforce the belief that your audience can trust you. This trust is in your credibility, your reliability, and your knowledge. This is not to be confused with prioritizing cleverness over clarity. Using big words can make things more confusing and turn people away. What I am talking about is having quality control on your website’s information. Not only is it informative, but it is also reliable. This means you need to make sure your site is clear of misinformation and errors. You don’t want someone to think you don’t know what you are talking about because you gave misinformation, have grammatical errors, or spelling errors all over.

7. Difficult to navigate

Websites can be large. The navigation of your site can be difficult depending on the amount of information and how many pages it is spread across. This can create problems and chase a lot of users away if they can’t find what brought them to your website. This can be helped by organizing your website in a way that makes things easier for the user. Your pages need to be user friendly and the process of navigating your website needs to be catered to your potential customers. The user needs to find their way around so that they can get to what they want quickly and you can find success with each visitor.

8. Too many steps to get to the right page

Along with simplifying navigation, it is important to consider simplifying the number of steps it takes to get from the homepage to the desired page. A great example of this is Amazon’s website. They have done a lot to simplify the buying process and have reduced the steps to purchase things. This can be applied to your website as you are organizing things. Simpler is better. The purpose of your site is to help potential buyers of your service or product, convert into actual customers. This conversion can be slowed or even stopped completely if your site is too complicated. Shortening that process and making things more convenient will help with your business’ success.

9. Landing page/ forms are too long

Landing Pages and Forms are both great ways of gathering information about your prospective customers. They both have their different benefits and drawbacks, but essentially their purpose is similar. The way you use them to gather information can determine how much success you will have. Making them too long or requiring too many fields to be filled out can hurt their effectiveness if the user becomes impatient. Keep things short and to the point. Simplifying forms and landing pages, whichever you choose to use on your website, will ensure that more users will complete them.

10. No clear engagement/ CTA

Your website will also run into problems if you don’t have elements that prompt engagement. There needs to be clear calls to action, buttons, and links that help your customer get to the main event. This could be leading them to the current deals going on or the premium offer. Whatever the desired action is, make it clear and make it convenient. Important elements of design such as appropriate font sizing, buttons, and where it is placed all help your elements of engagement to be more effective. 

A lot of websites are struggling because they cause friction for the user that leaves a bad taste in the visitor’s mouth. The whole point of your website is to provide users with a positive experience that will lead to them becoming customers. This is done through keeping things simple and by eliminating points of friction as much as possible. We know that by learning from our collection of mistakes that other businesses make, you can improve your website and find more success with your online visitors.

If you have any comments, questions, or marketing needs contact us. We’d love to help!

-The Forge Team