If your website is confusing, cluttered and difficult to navigate, consumers quickly move on to the competition. This results in lost sales and a poor reputation. The solution is to make your website attractive and user-friendly by avoiding the 5 common mistakes small businesses make on their websites.
1. Too many on-page links
This problem is often seen with a DIY website where the business owner wants to squeeze as many internal links as possible into a small number of pages. The result can make your page look spammy and reduce your Google rankings. The solution is to be judicious in your use of internal links, using them when they provide additional information to your visitors or are essential for navigating your website.
2. Cluttered pages
Next on our list of the 5 common mistakes small businesses make on their websites is too much clutter. Whilst keeping essential information above the fold is still important, too much clutter confuses visitors. The solution is a layout that highlights your services or products, includes essential content and has lots of white space or breathing room. Think clarity, not confusion!
3. Boring CTAs
CTAs are one of the best ways you can motivate visitors to take action, but boring CTAs don’t provide the same amount of interest or urgency. The solution is to create interesting CTAs that spur visitors to take the action you want. So instead of DOWNLOAD, you could try WATCH RIGHT NOW; instead of DONATE, you could try SUPPORT OUR CHILDREN; instead of LEARN MORE, you could try EXPLORE NOW.
4. Poor content
Your website’s content needs to be informative, succinct and clear. If you ramble around the topic and don’t give your visitors the information they want, they quickly become frustrated and move to the competition. The solution is to provide relevant, up-to-date, well-written and informative content, whether that’s text, images, videos or webinars. A visitor should be able to get the gist of the content on a page with a quick scroll, before settling in to read the content.
5. Mobile-unfriendly webpages
The last challenge in our 5 common mistakes small businesses make on their websites is when you don’t leverage a responsive or mobile-friendly design. Times have changed and consumers now like to search and buy online using their mobile phones. In fact, in 2021, 24% of consumers purchased online using their smartphones, whilst 58% used multiple devices. So if your website doesn’t open properly on smartphones, you’ll lose a lot of sales and revenue. The solution is to create a mobile-friendly website that makes it easy for consumers to buy your products or services.
