It is important for every business to have an effective website, but sadly many websites include design mistakes that lower the website’s SEO ranking and frustrate users. These design mistakes are normally caused by HTML errors and poor web design.
Thankfully, it is easy for businesses to analyse their websites to find design mistakes. Here are 10 website design mistakes that should be avoided.
Not having a page title
Search engines use HTML tags that contain the page title to sort and rank the page; if your site does not have page titles, it will fall down the Google results page. Make sure that every page on your website has a title of 66 characters or less.
Using too many PDFs
PDFs are ideal for printing, but you should avoid using them on your site. They are difficult to navigate online, as users cannot copy and paste or search through them for data.
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Being overly advertorial
Users dislike anything that looks like an advertisement; therefore, you should avoid overly-advertorial designs such as banners, pop-ups and flashing text.
Constantly changing your site design
Users dislike constant website changes, so try to keep your control systems and display similar unless you are doing a complete website overhaul.
Using poor keywords
Search engines link keywords to search queries, so your keywords should be relevant to search terms; for example, you should use keywords such as ‘bikes in Manchester’ and ‘Manchester bikes’ rather than ‘good bikes’ if you sell bikes in Manchester.
All links the same colour
Once a user has clicked on a link, the link should change colour so that they can easily tell which links they have clicked on and which they have not.
Not answering user questions
Users have come to your site for answers and solutions; if they don’t find them, they will leave.
Block text
According to Ignite Living, you should break up the text on your page into small chunks to make it easier to read.
Opening links on the same page
Links should open in new tabs so that users can stay on your site.
Unchangeable font sizes
Users should be able to edit the font on your site so that they can read the text clearly.