Website design has increasingly become more accessible; however, designing and running your own website still poses many problems. Unfortunately, most website owners are making common mistakes.

We should always learn from others’ mistakes. Once you know what mistakes others make on their websites, you can prevent making them on your own website. Learn what the 10 most common website problems are and how to fix them below!

1. Poor Design

 

The most prominent part of your website is not just the logo or even the content; rather, the first thing people see when opening your site is the website’s design.

This can be a make-it-or-break-it moment for visitors. If your website has a poor or outdated design, users will not find the site credible and close the page.

Some companies and designers can do beautiful web design for you that makes your site perform better.  But if this is not in your budget or a good fit for you yet, you can do some basic web design on your own by following a few simple principles.

Reflect the Brand

Your website is an extension of your company and the products it sells. If your website feels disconnected from the company and the products it sells, it will not be successful.

One trap website owners fall into is using bad design templates for their entire website. Although these are a good place to get basic website design, they are certainly not the best.

Take some time to customize the template to make it reflect your brand better.  Otherwise, you’ll just be another website with a template that hundreds of other websites already use.

Make it Modern

An outdated website design communicates to viewers that the content is out of date as well. Viewers will not remain on a website that does not feel credible.

Keep users on your website by updating your website design!

One of the most important modern design elements your website should include is different page layouts. Rather than following the same template for each of your pages, change how different pages look.

For example, your about page should not look the same as the home page and every other page on the site. Switching up the design can help users distinguish between the page’s different purposes.

Platforms like WordPress, tools like plugins, and website builders all offer modern solutions to web design that are easier to use, better, and cheaper than any outdated alternatives from the past. Tons of these are completely free!

There is no reason for your website to look outdated anymore, so stay up to date.

Avoid Clutter

Many website builders have a whole catalog of apps and widgets you can feature on your website; however, too many widgets can make the site feel cluttered.

If users are bombarded with things from every angle, they will likely become overwhelmed and leave the page.

While white space may make you think your website is unfinished, having space is a crucial design feature. Not only does it make the site look polished, but it helps direct the users’ attention to the area of the page that is most important.

It’s one of the easiest ways to make your site look better.  Remember, in design, less is more.

Clear Font

As the typography trend grows, some website designers are jumping at the chance to use these unique fonts. However, using too many fonts can become confusing for readers.

This is especially true if the font is too close together, too small to read, and too “fancy.” Use a simple font with adequate spacing between the letters and lines of text.

Some basic tips are to stick to 2-3 fonts for the entire site. This will make the entire website look more professional with a consistent design.

Use a simple sans serif fonts for body text, and if you want to be “fancy,” a serif font for your headings. Make sure it is not too “fancy.” Some examples of this are hard-to-read cursive writing or fonts with no space between the letters.

You can save a font like that if you really want it and use it only for your titles, not all your subheadings.

2. Hard to Navigate

 

Nothing is more frustrating than not knowing where to go next on a website. If users cannot easily find the content they need on your site, they will look elsewhere.

While a fair bit of navigating a website is based on its design (see above), other navigation issues have to do with how and where users are directed.

Make sure that all menu items direct users to the correct location, that search bars bring them to helpful results, and that there are no broken links throughout the website. If these problems exist on your website, users will likely not return in the future.

A quick tip here is to keep your menu limited. Try to limit the menu to 7 items in total. Having more menu items will make it look cluttered, make each item stand out less, and make the whole website look less professional.

3. Improper Use of Images

 

Including pictures on your website helps attract user attention and communicate messages. However, how and what images are used on your website will greatly impact the user experience. So use the images correctly!

Trevin Shirey from WebFX says, “Don’t just use images for the sake of using images.”

Rather than viewing images as space fillers, understand that they are a part of the website’s content. Avoid using poor-quality images or photos that do not serve the page’s purpose.

When adding pictures to your website, make sure they actually work. Broken images or photos that take too long to load will detract from the page’s content. Make sure images on your website are not too large that users have to scroll to see the whole thing, nor too small that they have to zoom in to see what it is.

Not sure why images are not loading on your website? Learn How to Fix Broken Images from Hosting Manual here!

Photos on your website should be relevant and help demonstrate what the content is describing. If there is a photo on your site that serves no purpose, it should not be there.

4. SEO Issues

 

Search Engine Optimization, otherwise known as SEO, is one of the most important ways your website gets discovered by users. If you have not done any SEO work on your website and its content, your website will not rank well on Google.

One of the most important factors of SEO is the use of keywords. Keywords are a series of terms that Google assumes are related to the topic of the page. Most often, Google will pull your page’s keywords from the first 300 characters.

If these first crucial characters are not related to the page’s topic, Google will not list the page on the first page of search results for the topic.

Make sure each page’s content contains keywords you’re targeting and stays on topic to get better SEO rankings.

5. Device Compatibility

 

 

Only 15 years ago, web designers only had to design sites for computer screens. However, with the invention of smartphones, designers now have to consider how their site will appear on multiple devices.

Successful sites have designed their website to work on both mobile and stationary devices. Follow the tips below to make sure your website will be compatible with all devices! Before you can start to optimize your website or mobile devices, you need to see how it looks on the device currently.

If you do not have a mobile device or are unsure whether your site is mobile-friendly or not, check out Google’s Mobile-Friendly Testing Tool. Simply type in your website’s URL, and Google will provide you with a comprehensive mobile-friendly report.

The most effective way to ensure that your website works on all devices is to make it responsive. Responsive websites check what device they are being used on and load the website accordingly. Many website builders have integrated a responsive design. Use these builders to edit how the website appears across all devices.

Many people are eager to create websites because they can be monetized through ads. While having a few ads on a desktop is fine, on smaller mobile screens, ads can block content and make the page feel cluttered. Ensure your website’s ad doesn’t block the site’s information when viewed on a mobile device.

As mentioned earlier, a cluttered website design will turn away most of your site’s foot traffic. This is especially true for mobile users. With so much information crammed onto a smaller screen, users can become overwhelmed and close the page. Keep your website simple, break up the text, and use white space. This will also help the page load faster!

Another factor to keep in mind when building a website for mobile devices is to avoid the use of flash. While flash was once a popular software in website design, it has since been removed from most browsers and devices. If your website contains content that uses flash, almost all users will not be able to view it.

6. Lack of Contact Information

 

No matter what type of website you own, users should be able to contact and communicate with you. Include contact information in an easy-to-find and common location such as the homepage, footer, or a contact page.  64% of people want to see contact information listed on the homepage, this is data I collected and shared in my post here.  If you want to learn more about what other information to include on your home page to avoid creating a bad website check out that article.

If your company has a physical location, be sure to include an address and phone number in these locations. This will give your website credibility and direct users from the website to the actual business.

 

7. Slow to Load

 

A study conducted by Akamai Technologies, a leading global content delivery network (CDN), cybersecurity, and cloud service company, found that users do not wait more than three seconds for a website to load before leaving the page.

If your website takes too long to load, you will see a steep decline in page views. In fact, someone does not even have to view your website to know if it loads slow. That same study by Akamai Technologies discovered that around 40% of users inform their friends of slow websites.

One factor that could be slowing down your website is the size and type of images displayed on the site. Many web developers suggest only using photos with a one-to-one ratio and compressing files. Websites such as Image Compressor, Tiny PNG, and even Adobe can easily compress the photos on your website to help your website load faster.

While large images are a factor of slow website loading, most websites are slowed by the amount of content that needs to download each time the page is loaded. The amount of time spent reloading elements on your site can be reduced by enabling browser caching.

Enabling browser caching will require you to edit the code of your website. If you are not familiar with website coding, call the company that hosts your website. Depending on who you host your site with, they should enable this feature for you.

If you use WordPress, you can follow this guide from Winning WP if you are comfortable working with code.

8. Poor Content

 

Users are not initially driven to your website by the clever design or how fast it loads; rather, users find their way to your site because of the content it contains.

If your site has little to no quality content, users will not find it, let alone use it. As mentioned earlier, all website content should be search engine optimized. Without related keywords, Google will not recognize the content as helpful. This will lower your search ranking and make you harder to find.

In addition to searching for keywords, both Google and users alike search for the answer to their question. A user will not scroll to the bottom of your site if they do not see the solution to their problem near the top.

Even when users visit your website directly, you need your content to get to the point quickly. If users are satisfied with the content they find at the top of a page, they will be more willing to stay on the page.

Answer their questions or provide the service they need and then deliver even more good content that helps them. While good content is important and keeps readers on your website longer, you do not want to ramble or add unnecessary fluff. Make sure your content is relevant, to the point, thorough, but only as long as it needs to be.

The final tip for quality content is to post often! If you do a mass upload of content all at once but do not continue to update the site, your information could become outdated. Google will stop ranking your website if your content becomes outdated.

9. Lack of Security

 

No matter the subject of your website, you are at risk of being hacked. It is crucial to protect your website against hackers if your website saves user information.

Some easy ways to protect your website are using security plugins, getting an SSL certificate, and updating the site frequently.

Security plugins can be downloaded on most major website builders and updated from there as well. However, plugins may be limited or expensive.  You will need to do your research to make sure that they are completely secure.

A Secure Sockets layer, or an SSL, creates the lock next to your website URL in the search bar. This small lock indicates that data on your site is encrypted and lets users know their information is safe on your website. But an SSL alone does NOT fully secure your site, and you CAN still be hacked.  Especially if you used a website builder, they offer many more opportunities for hackers and malicious people to attack your site.

Learn more about getting an SSL certificate for your website from Google Domains here!

10. No Call to Action

 

Finally, the most important part of your website is to get the viewers to take action. The more clicks, comments, shares, and engagement your website receives, the more popular it will become.

If your website does not contain some form of a call to action, then users will only stay on the website as long as it takes them to find what they are looking for (which should be fast).

Other than ads, you can’t benefit from any amount of traffic on your website if you don’t give them something to do.  If you are selling a product or service on your website, you need to include a call to action that gets the viewers to buy or contact you.

By integrating social media with your website, users can interact with your content and even share that content with others. If you do not have integrated sharing options on your website, you miss out on free advertisement & engagement.

Looking for more examples of bad web design or how to fix some problems on your own site?  Check out this other post I wrote on 20 examples of bad web design and how to fix them.