No business in this day and age takes a change of not having a website that could reflect and enhance the brand image of a company. Unfortunately, many business websites lack in some important characteristics, which are not usually known by a business owner. Eventually, these mistakes impact negatively on the image of a business and result in declining sales and revenue.
Generally, these mistakes are done due to lack of knowledge of a business owner about the website design and development or due to inexpert knowledge of a website designer. But it doesn’t mean that a business owner should learn website design and development, however, basic knowledge is crucial to have a website that should be a true reflection of a business.
In this article, 5 common website design mistakes are discussed that will be a great help to a business owners to not make such mistakes while designing and developing a website for his business.
Inappropriate Domain Name
Before going into a design and development phase of a website, you need to get a user friendly, business specific and a unique domain name for your website. Sometimes, a domain name same as a business name is not available because somebody has already taken it. Of course you cannot have a domain name which is not same as your business name. To avoid this issue, when starting up a business, find and register a domain name before finalizing the name of your business. For instance, Nike has a website www.nike.com or McDonald’s has www.mcdonalds.com. Godaddy.com and Name.com are famous domain name registration companies to go with.
Moreover, another important consideration is the extension of a domain name. People usually have a habit to open .com extension of any website. Other extensions like .org, .net and so on are not generally considered for business oriented websites. Therefore, getting a .com extension is another important aspect of a website.
Difficult to navigate
Websites which are cluttered with loads and loads of unnecessary information are appeared unattractive and make a user to instantly navigate away from a site. An easy to understand and easy to navigate website can make a visitor to feel comfortable while navigating, and that ultimately makes him to feel your business a responsible and credible enterprise.
In addition to the navigation feature, design of a website also plays a vital role in marketing and branding of your business. Website which is not designed appropriately can easily turn the visitor to navigate away to competitor website. Hence, designing a website with enough good design elements and with according to the theme of your business, not only grab the viewer’s attention but also makes a visitor to become your permanent customer.
Displaying Text Ads on an official Webpage
Everybody wants to earn additional money for making his lifestyle better. Internet has provided the opportunity to increase income by placing text ads on a website or a blog. But placing text ads like Adsense on you official website may not be the right option. You will want to earn from product and services provided by your company through your website. Definitely you don’t want your potential customer to go on your competitor website and make a purchase.
These text ads show the ads from the competitor through product and service keywords which are written on your website. And if any visitor clicks this ad, he will be redirected to the competitor website, and obviously this action is not in a favor of you. Thus, avoid using such ads on your website; instead you can use this type of ads on you official blogs and earn through clicks.
Cross Browser Compatibility
Different browsers have different functionality. Not every browser interpret the code same way. With 64.66% of internet explorer market share and 26.08% of Firefox, visitor can visit your website from any web browser. Therefore, consider to ask your website developer to check the cross functionality of your website on different popular web browsers in order to avoid possible browser compatibility issue.
Long Flash Intro
Do not try to annoy a visitor with heavy Flash based intro video in the starting of a webpage. Flash based introduction seems to look good with large brands like Rolex or Mercedes Benz, but not an appropriate choice for small and medium sized businesses.
With the immense competition in online marketing, you cannot take a chance to make a visitor to wait long and after getting irritated with this flash intro leave the website. Therefore, make sure that a visitor will visit the main page directly with relevant information on the first go.
Image Ref: http://www.flickr.com/photos/rehvonwald/2898619755/
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nice post…………… thanks
This is a great post. Would love to know if our recently published site is easy to navigate. Specifically do folks find it easy to see the product we are selling?
I would be interested in finding out more about this?
It’s funny that you finally spoke up! I have been waiting for someone to bring this out to the open! Anyway… nice post. I will be back.
thanks for the tips
ohhh nice info, keep it coming
thnx for this post! I remember when I used a free domain! it was so awfull but because i had no bank account I wasn’t able buy my own domain So I found a site were I could get one for free.