When you decide to build a website for your business, there are so many things to consider. It can be confusing to deal with the conflicting information out there about what constitutes a useful website, as well as matching it with your own vision.
As you work everything out in your mind, try to avoid making these mistakes.
1. Ignoring the Rules of Accessibility
It’s very important to understand the rules of accessibility, not just so that differently-abled people can enjoy your website, but also to help search engines access your site better.
2. Including Irrelevant Content
From images to audio, to text, you want to avoid including any type of content that is not relevant to your audience and the message you want them to take away from visiting your website.
3. Contact Info Is Not Readily Visible
Nothing is more frustrating than wanting to contact a business but not knowing how. Don’t hide your contact information from your website visitors. It’s imperative that they can contact you.
4. Unnecessary Entry Pages
You’ve seen websites like this. The ones that you have to “click here to enter.” This is completely unnecessary. It can be an impediment to your audience finding the information they need, and is absolutely a problem for search engines.
5. Including Automatic Audio
Some websites have sound that comes on the moment the visitor goes to it, or if the cursor goes over it, but this is also a bad thing to do. Let your visitor choose when the sound comes on and goes off so that they aren’t irritated.
6. Not Updating SEO Regularly
Search engine optimization involves ensuring that the right keywords, headlines, sub-headers, and information are in each page, plus that you provide enough information off your page to help get links back to your page. Learn all you can about SEO to make the most of this organic means of getting traffic.
7. Too Many Graphics
Graphics are important for a website and add to the look, feel and mood of your website. But, you don’t want to have too many, because it will make your website load slower and cause your visitors to get tired fast.
8. Unorganized Navigation
Learn how people tend to look at websites. When they read paper, it’s left to right, but websites they read vertically and sometimes in an F pattern. If you can understand that, you can put the important information where they’re most likely to view it.