Small businesses pay a lot of attention to their SEO marketing efforts, revenue generation and customers since they are usually serving niches and tend to focus on their core competencies a lot. Competing with giant organizations cost a lot to the small firms and they are prone to mistakes which the customers or potential customers may catch easily in whatever domain. Website design is one of the areas where the small businesses seem to be ignorant some of the time about certain aspects. Often lack of hefty initial capital leads to development of the business website by the organization’s own staff which might not be a professional team in this regard. Turns out, a website with a lot of design mistakes that could turn off the traffic. And since a small business needs a great deal of viewership at its site since that could be the only medium of communication before launching some campaigns, it hinders the growth of clientele.
Mistake # 1: Poor Choice of Colours
Colours and contrasts are not thought to be as a priority when listing common mistakes made by small businesses in web design, but it is one of the fundamental ones. Since visual appeal plays great role in attracting customers and viewers on the web, poor choice of colours or contrasts that speak otherwise of your vision and business philosophy might be the factor throwing off potential customers to competitors’ site. Fonts and graphic content also falls under this category.
Mistake # 2: The Quest for Search Box
If a site visitor has to search for a search box on your website, you’ve already fallen in their list of authentic sites. People go through sites for the information they seek and in the clutter they need to find their area of interest and for that they need a search box. If your search box is hidden behind news stories or bad colour choice, make it visible and if it does not exist, well, you know better.
Mistake # 3: Disorganized Content
While clutter is what’s often referred to as the fact that drives people away from any business website, disorganization of content and graphics is also a vital reason why that happens. The structure of the content speaks volumes about what the site is all about and how well organized is the firm itself (so would be their services, a cliché but true). Small businesses tend to focus so much on content development alone sometimes, that they forget to frame it beautifully on the site.
Mistake # 4: Navigation not A Priority
Some of the small businesses tend to forget to make navigation a priority when designing their business website. It could be very frustrating for the site visitors if they are unable to navigate through the abundant information, towards their desired content. Good navigation keeps the visitors on the site and induces action.
Mistake # 5: Something Wrong with CTAs (Call to Action)
Calls to action are essential features and need to be carefully designed in order to form a reliable image in the eyes of site visitors. The font style, colour choice, positioning and design all matter a lot when trying to attract visitors to take an action on your website. However this should be noted that this could not be done in a haphazard manner. Filling the pages with CTAs is definitely not going to bring in more traffic or generate revenue in any way; it just putts off the customers. Also, the CTAs need to be simple yet catchy, but not too out of the box that your target market fails to understand them.