10 Common Mistakes That Can Hurt Your Website

As a Web Developer I spend a lot of time analysing clients websites and finding the pain points that affect both the users experience and the general Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) of the site. Some are incredibly easy fixes that can go a long way to enhancing your businesses online success.

These are my 10 common mistakes that can hurt your website:

1. Slow Load Times

I have spoken about this previously in a blog but this is becoming a huge factor for search engines, but also for users who are likely to abandon your website before it even loads. I regularly see sites that take 3-4 seconds to load, which in the modern era of fast content is too long.

Solution

Load times can be down to a multitude of aspects such as heavy scripts or poor hosting. Reducing scripts is a sure way to speed up load times. However short term, the easiest solution is to optimise images, taking an image from 1 mb to 150 kb can have incredible consequences on LCP load times.

2. Poor Optimisation for Mobile Devices

A significant portion of B2C browsing is done via mobile devices, having a website that is poorly optimised is an easy way to drive customer bounce rate.

Solution

Ensure that your website is usable across a range of devices having elements that are responsive to device sizes. Make use of media queries to target specific screen sizes to adjust content for mobile and desktop uses.

3. Poor Navigation

Many websites use navigation with hard to use drop downs or unintuitive mobile menus this leads to user frustration and eventually a bounced user.

Solution

Keep the navigation as simple as possible, use something like a hamburger icon for mobile menus and reduce the animation. A quick and simple animation can be effective in increasing user experience but an animation which takes too long can increase the time it takes to navigate the site.

4. Ignoring SEO Best Practices

I see so many sites that do not adhere to SEO best practices, lacking important meta tags or heading tags. These are the basics of SEO.

Solution

Use the inspect tool and make sure your website has H1, H2 tags etc. You can also double check the meta tags in the head, use content-rich and user-friendly wording.

5. Lack of Call to Action (CTAs)

When creating your website you need to explore the purpose of the website, for many service based companies it is often to drive users to get in contact. One of the best leads is a lead that reaches out to you, without CTAs the user may never find your contact form, or information.

Solution

Implement CTAs with probing content to inspire the user to make the next step. You have an amazing section about services, under this section implement a button to navigate the user to getting in contact with you.

6. Not using Google Search Console

I've spoken to a lot of people who have websites but do not know what Google Search Console or GSC is. It is a great free tool by Google to monitor your website visibility on the search engine. It can take time to learn but it is worth it.

Solution

Create a GSC account and link your domain with it, submit your sitemap and monitor the results. It also allows you to directly request pages to be indexed if the Search Engine misses them.

7. Outdated Content

Outdated content, such as content relevant 3 years ago may have little or no significance now and won't resonate with users. Design concepts also change, a site made 5 years ago may look a bit dated and need a refresh.

Solution

Keep the content fresh, use new imagery and show the progression of your business. Perhaps update sections of your website following new design formats.

8. Not Having An SSL Certificate

I’m often surprised by the number of large companies whose websites still lack SSL encryption. It makes the website appear unsafe in the browser and some browsers will ask you if you are sure you want to enter. Furthermore, it looks poorly on google if you do not have one and could be detrimental to your ranking.

Solution

There are many ways to get an SSL certificate from buying one off your host or my personal favourite is to use a service like Let's Encrypt that allows you to get a free certificate that automatically renews.

9. Too Much Content In One Section

Content is very good and necessary but it can be overdone. Websites that have huge walls of text are likely to be ignored by the user and are counter productive.

Solution

Explore alternative ways to present this text. For example, breaking it into clear, concise bullet points can make the information easier to digest compared to a plain paragraph.

10. Poor User Experience

This may be my biggest gripe as a web developer and designer. Websites with excessive animations and pop-ups that interrupt your browsing experience, it throws off the balance of a website and actively drives me away from the site.

Solution

Use animations tactfully you don't need every word to appear from off the page, this also slows the perceived load speed of the site down. Instead focus on clear content and fonts that are easy to read for all users, pop-ups and animations can cause unwanted distractions if used incorrectly.

If any of these issues are impacting your website and you’d like to learn more, feel free to get in touch.

4th December 2024