These days, building a website has never been easier. But designing a website that meets the appeal of your potential visitors is a little trickier.

It takes more preparation and careful examination to ensure that your website lives up to its fullest potential and converts as many users as possible into paying customers.

If you are unsure where to start, this article should help. We have picked out a selection of common web design fails that you should resolve in order to increase your sales.

Poor Responsive Design

Let’s be honest, everybody should have a responsive design for their websites today. Mobile users account for a prominent chunk of the global internet traffic. In fact, it’s sitting at 51.89% as of 2018.

If you are designing a website, you’ve probably heard about responsive design a thousand times. However, you may not have heard that not all responsive design is the same.

Whether you’re using an eCommerce platform like Shopify, you’re using a CMS platform like WordPress, or you’re developing your own website from scratch, responsive design is something that needs to be carefully looked over.

Once you have a responsive website, carefully analyze your website on the three major platforms – mobile, desktop, and tablets.

How does the website respond? What do the menus look like on these platforms? Are your landing pages as pretty as they could be across all display sizes? It’s here where you have to be brutally honest with yourself.

Chances are, your website might need some extra tweaking here and there. Thankfully, it’s very easy to use CSS to make slight changes to the layout of your web page depending on the display size. If anything is slightly out of order, it shouldn’t be too difficult to fix.

With 57% of mobile users saying that they won’t recommend a business with a poorly designed mobile site, it makes sense to get yours right as soon as possible.

Slow Page Load Time

Just like with responsive design, it should come as no surprise that page load time impacts your visitors’ opinions of you.

40% of web users mentioned that they will abandon a website that takes more than 3 seconds to load. In the same study, it was found that a 1 second delay in page response would result in a 7% reduction in conversions.

Those are big statistics that cannot be ignored. You can use tools like GTmetrix to carefully analyze how your website performs. You can find bottlenecks in your performance and find easy methods to optimize them.

GTmetrix uses a variety of testing criteria and gives you information on how your website compares to the average web page. You can run the test on multiple pages, so make sure to test important areas such as your homepage, blog, and store page.

Poor Image Design and Web Copy

Have a website that loads quickly and gets displayed properly on all platforms? Great! You’re off to a good start.

Optimizing your web design doesn’t stop there, though. It’s just as important that you take time to perfect your web copy and improve the quality of the images you use.

During an eye tracking study conducted at the Missouri University of Science and Technology, a number of interesting stats were found that relate to images and web copy.

• The average time a users’ eyes fixated on the main image was 5.25 seconds
• The average time a users’ eyes focused on the main written content was 6.44 seconds
• The average for the logo and the menu were 5.94 seconds and 6.48 seconds, respectively.

If your users are going to spend this much time with their attention on these specific areas, they should be given dedicated resources to make sure they are perfect. If you’re having technical issues trying to build these features out correctly, we recommend using a page builder. They can save you time as well a lot of resources.

Placing CTAs Without Testing

Finding the perfect CTA is difficult. It may even require A/B testing and lots of visitor data to find out what works best.

Testing your CTA is a crucial method for optimizing your conversions.

It’s a common myth that your CTA should be placed above the fold. An excellent article CTA location shows that it’s less about the position and more about the copy that precedes it.

The article above makes it clear that whilst placing your CTA above the fold or just below usually works, it’s only going to convert exceptionally well if you provide engaging copy before the CTA.

It doesn’t stop at the copy, though. You must test your own CTA to find the best results. The studies below show just how far extra testing can take you.

These particular findings are anecdotal, so they may not be directly viable for your website. However, these stats show that there’s no such thing as ‘too far’ when it comes to testing your CTA performance.

First tip: Remove Clutter

Making sure your CTA stands out without being hidden amongst other web page clutter seems to be very important. Open Mile saw a 232% increase from their homepage by reducing clutter around their CTA.

Second tip: Make Buttons

Using buttons as opposed to text seems to be a powerful way to increase conversions. CreateDebate saw a 45% increase in sign ups by swapping out linked text with a button.

Third tip: A/B Test Everything

Once you’ve tested the obvious things, you may think it makes sense to give it a break. You don’t want to overcomplicate such a simple element of your web page, right? Well, this seems to be false.

In an article by Quicksprout, it was revealed that SAP increased their conversion rate by 32.5% by changing their CTA color to orange, whilst Performable saw a 21% increased conversion by picking the color red.

Simple changes like this show that additional testing can always lead to better conversion. If you are able to, test everything.

Not Optimizing Your Product Pages

If you are able to bring a visitor to a product page, you’ve already won a big battle in captivating that visitor. However, the battle is not over. Here are a few things to consider for optimizing your product pages.

Show Better Images

The images for your products are just as important as the images on your homepage, and for similar reasons. The image of the product you are selling leaves a lasting impression on the buyer. Make sure your store offers a zoom in feature so that users can get a better idea if the product is suited to them.

Show Stock Levels

If you have a physical store location, you should keep your stock levels up to date. 44% of UK correspondents and 36% of US correspondents said that they always research a purchase on the internet before visiting a local store.

If you use Shopify, you can use their card reader to automate this process for you. A POS also allows your customers to purchase from you in any physical location.

Include a Live Chat

If you have a contact form or live chat feature on your website, you should make it easily accessible when a visitor is on a product page. 65% of American shoppers have engaged in live chat, and 53% of UK shoppers use it.

Summary

If you want to ensure you don’t run into shocking fails like these with your own business, you should consider working with a designer to perfect your website experience.

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