The planning. The design. The writing. The programming and testing. Building a website can take hundreds of hours of work over months of time. And then, finally, it's live.
The result of all that effort depends on a lot of little things. And some of those little things can often hurt the result—big time.
Some common mistakes have big consequences, but they're also fixable. And some of those fixes are easy. This article is about five mistakes that can cause big problems but have easy fixes.
Note: The screenshots in this article are from sites that make big mistakes, but to protect their identities we've obscured their logos.
Mistake 1: Homepage Headline Hints
It's not obvious enough. Your homepage hints at it, but it doesn't explicitly tell visitors what you actually do. This is a devastating mistake that combines several design and content flaws.
- Your homepage headline is clever but unclear.
- Your featured image (or slideshow) doesn't show your product or service.
- Your navigation labels are generic: Home, About, Services, Contact.
- Your homepage text is all branding and benefits but doesn't actually say what you do.
Not all your visitors know you, so a homepage that doesn't immediately communicate what you do is a big problem.
The Fix: Stand back from the screen and squint your eyes. What part of the homepage stands out the most? Now pretend you don't know this company. Is it obvious what the company does?
Make sure the headline names the main product or service. Make it your value proposition. Make the main visual meaningful. Make the navigation labels descriptive, following navigation best-practices.
Mistake 2: The Buried Testimonials Page
People love you and they've put it in writing, but rather than put that social proof onto your product or service pages, you've tucked them all away on a separate page.
Take one look at your Analytics, and you'll see that only a minority of your visitors are visiting that page. Although those quotes strengthen your message, you've weakened them by separating them from the rest of the site—far away from the marketing claims they're supposed to support.
The Fix: Get rid of your testimonials page. Instead, put your testimonials (and any other social proof you can find) throughout the site:
- Make the testimonial match the page it's on, especially if it includes a relevant key phrase.
- Put a few of your best endorsements on the homepage.
Mistake 3: Social Icon Leakage
It's a nice clean site with a modern design, simple navigation... and big, colorful candy-like social media icons at the top right.
Those buttons pull your visitors' attention away from the content. Worse yet, they pull your visitors off your website and onto other sites that are full of distractions.
Do you really want your visitors to click that icon? If they do, will they ever come back? Isn't a visitor Facebook or Pinterest farther away from your brand? Less likely to become a lead or customer?