{"id":36486,"date":"2020-01-09T18:17:56","date_gmt":"2020-01-09T22:17:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.andysowards.com\/blog\/?p=36486"},"modified":"2020-01-09T18:17:56","modified_gmt":"2020-01-09T22:17:56","slug":"10-deadly-sins-website-design","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/andysowards.com\/blog\/2020\/10-deadly-sins-website-design\/","title":{"rendered":"10 Deadly Sins of Website Design"},"content":{"rendered":"

Is your personal or business website gathering virtual dust instead of welcoming an ongoing stream of relevant traffic? Then it could be due to one, some, or possibly all 10 of these deadly sins of website design:<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Your website isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t optimized for mobile traffic (i.e. it doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have responsive design). This is a massive mistake, considering that 51.5% of all internet traffic<\/a> around the world is on mobile devices \u00e2\u20ac\u201d and the number is rising each year.<\/li>\n
  2. Your website is loading too s-l-o-w-l-y. Research has revealed sites that load in 5 seconds or less have 70% longer average sessions<\/a> vs. sites that load in 19+ seconds.<\/li>\n
  3. Your website doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have clear and easily visible contact information. If there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s one thing that visitors hate more than anything else, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s digging around looking for contact information.<\/li>\n
  4. Your website doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have standard, intuitive structure. Imagine going into a grocery store and having no idea where anything is, because there are no aisles or signs. Well, that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s what visitors experience (that is, until they flee) when each page is like its own site-within-a-site. Navigational simplicity and consistency is a must!<\/li>\n
  5. Your website\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s text is difficult to read. What you want is dark text against a light background. This website that is offering the VenomRex 601<\/a> 20\u00e2\u20ac\u009d wheel for the Ford F-150 does it the right way: clear, crisp fonts that scale.<\/li>\n
  6. Your website is only trying to make search engines happy. Yes, you need to pay tribute to Google if you want your website to rank in the search engine results page<\/a> for relevant keywords. But you don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t want to forget that it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s human beings \u00e2\u20ac\u201d and not search engines spiders \u00e2\u20ac\u201d who will actually read your text. If it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s incomprehensible SEO-speak, then they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll hit the back arrow and never return.<\/li>\n
  7. Your website doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have search functionality. For every person who knows how to use the address bar to search a site (site:domain keyword), there are 99 who don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t.<\/li>\n
  8. Your website has auto-loading videos and audios. There may come a time where this is standard fare and a best practice. But for now, most people don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t like (or just hate) auto-loading content.<\/li>\n
  9. Your website inflicts visitors with endless popups. One or maybe even two small popups are fine \u00e2\u20ac\u201d for example, you may want to invite visitors to download an ebook or subscribe to your mailing list, or you may want to proactively let visitors know about your cookie\/tracking policy. However, you want to be as non-invasive (and non-annoying) as possible.<\/li>\n
  10. Your website\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s social media buttons don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t work. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s hard to grasp why this mistake is being made since it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s so easy to fix, but it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s surprisingly common.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

     <\/p>\n

    If your website is committing one, some, or perhaps all of the above 10 deadly design sins, then your mission is clear: fix them ASAP! You\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll generate more traffic, engagement, impact and results \u00e2\u20ac\u201d and really, isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t that what you want from your website?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Is your personal or business website gathering virtual dust instead of welcoming an ongoing stream of relevant traffic? Then it could be due to one, some, or possibly all 10<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":36487,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[109,24,111],"tags":[11503,11504,626,5907,5891,9195,9696,11502,5885,5892,7626,848,11505,4419,7800],"class_list":["post-36486","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","category-design","category-marketing","tag-bad-web-design","tag-bad-websites","tag-brand","tag-branding","tag-business","tag-business-marketing","tag-business-website","tag-business-website-design","tag-design","tag-marketing","tag-marketing-tips","tag-web-design","tag-web-design-mistakes","tag-website-design","tag-website-marketing"],"yoast_head":"\n10 Deadly Sins of Website Design<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Is your personal or business website gathering virtual dust instead of welcoming an ongoing stream of relevant traffic? 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