Your website helps you to attract, inform and convert customers, so it’s important that you get it right. It’s often the first thing that your customer sees from your business, so first impressions matter. Find a web designer in Manchester.

The most sure-fire way to make sure that your website is up to scratch is to hire a local web designer to help you. After all, they’re the experts in their field.

Here are five common web design mistakes that you can’t afford to make:  

Unclear brand messaging

When a customer finds your website through a search engine, it may be the first experience they have with your business, and you need to make an impression.

The most important thing here is storytelling. If you sound like every other company with generic messaging, you’re not offering anything to convert your customers. To stand out, you need to make an impression. You need to connect with your customers on a personal level.

This means designing your website to appeal to your audience, with compelling content which connects with them on an emotional level. Your brand messaging needs to reflect the values of your business, whilst your content should address the needs and motivations of your target audience.

Poor search engine optimisation (SEO)

Search engine optimisation, or SEO, is what sets your website apart from others on search engines such as Google. Fail to optimise your website for search engines and your potential customers will struggle to find you.

To have the best chance of achieving the best search rankings on Google and other search engines, you need to know how to optimise your website for search engines.

Firstly, you should post quality content regularly. This should be relevant to your target market and incorporate long tail keywords. In the past, businesses were encouraged to stuff short keywords into their content. However, it’s much easier to rank on the search engines using long tail keywords.

To find your long tail keywords, think about the type of things your customer might type into a search engine and then try to incorporate these into your website wherever appropriate. For example, rather than simply “IT support”, you might choose “how much does remote IT support cost?”.

Encouraging social engagement which links to your website can also help to boost your search engine rankings. You should share relevant content on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram regularly and encourage your followers to engage with it.

Your website isn’t linked to analytics

You’ve got a website that you think is great. But how do you know that your target market agrees with you?

Free analytics tools such as Google Analytics will analyse the performance of your website so that you can understand the behaviour of your target market. You can see where you’re performing well and where you could make improvements to your website.

Around 75% of small businesses don’t use analytics tools on their website. That’s 75% of small businesses who aren’t measuring the performance of their website and using this to make improvements. You can take advantage of this and get ahead of the competition.

Your website needs a call to action

Your potential customer has found your website and has been converted by your content, but what next? You need to have a clear call to action (CTA) to tell your customer what their next step should be.

A call to action is a written prompt which tells the customer what you want them to do. It is usually attached to a button or a link for the consumer to click.

You need to be clear with your call to action – don’t try to be creative here. Some effective examples of call to actions include ‘contact us today’, ‘add to cart’ or ‘get started’.

Unresponsive design

Today’s customers are constantly connected. That explains why around 50% of website traffic is now through smartphone browsers.

Your website needs to look as fantastic on a smartphone as it does on a desktop or you risk losing a potential customer. Mobile-friendly web design is essential in today’s increasingly digital world, so your website needs to be responsive. You need to offer a consistent user experience on any device, whether that be desktop, mobile or tablet.

An effective website design will attract, inform and convert your customers. Just be sure to avoid those five common web design mistakes. 

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