5 Common Mistakes You’re Making on Your Website and How to Fix (plus PRO Tips)

We all know the spell of first impression, right?

You only have about 6-10 seconds to make potential visitors bewitched with your website. (Yes, people now have the attention span of goldfish). There are so many things you need to know when building a website. It not only has to be visually appealing, but also has to answer 3 things right away: what you do, who you serve, and how you can help the viewers. Otherwise, they’re going to say namaste to your site.

So, how do you get them to stay put longer?

I’ve put together this list of common website mistakes and how to fix it, so that you can take action and dramatically boost the amount of traffic, leads, sales; and so on. It starts with understanding each of hidden mistakes hurting your website. Let’s get started!

Your Website’s Visitors Can’t Tell What You Do

The first priority is to make your website crystal clear about what you do. Visitors should realize very from that what you are offering and what they are looking for are on the same page, and within seconds!

How to Fix:

Look at your website and see if in 3 seconds a visitor can tell what you do, whether it’s for them, are you there if they have question and how they can buy from you.
Once you come up with your brand statement, put it above the fold of your website - which is the first snapshot that fills a device’s screen. It could include your logo, navigation bar, your brand colors, and a hero image.. and don’t forget to include that statement about what you offer and who you serve.
Make sure you have the most important and relevant pages in your main navigation bar. For example, you can see on my site, I include “Thrive Themes”, “WP Gutenberg”, “Blog” and “Contact” as those are pages that I know visitors are searching for or interested in my website.

Let's Talk!

Your Website is Not Mobile-Friendly

How are you reading this post right now? There’s a 40% chance that you are on a phone or tablet. According to Statcounter about mobile traffic vs desktop traffic in 2020, most internet traffic comes from mobile – 50.48%, 46.51% comes from desktop. Besides that, since 2016, Google primarily is placing the weight on how well the mobile version of your site is optimized to rank on Google.

Responsive design has been listed as the most important feature for a website. People prefer to spend time on Internet wherever they want, and their pocket-sized phones make it easier to do. Make sure your website looks good on every devices!

And if you’re the affiliate business owner, make sure that the comparison table always looks good, no matter what device the visitors are on. I have the article about the best WordPress plugins to create the affiliate comparison table here.

How to fix it

If you have got the old-school site, take a simple test of accessing your domain on your phone and see how each page looks and works.
If you have got a new modern site, it’s still necessary to check on mobile regularly. Website theme and plugin updates can break the design of your site, or content might have changed, and this means your site might not working properly on mobile.

PRO Tips

Use Thrive Architect: Every page you build with this plugin, whether you start from scratch or use a template, is mobile responsive. Take my website as an example, I have built this website from square one with Thrive Theme Builder and Thrive Architect - feel free to check it on desktop, tablet and mobile. 🙂

Let's Talk!

Your Website’s Interface is Confusing

Imagine your website as a road map that leads visitors to a specific destination. The signs along the drive are so clear and ample that you don’t need to open your GPS to reach there. If the website’s interface is difficult to understand, visitors are probably not going to stay for long, leaving all your effort behind.

How to fix

Give each page on your website a clear focus point. What message drives the visitor to take the specific action that you want them to take? Only give them that individual information.
Add the search bar to your website as visitors are very proactive looking for information now.

PRO Tips

Make sure you don’t miss these important details for website design:

Favicon: Some users open many tabs at the same time so they can switch between them. Favicon gives visitors the visual hint they need to find what they want and return to your tab while they’re browsing.
image
Typography mistakes: choosing the unclear font such as cursive font, hand-written scripts, and symbols can be difficult to read. Is it easy for visitors to understand what they’re reading on your website? Roboto is the default font used throughout Android and Chrome OS, and is created as a Google font.
Too small text size, narrow line spacing and paragraph spacing:

Line spacing determines the amount of vertical space between lines of text in a paragraph.
Paragraph spacing determines the amount of space above or below a paragraph.

The closer together these are, the harder it is for visitors to read and understand what you’re trying to say.The recommended text size is 16-18px, line spacing is 1.5em - 1.7em, paragraph spacing is 15-20px.
image
Poor sizing and scaling images: stretched or unresponsive images look cheap and unprofessional. When you resize an image, make sure you keep the the exact same width-to-height ratio as the original image.

Let's Talk!

You Don’t Marketing with 404 Pages

404 pages are silent traffic killer. When it happens, most visitors simply hit the back button and leaving your site for good. And most website owners don’t even try to look at the positive side of these pages. But we want to keep visitors stay longer!

How to fix

You can simply design your 404 page into a marketing page and suggest the visitors where to go next and what you offer. Here is an example:

Let's Talk!

Your Website Doesn’t Have A Clear Call - To - Action

Another common mistake people make on their website is not asking for what you want. For each page of your site, ask yourself a simple question: What do I want my visitors to do? Something I’ve learned in life is that you won’t get what you want unless you ask for it, and be clear with your intention. You need to be your own website’s captain. Drive visitors to exactly where you want them to go. There should be no dead ends. No wondering what to do next.

Ah, and don’t forget to choose the effective colors and words for your calls to action (or “CTAs”). We don’t only want a good-looking CTA button but also a button that can gain more clicks.

PRO Tips:

The secret is to choose a color that contrasts to the background for the CTA. I use this professional website to pick the right colors for my design. And yes, now you have my secret in your hands! 🙂

Besides that, I have a gift for you. Here is the collection of the most compelling CTAs that definitely work.

Conclusion

This is not a complete list, but it’s a great starting point if you’re looking to create a profitable site. By keeping things clear, pithy, conclusive, and calling visitors to action, you will engage your website’s users - which will increase the possibility that they will convert to clients.

I hope that this post is useful for you and has helped you identify your website’s problems and then make changes to benefit your business.

If you still have question or need help with re-design your website, please contact me here.

Let's Talk!

Best WordPress Plugins to Create Responsive Comparison Table

Author
Recent Posts

Chloe

Chloe is a seeker, for knowledge. The 9-5 is not enough to feed her challenge hunger so she got herself out of the box. "The harder you work for something, the greater you will feel when you achieve it" - her ideal.