7 Way to Fail as a Webdesigner
Keeping up with current trends in web design can often seem a herculean undertaking, especially given the fact that they seem to change almost overnight. As soon as you think you are up-to-date on what you should and should not do in terms of optimizing your website for traffic, conversions, and search result ranking, a new list of myths and must-haves makes headlines.
Fortunately, you do not need to constantly observe the steady stream of “new and improved” things you simply have to do to refine your online presence, to the detriment of other facets of your business. Rather than developing a single-minded focus on keeping your web design in line with what’s hot and what’s not, you can use a core set of principles — in this case a short list of things to avoid — that will help you keep your content more sustainable with less effort.
Here are seven deadly sins of web design that you should steer clear of when crafting your online content:
1. Failing to have your content regularly edited for spelling and grammar errors
The importance of proper spelling, punctuation, and other grammatical attributes cannot be stressed enough. When you are attempting to present yourself in a professional, knowledgeable, and authoritative way, a spelling error or poorly formed sentence appearing within your online content can damage your reputation. To some online visitors, a lack of care to the written presentation on your website, landing page, social media posts, or other online text is a strong indicator that you will demonstrate the same lack of care with customer relationships.
2. Having ineffective page titles, tags, headings, and subheadings
Content that is visible to visitors, such as headings and subheadings, is naturally important in web design because visitors can see at a glance what your content is about and what they can expect to find. The content that is visible to search engines, including meta tags and page titles, is also important because it helps your content get properly indexed and displayed in search results for which it may be relevant.
3. Using weak or thin content to ‘fluff’ out your pages
As web design technology moves ever forward, it provides more opportunities to create visually impressive online content that can compel interaction from your visitors. The opposite, however, may also be true; an abundance of gimmicky fluff in the form of videos, images, and personalized micro-moments can repel visitors as well. You need to provide your audience with meaningful, informative, and valuable content, leaving out anything that does not move them further along in your marketing funnel.
4. Failing to know who your target audience is and what they want from you
In an ideal world, your marketing material and online content would appeal to all your visitors all of the time. Since that is not possible, you need to define your desired audience and find out, with specificity, what they are looking for. Design your website and web pages with a focus on meeting their needs. If your content does not deliver in terms of value, information, and originality, your audience will quickly find content that does.
5. Offering your visitors too many marketing choices or too much information on a single page
There should be a single theme or main focus on each page of your website (or on each landing page), surrounded by content that reinforces and emphasizes that theme. Regardless of what your subject matter may be, all the content on a page should support one goal: to motivate your visitor to choose an action that moves them deeper into your marketing funnel.
6. Including too many (or too few) social sharing buttons
Cross-channel and multi-platform marketing are excellent ways to attract more attention to your online content. You can do your web presence more harm than good, however, by adding (or leaving out) social sharing options that are less than ideal for connecting to and engaging with your desired audience. An ideal mix consists of three or four links to your social media content, on networks that are most likely to be used by the majority of your target audience’s demographic.
7. Creating calls to action that are ambiguous or vague
A well-crafted call to action contains clear and concise language, is prominently visible (size, color, placement, etc.), and unequivocally indicates what your visitor should expect when they take that particular path in your marketing funnel. Avoid using misleading language and focus all the CTAs on each page toward a single offer. Be direct about what action you expect from your visitors (in other words, don’t ask them to engage — decisively tell them to do so).
Conclusion
While there are many other web design strategies and tactics you can use to appeal to your desired audience and search engines alike, these seven deadly sins of web design will provide you with easy-to-follow guidance for creating a strong and sustainable foundation for your web pages and online content.
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