When it comes to website design, you might be tempted to enlist the help of a friend with some experience in coding and website building to do it for you: links, search bars, images, the whole shebang. However, without the marketing experience and SEO knowledge that professional web designers have, your friend can build you a website, but not necessarily an amazing one. Straight from our CEO and pro website builder, Andrew Brockenbush, here’s seven mistakes that up-and-coming business owners might make if they rely on a friend for web design– and why hiring a professional is the true way to go if you want success.
- They won’t test for mobile optimization, lacking a responsive design for both desktop and mobile devices.
With how on-the-go everyone is these days, it’s crucial that your website looks good and works well on mobile devices like phones and tablets. Sure, it could look amazing on your desktop computer, but do all the fancy graphics merge into one big mess on your mobile device?
2. No clear development process while designing the website.
A developer with no experience might know how to make a website, but does he know how to avoid simple mistakes and keep up with deadlines? With a friend in charge, you likely won’t put a deadline in place, meaning they’ll build your business’s website on their own time. The more time your friend spends not working on your website means less customer traffic to your business as a whole, so make sure they’re not a procrastinator first.
3. Forgetting clear calls to action on the webpage.
Without links to contact the business, forms to fill out for more information, etc., how will potential consumers know how to engage with your content? Your friend can build the website, but do they know how to build traffic to your business? Pro web designers know that the “Contact Us” button is imperative to getting people to interact with your brand, and make sure that the forms potential customers fill out will get to you. Speaking of online forms…
4. Not making sure forms go where they’re meant to go, or having broken links throughout the webpage.
There can be dozens of fancy buttons and links on your website, but if they go to the wrong pages or to nowhere at all, viewers of your site will get annoyed that nothing works correctly and (gasp!) go to your competitor’s working website instead. Make sure to run a full website check before you make it public: check that every link goes where it needs to, fill out a form to double-check the destination is correct, and make sure everything is spelled correctly. It’s a small price to pay for perfection!
5. SEO: making sure it’s optimized for organic discovery through search engines.
If you’re not sure what SEO is, don’t worry– we’ve talked about it in depth on Business Growth Hacks and our blog. Basically, Search Engine Optimization is the work that goes into making sure your website is at the top of the page when a potential customer searches one of your services. Ever wonder why some websites seem more popular than others in search results on Google? That’s SEO at work. Quite often you’ll need to hire a professional for this service anyway, and luckily for you, that’s one of our services here at Beefy.
6. Poor content as a whole, or not communicating the best way to showcase what the webpage/business is all about.
Of course, website design isn’t just about making sure links work and that your business pops up on Google. The content in the website itself needs to properly illustrate what your business is all about; whether you run a marketing firm, a retail firm, or a shop where you sell your own art, make sure that the pictures are clean and high-definition, and that the text is grammatically correct and easy to read. It makes a world of difference when you know the content you’re putting out is as perfected as possible; the confidence in your website transfers into confidence in your business.
7. Forgetting to install analytics.
Analytics in website design are viewable statistics that show you how your website performs; whether you’re posting new content, tracking visits and counting clicks, analytics on your end can give you visible proof of the traffic your website gathers. Without those statistics, your website could be flying or floundering and you would have no clue. Make sure analytics get installed on your site and see for yourself how your content performs.
Those seven mistakes in any website design won’t generate business for your organization. Spending money on a website design that isn’t bringing back just as much value will hurt the business, rather than help it. If you want your website design done right and in a reasonable timeframe, using a pro is the way to go; when you pay for website design, there’s a level of expectation built into the cost that they’ll do the job well. Getting a family friend to design your website for free doesn’t come with that level of expectation– they’ll design it in their free time, with no clear deadlines in place, meaning more business lost to your competition. Professional web designers have the know-how to make sure your website looks good, performs well, and appears frequently in searches, so that your business can do just as well as your website.
And hey, if you’re looking for web designers, why not us? Beefy has designed thousands of websites for a myriad of clients over the years, from architecture to finance to medical and more. Plus, since we know the mistakes to avoid in web design, you have a guarantee for success with our designs. Visit our website for some examples of our design work!
