{"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:\/\/www.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\u2019t optimized for mobile traffic (i.e. it doesn\u2019t have responsive design). This is a massive mistake, considering that 51.5% of all internet traffic<\/a> around the world is on mobile devices \u2014 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\u2019t have clear and easily visible contact information. If there\u2019s one thing that visitors hate more than anything else, it\u2019s digging around looking for contact information.<\/li>\n
  4. Your website doesn\u2019t 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\u2019s 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\u2019s 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\u201d 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\u2019t want to forget that it\u2019s human beings \u2014 and not search engines spiders \u2014 who will actually read your text. If it\u2019s incomprehensible SEO-speak, then they\u2019ll hit the back arrow and never return.<\/li>\n
  7. Your website doesn\u2019t 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\u2019t.<\/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\u2019t 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 \u2014 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\u2019s social media buttons don\u2019t work. It\u2019s hard to grasp why this mistake is being made since it\u2019s so easy to fix, but it\u2019s 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\u2019ll generate more traffic, engagement, impact and results \u2014 and really, isn\u2019t 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],"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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