Your website is the index of your online business. It is the best medium to communicate with your visitors, from all parts of the world. Therefore it is essential that a website should be designed in such a way that it keeps your visitors or customers engaged in your website.
If your website is doing any of the following mistakes, it is high time for you to correct it.
1) Hiding your contact information
Normally any website displays contact information in the contact us page of the website. But research shows that it is essential to display your phone number and email address in your home page to make it more visible for the visitors.
2) Bad Navigation Links
Website navigation links is the main way to take your customers to the other important parts of your website. A visitor does not need a out-of-the-box graphics and buttons for your page links. What a visitor normally expects is an easy to navigate links, preferably on top of each page. Also it is important to use the common terms used for each page link like About Us, Profile, Contact Us, Products etc.
3) Long Registration Forms
Keep your Registration or Signup form as simple as possible. Collect minimal information from the visitor. Collecting more unwanted information will get your visitor frustrated about your website and they will quit immediately.
4) Automatic Play of Audio or Video
We all love music, but you get frustrated when you hear unwanted music while you are seriously browsing a website. If you want to add music to your website, you should give the visitors a way to stop or pause the music.
5) Slow loading content
People does not have patience to see your slow loading content. Visitors come to your website to see what your website is about and not for the slow loading graphic or animations in your website.
Use images or other scripts which load faster. Most of the visitors are not ready to wait more than 5 seconds to browse a website.
6) No Search Box
Search boxes are most important for websites with large amount of content and pages. People find it more convenient to use search boxes to land at the right content of your website. If your website is full of content, make sure you have search box right at the top of each page of your website.
7) Browser InCompatibility
Internet users have wider choice of browsers when it comes to surfing the net. It is our responsibility as website designers and developers to ensure that websites web design are compatible in all major browsers like Google Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Internet Explorer and Opera.
8) Horizontal Scrolling
There are many website where we have to scroll horizontally to read the content. This will give the users an absolute bad experience. Make sure that your website content is displayed without the need to scroll horizontally. If you are not sure what screen resolution to fix, make the website compatible with 1024 x 768 resolution.
9) Too Many Steps
Reduce the amount of steps needed to do any process by the users in the website. If your website is for uploading photos, allow people to upload a photo as soon as possible. Ideally, make it the first button they click immediately after they login.
10) PDF Files for online reading
PDF files are meant for printing and distributing manuals. People hate when they come across a PDF file while browsing. Even simple things like printing or saving documents are difficult with PDF files and also it is hard to navigate.