Websites can fail even before a single line of code is ever written. The success or failure of your website will very much depend on the competence or incompetence - of your web designer & how dedicated or lame they are in preparing your website for your market. 95% of sites will never make page 1 or page 2 of SERPs. Here are the worst web design planning mistakes in order:
(For resources supporting this article please see my blog: Top 60 Web Design Mistakes of 2009)
1 - Lack of Keyword Research - This is a cardinal sin - how can you attempt to write a website without knowing what your visitor's search for? Getting this wrong will mean that you will not rank well for the best terms, hence you will loose out on valuable organic traffic. There are many free keyword research tools at your disposal - use them!
2 - Lack of Competitor Research - without competitor research you won't know whether your page 1 competitors have 30 or 30,000 backlinks, and you won't know if their websites have 3 or 300 pages. The term 'mortgage' has 189 million pages listed in Google - moneysupermarket.com who are usually number 1 has 306,000 backlinks - hence it would be unrealistic for anyone other than a team of professional SEMs to compete. Simple research takes minutes and could save months of wasted effort and wasted cash.
3 - Same as the Next Guy - By making your website the same as everyone else you are not telling your visitor what's different, hence you are setting your website for failure. Plan to be different and insure you convey your differences quickly - think about improving your: content, visitor experience, site navigation & any special offers you might have when planning your website - making this effort in the planning stage really pays dividend later
4 - Lack of Good Content - fail on this point & it doesn't matter what else you have got right - many visitors use search engines to resolve a problem: this could be: find a product, find a supplier, find a service provider etc - hence answer your visitors immediate question & provide plenty of supporting content. The more thoughtful you are with your content the more likely your visitors will turn into business
5 - Lack of Page Planning - failing to plan each of your pages correctly will cause you a problem with 'on page factors' - these affect your position in search engines. The following should contain your researched keywords: page names, directory names, titles, descriptions, headings, footers, menu text, link text & paragraphs. Your menus should be simple/ text selectable & your primary keyworded heading should be displayed high on page. Your contact details should always be found easily.
6 - No Plan for Marketing - if your aim is to write a website which will drive business through web traffic and you haven't considered how this traffic will magically appear then you haven't made a marketing plan. Depending how competitive your industry is - you may need to build 10s, 100s or 1000s of backlinks using web partners, directories & blogs. This may take hours/week/years hence you will need a plan with timescales.
7 - Poor Choice of Hosting - cheap hosting deals overseas may not necessarily be good for your website as many search engines today use 'Geo Targeting' in some manner in their ranking algorithms and you visitors may find your website slower than your competitors. Where possible use host with servers located in your home country & look at live review sites before making a decision. If your site is geared for high traffic and/or overseas trade then use a dedicated server and insure you host has good peering agreements with the countries that you are likely to do business with. Always check your host's IP address to insure the servers really are based where the host claims they are.
8 - Poor use of Colours - using drab or exotic colours could make your website look amateur - you have an average of 3 seconds to make your first impression hence spend time planning your colour scheme. Remember that its not your personal taste that counts - its your visitor's. Take care though as certain colours have major significance in some countries. Insure your colours are well matched - you will find plenty of websafe colour match utilities in Google.
9 - Choosing Strange Fonts - could make your site hard to read especially for people with poor vision. Wherever possible use basic fonts such as Arial & Helvetica. If you must use alternative fonts insure the text is large enough, clear & it matches your website theme.
10 - Selecting your URL & TLD - wherever possible choose a domain that contains your researched keywords then select the correct domain suffix (TLD) - use .co.uk for a UK company .com for e-commerce - you will have trouble indexing an Indian domain (eg .co.in) in the UK . Here are come common UK domain suffixes:
.com - commercial/ecommerce website (UK &/or International)
.co.uk - corporate website
.net - larger network website - typically used by web hosts
.biz - for business-to-business websites
.org.uk - organisation, group or charity
.info - informational site
.name - for an individual or group
.ltd - for ltd company
(For resources supporting this article please see my blog: Top 60 Web Design Mistakes of 2009)
1 - Lack of Keyword Research - This is a cardinal sin - how can you attempt to write a website without knowing what your visitor's search for? Getting this wrong will mean that you will not rank well for the best terms, hence you will loose out on valuable organic traffic. There are many free keyword research tools at your disposal - use them!
2 - Lack of Competitor Research - without competitor research you won't know whether your page 1 competitors have 30 or 30,000 backlinks, and you won't know if their websites have 3 or 300 pages. The term 'mortgage' has 189 million pages listed in Google - moneysupermarket.com who are usually number 1 has 306,000 backlinks - hence it would be unrealistic for anyone other than a team of professional SEMs to compete. Simple research takes minutes and could save months of wasted effort and wasted cash.
3 - Same as the Next Guy - By making your website the same as everyone else you are not telling your visitor what's different, hence you are setting your website for failure. Plan to be different and insure you convey your differences quickly - think about improving your: content, visitor experience, site navigation & any special offers you might have when planning your website - making this effort in the planning stage really pays dividend later
4 - Lack of Good Content - fail on this point & it doesn't matter what else you have got right - many visitors use search engines to resolve a problem: this could be: find a product, find a supplier, find a service provider etc - hence answer your visitors immediate question & provide plenty of supporting content. The more thoughtful you are with your content the more likely your visitors will turn into business
5 - Lack of Page Planning - failing to plan each of your pages correctly will cause you a problem with 'on page factors' - these affect your position in search engines. The following should contain your researched keywords: page names, directory names, titles, descriptions, headings, footers, menu text, link text & paragraphs. Your menus should be simple/ text selectable & your primary keyworded heading should be displayed high on page. Your contact details should always be found easily.
6 - No Plan for Marketing - if your aim is to write a website which will drive business through web traffic and you haven't considered how this traffic will magically appear then you haven't made a marketing plan. Depending how competitive your industry is - you may need to build 10s, 100s or 1000s of backlinks using web partners, directories & blogs. This may take hours/week/years hence you will need a plan with timescales.
7 - Poor Choice of Hosting - cheap hosting deals overseas may not necessarily be good for your website as many search engines today use 'Geo Targeting' in some manner in their ranking algorithms and you visitors may find your website slower than your competitors. Where possible use host with servers located in your home country & look at live review sites before making a decision. If your site is geared for high traffic and/or overseas trade then use a dedicated server and insure you host has good peering agreements with the countries that you are likely to do business with. Always check your host's IP address to insure the servers really are based where the host claims they are.
8 - Poor use of Colours - using drab or exotic colours could make your website look amateur - you have an average of 3 seconds to make your first impression hence spend time planning your colour scheme. Remember that its not your personal taste that counts - its your visitor's. Take care though as certain colours have major significance in some countries. Insure your colours are well matched - you will find plenty of websafe colour match utilities in Google.
9 - Choosing Strange Fonts - could make your site hard to read especially for people with poor vision. Wherever possible use basic fonts such as Arial & Helvetica. If you must use alternative fonts insure the text is large enough, clear & it matches your website theme.
10 - Selecting your URL & TLD - wherever possible choose a domain that contains your researched keywords then select the correct domain suffix (TLD) - use .co.uk for a UK company .com for e-commerce - you will have trouble indexing an Indian domain (eg .co.in) in the UK . Here are come common UK domain suffixes:
.com - commercial/ecommerce website (UK &/or International)
.co.uk - corporate website
.net - larger network website - typically used by web hosts
.biz - for business-to-business websites
.org.uk - organisation, group or charity
.info - informational site
.name - for an individual or group
.ltd - for ltd company
About the Author:
The author is an Ecommerce/Web Design Consultant with 12 years experience in the Web/IT Industries. He works with designers for many large PLC's such as: Vodafone, Coca Cola & Npower - see web design Birmingham for more information.
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