10 Common Website Failures and How to Fix Them!

Simply Having a Website is No Longer Enough!

Many business owners believe that having a website will instantly draw a steady stream of new customers ready to buy their products. However, the reality is that simply having a website is not enough. You have to help your customers easily find it and give them a good experience.

In today’s fiercely competitive world, businesses often overlook the significance of professional web design. Instead, they rely on free or low-cost services or DIY website builders. Unfortunately, cheap web design leads to website failure. It leaves them with little or no choice but to reinvest in professional website design and development later. 

In this post, we explore the top reasons websites fail to help you avoid making mistakes when designing and developing your website. We also provide straightforward advice for fixing the most common website failures. Let’s get started!

10 Common Website Failures

1. Not Optimized for Mobile Devices

As of 2016, the number of people viewing websites on their mobile devices surpassed people viewing a website on a desktop. That’s over four years ago! If your website is not optimized for mobile devices (known as responsive), then it’s time you updated and quick.

Statistics suggest that about 50 percent of the world’s web traffic today comes from mobile users. In some industries, this can be as high as 90 percent!

If you do not optimize your website for mobile, you’re missing out on A LOT of potential visitors and customers.

Slow loading or poor website navigation on mobile devices can make your business lose many potential leads.

Websites not optimized for mobile devices will appear small, look broken, and outdated. Mobile optimized websites are the standard now. Visitors don’t want to waste time resizing pages, searching for the menu, trying to tap links, and generally getting frustrated.

How to Fix it

If you don’t have a mobile-friendly website, you are due for a redesign.

While there are several different ways to improve the mobile friendliness of your website, the most effective way to ensure a fully mobile-optimized website is mobile-first web design.

If you’re getting a new website, make sure it will be optimized for mobile devices and provides a great mobile user experience on all screen sizes. A professional web design agency will offer this as a standard. If they don’t, then you are talking to the wrong web design partner.

2. Poor Website Design

One of the most common website failures is poor website design. A poor design will not win your business any points when customers are comparing your website with a competitor’s. The design of your site should match your business message and branding, be pleasing to look at without obstructing information and provide the best possible user experience.

The importance of a responsive web design as an essential digital marketing tool is immense.  Remember, your website doesn’t just serve as the first point of contact between your business and customers; it also acts as an extension of your physical store.

When it comes to effective web design, it’s vital to provide a seamless customer experience, allowing visitors to move from one page to another with ease. Your website should offer an intuitive experience without making the customer think about what they need to do next.

Some of the web design elements that can lead to poor usability and frustrating user experiences include:

• Color palette
• Layout
• Navigation menu
• Typography 
• Clickable elements

If your website looks out of date and doesn’t match your brand, customers will think your products or services are out of date and will favor your competitor.

How to Fix it

Among some of the ways you can improve your website design and prevent website failure include:

• Creating a responsive design so that your website displays well on all devices
• Consistently updating your website copy for clarity
• Placing the navigation bar in conspicuous places and making it easy to use
• Adjusting the site color palette for better readability
• Changing the site layout for improved usability

Apart from these, the easiest way to improve your site’s ease of use is to work with a professional web design agency. Professional web designers help you develop a website that gives users the best user experience possible.

You don’t have to follow a design trend or have a fully animated website. Still, you need to make sure your website connects with your target audience. So take a look at what your competitors are doing and see how you can do it better.

3. Slow Loading Website

One of the most common website failures is because they aren’t fast enough. Regardless of your industry, service, or product, a slow website can prove to be an obstacle to your website’s success.

This common website failure is because website visitors don’t have the patience to wait for the page or site to load. Instead, they visit your website with a specific objective, whether to compare prices or research about a particular product.

Statistics suggest that more than 50% of users abandon a site that takes more than three seconds to load.

Businesses that make page speed a priority generally experience a range of benefits, including increased conversions and longer sessions, which means visitors spend more time on the website.

The following can be the reasons for a slow loading website;

• Not optimized for mobile devices
• Browser cache not configured
• Images are not optimized
• Files are not compressed
• Slow hosting server

How to Fix it

Running a speed test on GT Metrix and Pingdom will identify any issues relating to website loading times. You can then work through the suggestions to make your website lightning quick.

There are multiple solutions and approaches you can employ to speed up your site. Some of these include:

• Improving your website server response times by fixing performance bottlenecks
• Compressing large site images
• Minimizing the number of redirects or 301s
• Minifying code like HTML, JavaScript, and CSS by removing unnecessary elements
• Using browser caching to reduce how often browsers need to reload your pages

The simplest way to improve the loading speed of your site is to choose a web hosting plan that meets your business’s specific demands. We use and recommend this hosting provider.

4. Not Optimized for Search

Even the most beautifully designed website can fail if it is not optimized for search. Your customers will begin their buying process with a search on Google. If potential clients can’t easily find your website, it will never receive any visitors.

While making sure your website is SEO-compliant may seem evident to marketers, many business owners often overlook this strategy. Optimizing your site for search engines makes it much easier for search engines to discover, understand, and index your content.

This effort, in turn, helps you achieve a high ranking in online searches and makes it easier for visitors to find your website online.

Suppose your website is mobile-friendly and has a good design with a clear call to action. In that case, there should be nothing holding you back from turning your visitors into customers, especially if your website appears ahead of your competitor’s in Google.

How to Fix it

If you want to rank higher than your competitors on Google, you need to optimize your website. Investing time in SEO or Search Engine Optimization is necessary to achieve this.

Designing an effective SEO strategy is a complex and ongoing process that revolves around quality. To optimize your website, you need to check all the basic SEO practices are in place and you’re using a mixture of short and long-tail keywords in the correct areas.

SEO compliance includes everything from keyword research, focused social media approaches, detailed linking strategies to well-executed conversion methods.

Here are some other ways you can make your website SEO compliant:

• Optimizing images on the website
• Adding image alt texts and meta tags
• Structuring your web pages 
• Correctly formatting your URLs

5. No Call to Action

Your website should prompt visitors to do something. Whether that’s to buy a product, fill in a form, or pick up the phone. A clear and prominent call to action will help your visitors complete your goal. Unfortunately missing or weak CTAs are among the common website failures on many business websites.

A website design without a clear call-to-action or CTA leads visitors nowhere. A business website can’t generate enough leads or sales without having a proper CTA button.

Calls to action can be a button linking to a form, a phone number in bold text, or a large promotional image with text. If there isn’t a clear call to action, your visitors won’t know what you want them to do.

A good web design places CTAs inconspicuous parts of your website to compel users to take the desired action. For example, the required step can be downloading a brochure, filling up a contact form, or purchasing a product.

How to Fix it

Start by identifying what you want your visitors to do when they visit your site and include it on all of your web pages.

Also, make sure to keep your CTA precise. Focus on one CTA per page to limit the choices for site visitors and promote conversions.

6. Confusing Navigation & Content Structure

Confusing website navigation and inconsistent content structure are two of the more common website failures we see on a regular basis.

Check that you can navigate around your website with ease. The menu should be uncluttered, simple to use and identify the key pages. If your website is full of sub-menus, side menus, and dead ends, your visitors can quickly become lost and leave your website.

Mobile navigation should be a top priority. With more people accessing websites via mobile devices, it’s essential to have good mobile navigation for large fingers.

How to Fix it

Before you commit to a new design, ensure you know what content you need on your website. Knowing the page content at the beginning will make it easier to create a website structure that flows and has a straightforward navigation menu.

7. Broken Links & Pages

A broken website is an instant fail. If your visitors can’t access the information they are looking for, or your contact form, links, and images aren’t working, they will leave.

Suppose your visitors can’t access the desired information because of broken links. In that case, this reduces the chances that they’ll convert into customers. Among some of the most common causes for broken links or pages include human error and CMS updates.

How to Fix it

Begin by constantly monitoring and maintaining your website once it’s up and running. Make sure to fix links within the content by updating the URL. If pages are moved or unpublished, you can create a 301 redirect to redirect visitors to another live page.

8. Poor Content

Another common website failure is outdated content. If you want your website visitors to regard your business as a trusted resource, you need to prove that. Having obsolete content will make your website appear stale and dated.

Equally frustrating for your website visitors is content not aligned with their objective for visiting your website. For example, you may be proud of your long history or love telling the story of how you came up with the name. But it does little to convince a potential customer that you are the best option to satisfy their needs.

You should also avoid technical or industry jargon in your website copy. While this may seem to be a great way to showcase your expertise, it most often will work against you. If your visitors can’t understand what you are trying to say, they will not stick around to find out.

How to Fix it

Fresh and relevant content will show that you are current with the latest developments in your field or industry. The easiest way to publish content on your site is to keep an active blog.

Be sure to use plain English and focus on the needs and expectations of your visitors. Try to anticipate the most common questions and concerns of your audience and address those in your content.

If you must use technical or industry terms, you should include a simple explanation of what they mean.

9. Not Promoting Your Website

One of the main reasons websites fail is a lack of promotion (digital marketing). Once your website is live, you need to attract and drive visitors to it. The following marketing channels will help you do that:

• Organic visitors from Google
• Social media
• Paid social advertising (Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube)
• Pay-Per-Click advertising (Google Ads)
• Email campaigns

If you’re not actively marketing your website, your business will not reach its full potential. Conversely, a website can work wonders for your business if you promote it and increase customer inquiries and sales.

How to Fix it

You don’t have to use all of the channels mentioned above. Still, you need to find the best strategy for your business and identify your target audience. For example, gaining visitors from Google (organic search) is always a solid strategy because it’s free traffic, and it’s where your customers start their buying process.

10. Using an Amateur Web Designer

If you are using an amateur to build your website, you are getting a bad deal. Cheap websites and DIY website builders are never the best solutions for your business. And soon after launching your website or online store, you’ll realize your mistake.

Someone can always do it cheaper; you probably know this from your industry. But what do you think about businesses offering rock bottom services? You know they are cutting corners or will not provide excellent service, and what about the after-service?

Suppose you’re serious about your business and want to appear trustworthy and reliable. In that case, you should get your website built by professionals. By professionals, we are referring to an agency or a seasoned freelancer, not a bedroom coder or your neighbor’s nephew.

Using a professional will give your website project its best start. The design will be spot on and built with technical SEO from the beginning. Doing this can reduce the amount of work in the future if you want to invest in digital marketing.

How to Fix it

You want your overall design to be modern, align with your business goals, connect with your audience and have a clear call to action.

Before you invest in a new website, check that the web design agency has the relevant experience and good customer testimonials from previous work.

Is Your Website Supporting Your Business Objectives?

The critical reason businesses and product brands have an online presence are to support their business objectives. And as we outlined in this post, many business websites fail because they contain one or more of these common website failures. Is your website among them?

Many business owners think that a website will attract potential customers and improve sales performance. However, an attractive website alone is not sufficient to achieve this. You must deliver an excellent user experience to visitors so they will select your service over others.

Most of all, websites fail when they’re not constantly updated. With the ever-changing online consumer expectations and search engine trends, it pays to find ways to improve your website. Even if you built your website only a few years ago, it might be time for a redesign.

What’s Next?

Now you know the most common website failures, it’s time to fix them. If your website is underperforming and you want to attract more visitors and turn them into customers, we can help.

We are a team of expert designers and developers skilled in building fully functional websites for businesses and product brands. We follow the latest web design trends and implement them to ensure high performance.

Here at PixoLabo, we offer a full range of business website consulting and WordPress web design services, including website design and development, e-commerce solutions, search engine optimization, and WordPress optimization.

To get a feature-packed and flawless website developed for your business, feel free to schedule a free consultation or request a free, no-obligation web design estimate.

Any Questions?

And if you are still not sure how to fix common website failures, let’s talk. We will listen to your concerns, answer your questions, and help you establish and grow the online presence your business needs!

Do you have any other common website failures you would like us to add to our list? Feel free to add your comments below so our audience can benefit and grab our feed so you don’t miss our next post! And feel free to share our tips on how to fix these shortcomings with your audience!

Thank you! We appreciate your help to end bad business websites, one pixel at a time!

By PixoLabo
A Next-Generation Web Design Agency
@PixoLabo