Every website, eCommerce store, and blogger has to start somewhere. Some people start a website without much thought or research into what makes one website successful and another site a failure. Starting a website can be a fun and exciting project, but if it’s done wrong the mistakes can be costly.

I’ve seen a lot of new websites start up and then fail because of some simple design mistakes. Below are the top 10 most common design mistakes that I’ve personally come across when helping out new website owners. Most of these mistakes are easily fixed but require time and a little money to fix the right way. By avoiding these 10 common mistakes at the beginning, you’ll save yourself some time and money because you’ll get it right the first time.

1. Keywords – There are three areas of mistakes dealing with keywords.

• Not having a keyword strategy – Starting with a basic keyword strategy can help you with the entire design process. List your target audience, the keywords your audience may use to find your products/site, and how you plan on structuring these keywords into your site. With a basic keyword strategy you’ll have a better idea of how your site can be structured (navigation, etc).
• Using industry keywords – Don’t target industry jargon keywords in your website content. You should never assume your visitors have an understanding of your product and/or service. Use everyday language/keywords that your customers will be using.
• Keyword stuffing – This is one of the oldest SEO tricks in the book. And it’s a trick that search engines figured out long-long ago. Don’t try to make every page on your site a dictionary of keywords. Don’t stuff keywords in your <title> tags. Use common sense when you write content for your website. Each page of your website should be targeted around a central theme for the page… concentrating on a small group of keywords related to the topic for the page. If you have multiple topics, then use multiple pages. Each of these topics/pages should then tie into a central theme for the site as a whole.

2. Flash and Splash – Flash has its place, but it’s not for covering your entire home page or main landing page. Most visitors don’t want to wait for your flash file to load and then have to watch something they may not be interested in. It may look cool or pretty, but you need to ask yourself… Is it creating conversions for me? If you think it is then do an A/B test to check our your assumptions. If you’re considering flash on your page then my suggestion is to use it in a limited way. For example, highlighting a particular feature you’re trying to get a customer to see. Splash pages are another annoying design style in my opinion. In order to optimize conversions, the click path your customer has to take needs to be as short as possible. Adding in a splash page is almost always unnecessary and just adds in extra clicks for the visitor.

3. Hard to find contact information – Your website visitors should be able to easily locate your contact information. Include a link to your contact info on every page of your website. Don’t bury the link at the bottom of the page. Make sure it stands out. On the contact page itself, give your visitors multiple ways to get in touch with you. Email, Twitter, live chat, phone, etc.

4. Hit counters – Believe it or not, I still see new website owners putting hit counters at the bottom of their pages. No one cares how many visitors you’ve had and worse, it looks very amateurish. Use an analytics program to study your websites traffic. Google analytics or Open Web analytics are two free programs. There are a multitude of options for you to study your website traffic without having to put up a hit counter which gives you useless data.

5. Poorly written page titles <title> tags – Title tags are extremely important for getting visitors to find your website in search engine results. Your title tag should directly relate to the content that is on the page. Don’t stuff the tag with keywords, but use a logical combination of words that make sense to your target audience. Having “Home” or “Products” for your title tag will get you nowhere. Each pages title tag should be unique.

6. Consistency in font size and overall design – If you’re not a designer then consider consulting with one. Having inconsistent font size and inconsistent overall design is a quick way to turn off potential visitors and customers.  Your site doesn’t need 10 font sizes. One size for the body, one or two sizes for your headings and possibly a smaller size for link and/or text that is of low importance. In addition to font size consistency, keep the overall design consistent. Don’t use one set of fonts for your home page, a second set of font’s and sizes for your product pages and then a completely unrelated design for your blog. Keep everything consistent. It will give your visitors a better feeling of continuity.

7. Crazy color schemes – Steer clear of crazy color schemes. Look around… you’ll notice the most successful and best designed sites have a consistent color scheme. Don’t use 15 colors in your design. Don’t try to highlight things on a page by using several different colors… that’s what bold is for. A good starting point it to use 3 colors in your sites design.

8. Music – Don’t have music automatically play on your website. It’s a huge turn off for most people. If you want music on the site, make it optional so the visitor can start the music if they want to.

9. Own your own domain for your site, email, and blog – Domain names and hosting are very reasonably priced these days. There’s no reason to start your website or blog using a free hosting service. Same goes for email. Having your own domain name for your site, blog and email lets your customers know you take your business seriously.

10. Generic or no logo at all – Your company logo says a lot about your company. Using a generic logo that you personally made with clip-art does not say the right thing. Even worse is having no logo at all, but instead using plain text. You don’t need to spend thousand of dollar for a nice logo. There are hundreds of designers out there that can design an original and one of a kind logo for your business. Check out this page for logo design sites, blogs and logo inspiration.

Plan and avoid these common design mistakes… your new website startup with have a much better chance of success. If you would like my help in planning your new website or eCommerce store, then send me a message… I’d be happy to help.

Interested in sharing the common design mistakes you frequently see? Post a comment below.