8 Critical Website Mistakes You Should Never Make

4 Common Website Mistakes and How to Fix Them

You’ll know from your own browsing that some websites are so badly designed that, even if the content is good, you’ll never go back. Giving a visitor a poor experience can kill a website and destroy an online business. Here are 8 of the most critical website mistakes you need to avoid.

1. Poor navigation

6 Ways Bad Website Navigation Can Tank Your Marketing

A good user experience is all about doing things quickly and easily. So, when a visitor lands on your site, they don’t want the hassle of having to spend too much time looking for things or having to constantly press the back button to get to the homepage. A site which doesn’t offer great navigation can be frustrating to users, leading them to abandon it.

To achieve great navigation for your visitors, you need a menu in your header or at the top of your sidebar, a content search bar, breadcrumbs to make it easy to retrace steps, and links to important pages in your footer. The links in the footer should also include a link to a sitemap so that those who are really stuck have a better chance of finding what they want.

2. Invisible contact details

Some online businesses want all communication with their visitors and customers to be electronic. They’d prefer not to have to deal with telephone calls and letters. However, as a legitimate business, you should put these details clearly on your website. If you are a limited company, you are obliged to show them. These companies lose out because the lack of a physical address or a business number makes customers suspicious and this can have a drastic impact on sales.

There are other companies who want their address and phone number to be seen but don’t make it easy for customers to find them. The easiest solution is to put them in two places. Firstly, they should go in the footer. This way, they will appear at the bottom of every page. Secondly, you should create a contact page which has the details clearly displayed. A link to the contact page should be in the main menu or in the footer.

3. A headache inducing design

10 Ridiculous Web Design Blunders to Avoid at All Costs | Designbeep

Great website design should be easy on the eye. The design on each page and across pages should be consistent, attractive to look at, easy to read on all devices, have plenty of white space and match your brand.

Unfortunately, some people who build their own websites can often get carried away with the wide choice of fonts and colours at their disposal. What results is a website that is too busy. There are clashing colours, an array of badly chosen fonts (some of which are not supported by every browser) and so little space that the user’s eye cannot take all the information in.

Many users will simply hit the back button, not just because it is chaotic but also because it looks unprofessional. Those that persist will end up with eyestrain and a headache.

4. Breaking the back button

4 Design Patterns That Violate “Back” Button Expectations – 59% of Sites Get It Wrong – Articles – Baymard Institute

As a ploy to keep visitors on their website for longer, some webmasters have configured their site so that when a user clicks the back button they find it has been disabled or it takes them to another landing page. This essentially traps a user and prevents them from going back to Google to find a different site.

This form of tactic offers one of the worst forms of user experience. No visitor expects a browser button not to work and this can cause frustration, anxiety and anger. The only solution is to close down the browser tab.  After that, you’ll have zero chance of that user ever coming back to visit you.

5. Opening up a new browsing window

The Beginner's Guide To Tabbed Browsing

When creating links on your website you are giving the option to open the page in the same tab, a new tab or a new window. The general rule is that if the link is to a page on your own site, it should open in the same tab. If the link is to a different site, open it in a new tab so that the user can still go back to your site easily if needed.

There is no need, however, to open any page in a different window. Doing this essentially opens up two versions of the browser at the same time. Not only does this make for a complex browsing experience, it also uses up much more of the resources on the user’s device, slowing down how well it performs.

6. Leaving broken hyperlinks on your site

Why broken links can hurt your website and what to do about them | 123 Reg Blog

Putting links to pages on your own or other’s sites is extremely helpful to visitors. However, when the pages you have linked to have been removed, what you are left with are links to nowhere. When a visitor clicks on them, all they see is a 404 error page. This can be very frustrating for users, especially if your site has lots of broken links.

The easiest way to prevent them is to use a broken link checker plugin. These will regularly check all the links on your site and notify you if any are broken. For links on your own site, you can choose to redirect them so that customers are sent to newer, more relevant pages. For external links, you can opt to remove them or find alternative URLs to link to.

7. Obsolete content

5 Reasons You Should Remove Outdated Content (And One Reason You Shouldn't)

Google and visitors like content that is up-to-date and relevant. Websites should be checked regularly to ensure that the information provided is accurate and fit for purpose. For example, if you have a team page on your site and one of your team members moves on, you will need to update that information in case potential customers still try to contact them. If you don’t, you may lose that customer. The same goes for things like addresses, opening hours, product inventory, shipping details, pricing, etc.

8. Slow loading times

Top 10 Reasons for Slow Loading Websites (And How to Fix It)

If there is one thing that will force a customer to abandon your site before they even start to read it, it’s a slow loading time. With superfast broadband and 4G networks, internet users expect websites to load more or less instantly. If you’re not fully loaded in a second or so, they’ll be gone. The business will go elsewhere.

There are many things that can cause websites to load slowly and for a detailed understanding, you should always check your site using the Google PageSpeed Insights tool. Key to faster loading, however, is the quality of your web hosting. A great web hosting solution can have a big impact on the speed at which a site loads and, consequently, on the number of sales your website makes. A one second’s delay is estimated to reduce conversion rates by as much as 7%.

Conclusion

As you can see, there are some website management and design errors that can have a very negative effect on your website. These need to be addressed both during the design phase of your site and in its regular maintenance. Hopefully, the information provided here will help prevent you making these critical mistakes.

How To Find Best Custom Web Development Services?

A website is a need for today business owners who have not website are losing their valuable leads because at the same time your competitor is fetching all your leads or sales using website. Maybe you are now aware of website benefits that’s why you are here. Here we’ve talked about how you can find best custom web development services.We know picking the best custom web development services is not an easy task but with this post, we help you to decide to choose the best one. Make sure you read the full article and then apply the points while looking for custom web development services. It will really help you to find what you are looking for so best of luck.

Custom Web Design Services - Benefits & How To Find The Best One? | Journal

1. Experience

You need to look for a company who has a decent year of experience. In this age of competition, many companies open and shut down every day. Now the company which stands for years means they have good knowledge and knows every in and out in the industry. They obviously stay up to date with latest technologies and latest trends. If you choose a company which has years of experience in custom web development services then it is sure that you will get an awesome output.

2. Previous Work

Now if the company has years of experience then it really doesn’t mean that the particular company will give you the best result. Actually, you need to check the company’s previous work and if possible contact the client which they mentioned on their website. Company’s previous work will tell you more about the company without even contacting them. Check their previous websites or work and check the functionality, design etc. If they are creative in their work then no doubt you will also get something out of the box.

3. Dedicated Team

There are many processes involved in custom web development services. It is not a one-man task, it requires a full dedicated team. Generally, web development starts with a plan, after that how it will look, what functionality needs, framework, testing, finding bugs and more. Each single task needs to be handled by professionals so he/she can eliminate all errors or flaws.

4.Content and SEO

If you want to up in the game then you need fresh and unique content anyhow. Content is king and you can’t ignore it. Apart from that second most important thing is SEO. If you neglect the SEO of your website then you will be out of the game and your competitor will overtake you. Well writing fresh content and keep an eagle eye on your website SEO can be a pain for you, so if you have a budget then it is a good idea to outsource the task to the company. You can ask the same company which is providing the custom web development services definitely they have professionals for it if not then you can look for other company but it is better if you pick the same company for all task.

5. Budget

This is obviously the first thing pops up in mind when you start reading about Custom web development services in india. Well, all companies have a different price. Some may provide the same service at a lower price or vice versa. Here you need to be very careful because when you see services with low price obviously you will prefer it first but you will get good service it is not a guarantee. Actually, you need to consider all the factors mentioned here to before taking any decision. At the end, if you decide you pick the custom web development services which charge bit high then feel free to go with it.

6. Maintenance and Support

When your website grows definitely it need be updated time to time because you need to update your website according to your visitors, add new achievements, functions and more. Moreover, you also need some security features in future so you need to be prepared for it. Many custom web development services offer full support which means whenever you face any problem in your website they help you to resolve it free of cost. Now it really doesn’t count any website update but yes you can expect some small favors.
Hope you find this article useful. Here at RichestSoft you will find the best custom web development services and apart from it, we are into mobile app development, SEO, SMO, content writing, SalesFOrce and other IT solutions. Feel free to contact us and get a quote on your website.

How Google Home and Amazon Echo Will Affect the Content of Your Website

Amazon Echo vs. Google Home: Which Voice-Controlled Speaker Is Right for You?

The way we interact with the internet is changing. Many of us now use voice to search online and the answers we get are increasingly being spoken to us. This isn’t just happening on smart speakers, which are becoming commonplace, it is also being used on phones, computers and even on devices like smart TVs. If this is the future of how we use the internet, it is obviously going to affect the content that organisations place on their websites and in this post, we’ll look at what changes are likely to be needed.

Why you need to act now

It is estimated that by 2020 over half of all internet searches will be done by voice. This is due to a number of factors. First of all is the low price of smart speakers. You can pick up a basic Amazon Echo Dot or a Google Home for around £30; cheap enough to put several around the home so voice searches can be done anywhere without having to touch a keyboard.

Hand in hand with their low price are the consistent improvements in natural language processing. Computers can now understand what we say and speak back to us in intelligible ways and their ability to do so is getting better all the time. While, for the time being, what we can do with voice search is fairly limited, the scope of their abilities will no doubt expand to help us in ways we currently haven’t begun to fathom.

For website owners, this means that what you publish on your sites will increasingly be read out to the searcher rather than being presented to them visually and this will impact how that content is created in the first place.

Voice search results

Voice Search SEO Study: Results From 10k Voice Searches

One of the biggest differences between voice and keyboard searches will be in the way that search results are presented. As we all know, when we search using a keyboard and screen, we are shown a list of search results and click on the one that most appeals to us. This is why most websites strive to be on the first page of results.

With voice search, this isn’t always going to happen. Where there is a screen on which to view the results, for example when using Cortana, Siri, or Google Assistant on a computer or phone, the results may show up as we are used to. However, on smart speakers and other devices, reading out a long list of titles and snippets would not be user-friendly; instead, the google search engine will make the choice for us and read out what it considers to be the most appropriate answer.

Indeed, even screen-based search is moving in this direction. Type a question into Google , today, and before it presents a list of websites to look at, it will show you what it considers to be the best answer in the knowledge graph at the top of the page. This is a move which keeps the visitor on a Google page and reduces the chances of any other web page being visited.

What’s the solution for website owners? It means that for voice searches, it is even more crucial that the titles and metadata are focused on the search query and, in doing so, provide answers in themselves that can be read out. Websites that can feature in the knowledge graph are the ones which are most likely to be visited.

The rise of natural language generation

Deep Learning for NLP: An Overview of Recent Trends | by elvis | dair.ai | Medium

With the use of AI and machine learning, the information supplied by voice searches is going to get more sophisticated. At present, it uses natural language processing to understand your enquiry and then uses this to identify the most relevant content to speak back to you. In the future, it will go beyond this. With natural language generation and AI, the search engine will be able to gather the essential information from the internet, perhaps taking small elements from many different sites and will reformulate these into a single, cohesive and comprehensive answer. So, rather than speaking out verbatim what it finds, it will generate specific answers to specific questions. For example, if you ask what restaurants are the best in your local area, it might search all the various review sites, looking beyond star ratings, to consider the actual text individuals write in their reviews. In addition, it may also take into consideration the browsing and purchase history of the customer in order to offer what it considers the appropriate response. In this sense, search engines will morph into concierges offering personalised customer services.

Will there be an end to screen searches?

There will always be a need for screen searches. If consumers want to purchase something, they usually want to see it first. Indeed, it goes against freedom of choice not to give a customer options and if they removed these, google search engines will lose massive revenues from their advertisers. This is perhaps why so many smart speakers with screens are already being produced, in order to give us the best of voice and screen searching.

How will this affect content creation?

How will Artificial Intelligence affect content creation for digital marketers?

All these developments point to several changes that websites need to make to help them stay relevant in the age of the voice search.

Firstly, the content published on a webpage needs to be structured and written in a way that makes sense when read aloud. This means writing in a way which sounds natural and using vocabulary that communicates information clearly. Accurate punctuation, which is essential for ensuring meaning is communicated clearly, will become more vital than ever.

Another factor is in creating different content for different searchers. The use of subject orientated terminology might be suitable for some readers but not for others. A search engine could determine the level of understanding that a searcher has and look for search results that the user could understand when the website was read out to them. For some businesses, therefore, the solution would be in creating both a layperson’s and a subject specialist’s page.

Graphical data is one area, in particular, which needs to be looked at carefully when considering voice searches. Tables and lists work very well for visual searches and can save users lots of time when they look for information on your site. However, when read out, they don’t always make the best sense and it would be easier to understand if the information was put into sentences and paragraphs. The obvious answer to this is the development of a new type of responsive site – one which provides different versions depending on whether the results are shown or read. This, however, is a development for the future. For the time being, it may mean making both sets of information available.

SEO also has a part to play in helping websites do well in voice searches. Indeed, Google recommends that SEO focuses on making it simple for the search engines to understand what the content is about. This should be done through the use of titles, meta descriptions, headings and subheadings as well as using proper descriptions rather than just keywords in image alt-tags. Just remember that most of these things need to work for visual consumption at the same time.

Conclusion

With the advance of voice search technology and the popularity of smart speakers, we are moving into a new era of internet use where there is less need to be stuck to a screen to find the information we want or to carry out actions. For website owners, this will push you towards creating content that is suitable for both kinds of search and which makes sense when read aloud.

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