Unlike the common notion that having a website is enough to mark an online presence, a site will be pretty worthless until it’s well designed to yield exceptional business outcomes.Â
In today’s fiercely competitive world, businesses often overlook the significance of good website design. This leads to website failure and leaves them with little or no choice but to reinvest in robust web page design and development at a later stage. 
In this article, we explore six reasons web designs fail to help you avoid making mistakes when you design and develop your website.
Why Websites Fail and How to Deal with Them
Your website is slow
Website speed simply refers to how fast your site loads in response to a request. One of the significant reasons why websites fail 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 is because website visitors don’t have the patience to wait for the page or site to load. They visit your website with a specific objective, whether to compare prices or research about a certain product.
Statistics suggest that more than 50% of users abandon a site that takes more than three seconds to load.
Organisations 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.
What to do?
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 bottlenecksÂ
- Compressing large site images
- Minimising 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. A good web hosting ensures your website is afloat and accessible 24/7.
READ:Â How to Choose a Hosting Plan that Skyrockets Your Business Online
Mobile incompatibility
Statistics suggest that about 50 percent of the world’s web traffic today come from mobile users.
If you do not optimise 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 a considerable number of potential leads.
What to do?
While there are several different ways to improve the mobile-friendliness of your website, the most effective way to ensure a fully mobile-optimised site is to practise responsive website design.
Responsive websites should know what mobile device they’re being viewed on and adjust their layout accordingly.
SEO compliance ignored
While making sure your website is SEO-compliant may seem evident to marketers, it is often overlooked. Optimising your site for search engines makes it much easier for them to discover, understand, and index your content.
This, in turn, helps you achieve a high ranking in online searches and makes it easier for visitors to find your website online.
What to do?
Designing an effective SEO strategy is a complex and ongoing process that revolves around quality.
Right from careful keyword research, focused social media approaches, detailed linking strategies to well-executed conversion stratagems, you need almost everything to be SEO compliant.Â
Among some of the other ways, you can make your website SEO compliant by:
- Optimising images on the websiteÂ
- Adding image alt texts and meta tagsÂ
- Structuring your web pages Â
- Correctly formatting your URLs
Poor website design
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 powerful 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.
Among some of the web design elements that can lead to poor usability and frustrating user experiences include:
- Colour paletteÂ
- LayoutÂ
- Navigation menuÂ
- Typography Â
- Clickable elements
What to do?
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 devicesÂ
- Consistently updating your website copy for clarityÂ
- Placing the navigation bar in conspicuous places and making it easy to useÂ
- Adjusting the site colour palette for better readabilityÂ
- 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.
Broken website links or pages
If your visitors can’t access the desired information because of broken links, 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.Â
What to do?
Begin by constantly monitoring and maintaining your website once it’s up and running. Make sure to fix links within the content by changing the URL. If pages are moved or get unpublished, you can create a 301 redirect to redirect visitors to another live page.
No Clear CTA
A website design without a clear call-to-action or CTA leads visitors nowhere. It would be impossible for a business website to generate enough leads or sales without having a proper CTA button.
A good web design places CTAs in conspicuous parts of your website to compel users to take the desired action, whether that’s downloading a brochure, filling up a contact form, or purchasing a product.
What to do?
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.
To wrap
You now know the most common reasons websites fail. Most of all, websites fail when they’re not constantly updated. With the ever-changing online consumer and search engine trends, it pays to always find ways to improve your website.
If you want to learn more website tips, explore our extensive guides here.
