Many small business have their web sites built by inexperienced friends or buy an off the shelf template because it’s far cheaper than getting a professional to create a custom web site. This is a false economy. If your site isn’t built properly by an experienced web designer then you will generate less business as a result, and getting more business is why you want a web site in the first place, right?

Lets run down the top ten web design mistakes shall we?

And before you ask, yes, I have committed every single one of these over the years, but I’ve learned from my mistakes and I hope you can too.

10. Site doesn’t work on a mac

I’m a Mac user so I freely admit that I’m biased, but it really frustrates me when I can’t use a web site with my Mac. Thankfully this is becoming less common as more people get seduced by slick apple marketing campaigns, but it still happens occasionally and it still bugs the hell out of me. Web designers can pick up a cheap 2nd hand imac off ebay for buttons and use it to test sites. Plus itunes makes it a great office jukebox!

9. Flashturbation

When used well Flash gives you the freedom to create an unrivaled user experience but (and this is a pretty BIG but) it is dangerously easy to get carried away. Splash pages and animated banners don’t achieve anything other than distract from your content. Use Flash only when it serves a purpose which directly benefits the audience or don’t use it at all.

8. Graphic Design That Sucks

Good design is all about consistency. Cluttered pages with inconsistent layout and unstructured content just confuse your audience and make you look unprofessional.

7. Heavy Duty Contact Forms

How many times have you seen those long, long contact forms where they ask you for your name, age, sex, address, postcode, county, country, home phone, mobile phone, fax (seriously, who uses faxes?), etc. Please! Just make simple contact forms. You’ll get more people using them, that’s a fact.

6. Out Of Date Content

If a latest news article is dated November 2006 what does this say? Nothing happens here! Or maybe you’re not even trading any more! Who knows? Not your web audience that’s for sure.

5. Poorly Optimized Images

Nothing says amateur web monkey like excessively large web site images, and I actually think this problem is getting worse. Yes, nearly everyone has broadband but that doesn’t mean your home page should be 600K. Large page sizes mean slower page loads, frustrated customers and higher hosting costs through increased bandwidth use. Nobody likes slow web sites.

4. Home Made Photography

Digital cameras have come a long way in recent years but amateur digital snaps are pretty easy to spot - they look cheap and inconsistent. Great photo’s are absolutely essential if you want to create a great website. If you are on a tight budget use one of the many good quality stock photography sites. Dreamstime is pretty good.

3. Monster Navigation Bars

Navigation bars work best when they feature concise lists of intuitive, descriptive links. Long lists are just going to make it more difficult to navigate around your web site. Large drop down menus are also difficult to use. Keep it simple.

2. Non Descriptive Page Titles

Page titles are usually displayed on search engine results pages and a browser’s bookmark uses the page title for the bookmark name by default. Because they describe the contents of the page they have a massive impact on click-through rates. A non-descriptive page title will loose traffic to a competitor with a better use of page titles.

1. Content That Doesn’t Make Sense

So, you work and work on a new web site. You spend weeks building the templates and structure. You create beautiful CSS based designs and everything is looking great for the launch.

Now just add some content and away we go. But wait, what’s that you say? The client hasn’t got the content ready? They’ll be sending it through just as soon as they’ve finished putting it together? When it finally arrives the content has been quickly thrown together by a team member (in their spare time normally) and the result is disjointed, difficult to follow and doesn’t make much sense. Sound familiar?

In my experience clients nearly always underestimate the amount of time and effort involved in creating good content for the web. You can’t just copy and paste a few manufacturer PDF docs & stick that up. Good web sites have clearly structured content which answers common customer questions. Spend lots of time on this task and use a copy writer if you can afford one. Your customers will be glad you did.

Content is, and always has been, king.

Have I missed anything? Of course! Please comment if you can think of some other examples of what not to do.