Did you know that people and businesses around the country spend more than $11 billion each year on web design services? That is just one indicator of how much the right website design can help a business or a law firm to grow.
One reason that so many businesses depend on professionals for help is that it is so easy to make some of the most common website design mistakes.
However, there is a silver lining. Once you know how to avoid these common mistakes, there is a good chance you will be able to stand out from your competitors and help grow your law firm.
So what are these website design mistakes, and how can you avoid making them? Read on to learn all about the most important things to understand about website design mistakes you need to avoid!
1. Designing Law Firm Websites Without Guiding Your Audience
One of the more neglected principles of website design is the importance of guiding your audience. They’re not on your website to pass time. Rather, the whole point of the website is to guide them to certain actions.
Make sure you know what actions you want people who visit your website to take. Then, design your website to encourage them to take those actions. At the very least, you should prominently display website functions that invite people to take your desired actions.
2. Designing Website Pages That Are Too Busy
One of the worst things you can do while designing a website is put too much information in too small of a space. Some people feel like they have so much important information to communicate that they need to squeeze it onto the page.
However, no matter how important your information is, nobody will find out about it if they refuse to read your content at all. Trying to squeeze in extra content does not translate to getting people to read a little bit more. Very much the opposite: busy pages mean that people are likely to absorb even less information.
3. Using Excessively Dense Images
One of the most important factors about website design is how fast your pages load. If your website pages take too long to load, people will give up and go back to Google to look for your competitors. So how can you help your website pages load as quickly as possible?
One of the simplest ways is to avoid filling your website with informationally dense images. That does not refer to how those images appear to your eye. Rather, it refers to how much data computers are required to process to load them.
Keep your images as small and simple as possible. Try removing some of your more complicated or high-resolution images and see how it affects the loading speed of your pages.
4. Failing to Create a Mobile-Friendly Website
Many people are still used to thinking of the internet as something you access with a computer. The truth is, that idea is becoming more and more outdated. These days, huge segments of the population use their phones as their primary means of accessing the internet.
But why should that make such a difference? If a website is not designed for use on mobile phones, then the formatting will be off. It’ll be next to impossible to navigate the website, meaning that mobile users will leave the website rather than try to navigate something that is not designed for their devices.
Failing to create a mobile-friendly website means alienating a huge segment of your potential customer base right off the bat. On top of that, it can harm your search engine optimization. Every time a user arrives on your website only to immediately leave, the search engine algorithm docks you points.
Even if you did only want to reach people who use computers to access your web page, they would be far less likely to find your website once it suffered from the search engine optimization effects of mobile users leaving your website so fast.
5. Failing to Design Your Page for Scanning
These days, people often scan websites rather than read them carefully. If your website is not designed for scanning, they may leave it. There are a number of techniques that make websites easier to scan.
You need to highlight your most important information. People need to know whether or not they need to read the details of a section because it is labeled.
6. Failing to Mention the Most Important Information Prominently
Some websites fail to mention their most important information where it is easy to find. Many users only come to your website because they want to find your phone number. If you make it hard to find, they may leave your website in frustration.
The same thing applies to your address, your email, your office hours, and similar information.
7. Violating the Principles of SEO for Lawyer Websites
Search engine optimization is becoming more important all the time. If you want to be able to keep up with your competitors, you need to show up when potential customers search for related search terms.
That means making sure that you have the right keywords in the right places. For more effective search engine optimization effects, you may need to get help from professionals.
Understand How to Avoid the Most Common Website Design Mistakes
We hope learning about the most common website design mistakes to avoid has been helpful. More and more law firms are appreciating how important a strong online presence can be. However, many are failing to get the results they want because they are inadvertently making some of the most common design mistakes.
To learn more about how to avoid website design mistakes and help take your law firm’s success to the next level, feel free to reach out and get in touch with us here at any time!
