Three major Mistakes of Web Design and Hosting

If you’re a small business owner, your website is the central hub of your company, and it’s a pivotal part of your marketing and branding.

Potential customers visit your site specifically for its content, meaning its appearance and usability are critical to its success and how those users view your company. However, getting your web design wrong can have a negative impact on your business.

Here are Three major Mistakes of Web Design and Hosting you must avoid to create a great user experience and grow your bottom line.

1. Poor Navigation

There are several principles you can follow to create an effective navigation structure:

1. Use icons to aid navigation. They’re both visually appealing and easy to use and understand.

2. Create logical groups of related links, with the most important links on the top-level navigation bar and functional (dashboard, account, settings, etc.) and legal (copyright, privacy, terms) located elsewhere.

3. Provide location information so users know where they are on any given page and how to proceed to another area of the website. This can be achieved by using Breadcrumb navigation.

2. No Clear Calls To Action

It’s important to keep the following best practices in mind when creating an optimal call to action for Creative web design services:

1. The design of a call to action can be broken down into 4 simple elements — size, shape, color, and position. Each plays a vital part in determining how effective the call to action is in directing the user.

2. Don’t make your users work or think, or they’ll leave. It’s not that they aren’t smart, it’s that they want access to information quickly without spending unnecessary time searching for it.

3. Don’t overdo it with multiple, competing calls to action on every page. Decide what your primary target is and then define a clear objective per page. Your content should have answered, “What’s in it for me?” and your call to action should now answer, “What do I do now?”

3. Color & Contrast

1. Using a free a Color Contrast tool (which conforms to accepted standards) you can easily check to see how the contrast on your website measures up.

2. Research how major sites use color and contrast to improve readability and highlight specific sections, and use this knowledge to experiment with color schemes.

3. One of best ways to enhance contrast is by creating size differences between elements, making some things appear larger than others. This works especially well within a minimal color scheme, and it means you don’t have to necessarily rely on color.

In order for your web hosting adventure to be smooth, there are three critical mistakes you need to avoid.  If you want to establish yourself as an online business owner, these mistakes should be avoided at all costs.

1. Free Services

It’s hard not to find interest in a “free” service.  When it comes to web hosting, you can reduce your start up costs significantly by signing up with a free host.  Sounds good but take heed – the negatives outweigh the positives by far.  More often than not, this type of service is only free because it is being sponsored by other companies, companies that want to liter your web pages with advertisements.  That doesn’t sound like having your own business at all.  The visitors you bring in could end becoming someone else’s customers.  Or perhaps visitors will view your site as unprofessional and don’t even bother to return.  With advertisements cluttering your site and a free provider’s stamp appended to the end of your URL, this only makes a good option for someone looking to have fun with a personal website.

2. Limited Options

Paid hosting outweighs free services easily with thousands of providers on the market.  However, not all paid hosts are created equal.  Some of them are limited and will only provide you with the basics.  For this reason, you should avoid any companies that don’t offer or allow you to incorporate essential items such as web forms, email accounts and shopping carts into your website.  Here are a couple of useful features you should look out for: adequate bandwidth, storage space, multiple email accounts, database access.  While the features all depend on the individual needs of your site, these are necessary services that should be included with an hosting plan.

3.Cheap Hosting

Here is where things get tricky.  Some companies will advertise their service as “cheap hosting” while others in the industry look down upon such solutions.  Even if you are trying to host on a budget, stay cautious of providers offering plans for around $2 per month. Some might still consider this as a cheap service, but there are many reliable providers that fall into this price bracket.

The web hosting industry is like a jungle with companies swinging from all angles to win your service.  Jot down a list of what your site requires to be successful, do a little research and go out and find a company that meets those needs.  After landing a winner, you will be more than happy that you did.

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