Google receives over 63,000 searches per second on any given day. That's the average figure of how many people use Google a day, which translates into at least 2 trillion searches per year, 3.8 million searches per minute, 228 million searches per hour, and 5.6 billion searches per day.

An SEO strategy helps brands position themselves within the digital ecosystem. A strong SEO strategy will use data, technical SEO, and user intent to create content that answers the user’s needs and is easily found by prospective visitors.

See our more detailed blogs about SEO.

You don’t have to be a marketing expert to know that customer service plays a crucial role in business. Your customers are the ones who spread the word about you and help grow your customer base.

Many eCommerce websites have been adding live chat support to their help desk software in order to provide real-time answers rather than having customers leave their websites. Real-time chatting with a customer support expert not only builds customers‘ confidence during their shopping experience but also helps to improve your conversion rates. According to a survey of online consumers, 68% engage in live chat and 63% prefer getting back to a website with live chat for repeat purchase.

Reasons Why Live Chat Is Important

Most Common Website Design Mistakes

In today’s world, almost all businesses require websites to gain new customers and maintain a smooth client relationship. As a business owner, web design mistakes are something that you would want to avoid.

An effective small business website generally comes with:

• Responsive Design – easily viewable and usable
• Minimalism – fewer pages, with simpler designs
• User-friendly experience – comfortable for users
• Attractive content – simple, easy to get and informative at the same time

But crucial web design mistakes hamper your business website’s ability to meet the above-mentioned criteria. Some of the common web design mistakes that small business make are: 

1. Terrible Call to Action (CTA)

Lack of call to action or no call to action is a terrible mistake found on many small business websites.

Call to action guides visitors to do something. In a way, it is a gateway to your business. A good website should tell you:

• What to do
• Where to go

CTA should:

• Guide users well
• Be concise
• Be as simple as possible rather than creative

Some well-known examples of CTA are: Get Started for Free, Sign Up, Contact Us, Download Now, Subscribe, etc.

2. Search Engine Optimization Deficiency

Search engine rankings are based on Search Engine Optimization techniques. A good website must follow proper SEO techniques for the business to flourish. Often, when you do not create a website adhering to SEO techniques, it results in poor search engine performance. Here are some design mistakes that can hurt your SEO:

› Missing H1 Tags

Very often website designers and developers try to emphasize on the outlook of a website and ignore essential SEO elements. Removing an H1 tag is one of them. No matter how amazing the site looks, it won’t appear in the search engines because of the missing H1 tag. Use a descriptive H1 tag with the target keyword.

› Large Images and Media Files

Images and videos certainly enhance the beauty of a website, but they may also affect the site speed. Google rewards sites that load faster. You can use tools like Google Pagespeed Insights Test and Screaming Frog to identify if the page contains large images and media files. It is possible to re-upload the resized or compressed media files upon identification.

› Pop-ups

Pop-ups can negatively impact SEO. So, you should reconsider pop-up strategies if visitors don’t find those user-friendly.

› Text in Images

Search engines generally don’t read texts overlaid on images. Some websites include important titles or headings inside images. This is a bad practice and you should avoid it. Even if your image contains some text, restate that text content on your page.

› Infinite Scroll

Infinite scroll is harmful for SEO.  Search Engine robots only see the content that is primarily visible on the website. It doesn’t see the remaining elements that would load through infinite scrolling. Hence it has effects on SEO. But one can also make infinite scrolls search-friendly.

› Thin Content

Thin contents make your website’s SEO suffer. Common thin content related mistakes are:

• Not having enough detail information on your product or service pages. There is a higher chance of visitors turning into customers if descriptive content is present on these pages.
• Listing multiple products or services on one page confuses the search engine regarding what the page is about. 
• Search engines do not like plagiarized content. Also, content full of grammatical mistakes hurts the user experience of your website, which in turn affects the SEO.

You need to keep these critical SEO elements in mind while working on a new website or redesigning one.

3. Slow Loading Times

If your website loads slowly, you will most certainly lose the visitor. By slow, I mean anything that takes above 3 seconds to load.

Everyone wants to find their information fast.

4.Poor Mobile Site Experience

Poor mobile site experience is another mistake that people make often. People today are dependent on mobile devices and use them a lot to access the internet. So, with the number of mobile site visitors increasing with each passing day, you should take the responsive websites seriously to reach more people.

67% of users prefer buying products from mobile-friendly sites. 40% of users have changed to a competitor’s website due to facing poor mobile experience.

So, if your small business website isn’t mobile responsive, it’s high time to change that.

5. Lacking Content Quality

Content quality should be the prime concern while designing the website. Some key concerns might be:

• Sometimes the content is lengthy and irrelevant. It drives away the customers. Sometimes it is not enough to provide information to the customer.
• You should use images to create better and engaging content. But irrelevant images also ruin the quality of the content instead.
• It is important to take care of the poor use of whitespaces. Ads in the wrong places are also a matter of concern.

The topic and tone of your content must be suitable for your target audience.

6. No Website Mainenance

A lot of small businesses make the mistake of thinking web design is a one and done thing. But the fact is, with so much happening in the background of your website, it really is so important to invest in a maintenance plan to ensure it stays ticking over smoothly. Because you don’t want to find out from your customers that your site is down, or find that you are losing sales or enquiries because something isn’t functioning properly.

There’s a lot of truth in the saying that “first impressions always count. In fact, you have 15 seconds to make a good impression before your visitors make up their minds about what they think about your brand. 

Buyers aren’t waiting for your phone call and your sales pitch. They are researching online, trying to find the best product or service provider to solve a problem. That means your website has to act as your first impression – like the receptionist at the front desk, it sets the tone for what people think about interacting with your company. You want that first impression to be positive if you have any hope of turning website visitors into leads and then being able to nurture leads through to sales.

Strong visuals and a clean, organised design lend legitimacy to a website. These elements can also help establish trust in your brand, which is especially important if your website is trying to move a prospect closer towards buying. A user will equate the experience he or she has on your website with the experience they are likely to have with you in person.

Users will make a million different assumptions about your company or brand based solely on the website design. It’s our job to make sure the site sends out the message you want people to receive about your business.

When we assess a website we assess the following elements.

• Logo and branding
• Simple typography that is easy to read
• Defined colour palette
• Easy user interface tools and elements that work in intuitive ways
• Navigation that moves users through the site
• Strong images that showcase your brand
• Concise and targeted copy
• Easy to understand calls-to-action
• Your brand story told in a way that connects with users
• Modern design techniques and interface
• Mobile responsiveness

In our experience, the above elements play a large role in providing the user with the website experience they will have on your site.