The 5 Most Common Mistakes to Avoid When DIYing Your Website
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At BrandWell we work with a lot of clients who previously DIY’d their websites and could never quite get it to the point where they were confident in it. I wanted to share with you the 5 most common mistakes that we saw people making when DIY’ing their websites, and hopefully help you avoid making them on your own website too.
#1 Not telling people right away what it is that you do
This is something we often teach our custom design clients as well but it’s really easy to think about only the design of your site and not at all about the strategy. You can have a beautifully designed website but if there was no strategy behind it and the messaging is not there, you’re never going to get people to take action when they visit it.
Tip: I always recommend having a captivating headline right when somebody lands on your site. You have about 3 seconds to capture their attention and know they’re in the right place and then persuade them to stick around.
#2 Using inconsistent fonts throughout your website
I’m going to bundle two mistakes into this one and that is using a lot of different fonts on your site or you’re choosing the wrong fonts. I see a lot of people who love that hand letter script font, and that can be really beautiful but if it’s not legible or easy to read, do not use it. You could use it only where you have a large headline but don’t try to put your 9 pt. call to action button in a script that nobody can read. If they have any confusion at all, you’re going to lose that person.
Tip: I would say to never stray beyond 3 fonts. A headline font should be consistent with all of your headers, a paragraph font should be consistent with all of your paragraph and body copy, and if you want a third font maybe something that is used on your buttons or ties into your logo.
#3 Using inconsistent photo filters
I understand that if you are DIY’ing your website, you probably aren’t hiring a photographer to come in and shoot beautiful brand images. That might be the goal but it’s not always the reality. If you’re going to use stock photography or photos you shoot with your iPhone, photo filters matter.
Tip: I use Lightroom presets on all my photos for social media so that all the photos look very similar.
#4 Making it all about you when it should be all about your customer
Again, another very common mistake that we see is that people feel they have to shout all of their accomplishments but at the end of the day the person coming to your website just wants to know how you can help them. What are you offering, how can it meet their needs, how much does it cost. These are the things that they’re looking for. Can you slip in those accomplishments, sure! But, it’s so important that we’re not just tooting our own horns, that when somebody reads the copy it’s really about them, your customer. Make sure you’re relating to those little dramas in their life that you understand.
Tip: Connect with them first on a level of I see you, I understand you, I know why this is so hard, and then share that there is a better way. From there you can segway into your offerings and why they’re awesome and why they’re the right solution for them.
#5 Not having an explicitly clear call to actions
It is very important to have clear calls to actions peppered throughout your website. I’m a big believer in having buttons for your call to actions and it’s actually proven that buttons get more clicks than hyperlinked text. They are just easier to click on especially on mobile. A lot of times, people will be visiting your website on their phones. You want to make sure that what you’re designing on your desktop is going to translate well to mobile and often times when it comes to your call to actions that means using buttons.
Tip: This also goes into making sure when you’re designing the call to actions, that they are clear. We see a lot of people being cutesy and clever. Sometimes it’s just better to be clear than cute and those are the CTAs that actually get clicked and end up converting.
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KEEP BRANDING WELL,
Victoria
