When creating a website from scratch, you have to go through a number of phases before it’s actually in a workable state, and one of them is the development phase. You can say that it’s the most crucial process of building a website as it can be disastrous if it isn’t done right.

Read on and find out more about the common pitfalls that you can face when developing a website.

The Web Development Phase

Before we get into the actual tips though, let’s refresh on what the web development phase is. Usually, it’s simultaneously done along with designing your website as it’s all about the code at this point that will bring the designs to life.

Having knowledge of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript is a must to create your website unless you decide to call for a professional web designer. The designs will then be integrated into your choice of content management system like WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, etc.

The development stage is where you can add functionality and interactive elements to your site. User experience all depends on the outcome of this phase, which will then affect your website’s performance. Hence there’s no room for mistakes!

7 Common Pitfalls

Do keep in mind the common mistakes listed down below if you want to end up with a smooth website design that your visitors can’t get enough of.

The Design Is Not Focused on Your Audience

When creating your own website, you tend to have an image on how you want your website to look. However, it doesn’t guarantee its success if you don’t have basic knowledge of how the web industry works. To put it simply, it revolves around the target audiences and their user experience.

Being completely unique and original is great, but when it comes to web design, there are best practices and general rules that you should consider. A number of examples would be leaving space between elements, applying the rule of thirds, grouping similar elements together, and so on.

What you can be entirely unique with is when choosing a domain name. Use the help of domain name generators to create one. Check www.hostinger.com/tutorials/domain-name-generators/ for more information.

Not Designed to Scale

Launching a website is like starting a brand. You should have in mind that it will grow and the site needs to accommodate the increasing amount of data and visitors. Many newcomers tend to create a minimum viable product since they want to release their websites as soon as possible.

It’s a great strategy to gain early traffic, but as time goes by, you will need to recode a few aspects due to the expansion. By being ready from the start, you will be saved from all that trouble and won’t waste precious time.

Missed SEO

A website should be search engine optimized all around. The SEO aspects are not solely writing good content, adding image alt text, or keyword research. The site’s architecture should also be crawlable so that search engines can easily identify content from your website.

You can implement a flat site architecture where links to other pages are accessible from the homepage. However, remember to build a strategic internal linking structure without spamming or stuffing keywords on your homepage.

Keep in mind that you don’t want to confuse visitors or go against the search engine terms and conditions. Other than that, try to avoid directing the links to new windows as well. Having proper headings and subheadings also helps crawlers to read what your website is about.

Website is Not Reader Friendly

After the design, comes the content, and as always, it should focus more on your readers. Using artistic fonts can make your website beautiful or aesthetic looking, but if visitors find it hard to read, then they won’t be staying around.

The size of the fonts matters as well. The letters shouldn’t be too big or too small, and ideally able to adapt to different devices. Other than that, where you place your content is just as important. If images are bigger than the text or the main content are hard to find, then say goodbye to your potential traffic.

Unstrategic CTAs

Any webmaster would want their visitors to stay longer and read more of their content. One way to convert readers is to lure them to click on another page through call to action buttons. These buttons need to be clear and attractive as users can be triggered by visual cues nowadays.

You need to carefully choose the right words, colors, and place them in strategic places. It won’t make any difference if the buttons are hard to find or camouflaged in the background. CTAs may be a small element on a website, but it can make a significant impact.

Website Not Tested on Different Browsers

When you’re developing a website, you tend to be on one browser 90% of the time, whether it’s Chrome, Safari, Firefox, etc. Usually, browser compatibility tests are put near the completion of a site, and at times you might forget about them altogether.

Before that happens or worse, discovering major issues at the last minute, you can schedule switches among different browsers. It can help you dodge browser specific errors and detect problems earlier rather than later.

Not Making Your Website Mobile Friendly

Almost half of the global web traffic is coming from mobile users. Webmasters should take that advantage to develop mobile-optimized websites. Yet, it’s not merely squashing the site down to fit into a mobile screen.

The design should be responsive. It needs to be reconfigured to adapt to different screen resolutions so that it’ll give a much better user experience. Having a mobile-friendly website will definitely boost your rank in search engines.

Conclusion

When you’ve finally on the stage of developing a website, make sure to check your plans thoroughly. Have you contemplate on the points above and review your objectives. The end product will determine whether your site will soar up on search engines or it’ll go the opposite way. Good luck, and have fun creating!