Taking part in a trend isn’t a bad thing in and of itself. After all, trends often exist for a reason. And who would take back the Macarena? (Okay, a lot of people.) But sometimes a popular choice has worn out it’s welcome – or was never all that great in the first place. We think the list below should be avoided by anyone looking for a strong and healthy website. Rebel a little!
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Endless scroll home pages. We can’t deny the eye-popping “ooh la la” look of these. These kind of sites appear to be charming at first. But when you’re a visitor actually trying to get something done on the site, the appeal grows old quickly. It’s also not great for SEO, because without separate URLs for each section, you’re only getting credit from Google for one page. And speaking of SEO, which we do more than is probably healthy…
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Focusing on SEO instead of user experience. As anyone from Sergey Brin to a new blogger could tell you, SEO is important. Really important. Lost in the conversation, though, is the fact that it’s not the be-all end-all of a website. The other must-have? User experience. Even if thousands (or millions!) of visitors flock to your site, if they’re all leaving immediately because your site is confusing or hard to navigate, it won’t mean anything. In fact, having a high bounce rate will actually lower your ranking. Before you even say the words “Search Engine Optimization” out loud, it’s important to make sure that your site is user-friendly. In that vein…
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Ditching QA to save money. You wouldn’t be blamed for thinking that skipping the Quality Assurance process is something only done by beginners with little to no budget. The truth, however, is that even companies with a thousand employees and revenue in the hundreds of millions routinely forego the full QA process in what can only be described as “Penny wise, pound foolish.” Yes, skipping QA will save you money up front. But it would be impossible to put a price on the potential losses you’ll incur in the long run when your site has broken links, grammatical errors, and any other number of bugs.
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Not being transparent with pricing. And yes, “call us for a quote!” can fall under this. If there’s truly no way to give even a ballpark figure without getting the nitty gritty details of a potential customer’s situation, then you’d be forgiven for not including pricing on your site. But generally speaking, you should give visitors an idea of what your service will cost. After all, forcing people to email or call you for this info can easily result in false hopes and time wasted on both ends.
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Going overboard on social media. Social media presence is a no-brainer, right? Far from it. What’s often thought of as the easiest aspect of marketing your site can actually be a labyrinth of hoops to jump through. What should you share? What kind of tone should you have? How often should you post? If those questions make your head spin, you’re not alone. But if there’s one aspect above all that will make your users want to un-like or unfollow your brand, it’s going overboard with quantity instead of quality. The motivator for what you share on social media should be, “Will this entertain and/or help my followers?” not “I haven’t tweeted yet today – I need to share something, anything before the day is over!”
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Making mobile users access your site via app. Apps are awesome when they’re done right. But even a well-done, high quality app can’t usually compete with a site that’s properly optimized for mobile. If you’re asking your users to download yet another app to their already crowded phone, you better have a good reason.
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Having a “set it and forget it” strategy. Setting up a website is a lot of work, so it feels understandably great once you reach the point of being ready to share it with the world. After all of the blood, sweat, and tears you put into it, the idea of having to do more work is daunting to say the least. But think again of all of the work you put into setting it up (or cash you put into paying your web designer) – do you really want to let all of that go to waste by not keeping your website fresh? If Google doesn’t see that you’re adding new content to your site regularly, you can kiss your ranking goodbye. This doesn’t mean you have to add 100 new pages every day – far from it. But if a year passes and your site looks and consists of exactly the same material, not only will your SEO suffer, but you won’t be giving past users a reason to come back.
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Letting comments go wild – or restricting them completely. This is a tough one – no one wants to try to wrangle a site with a YouTube-style cesspool of comments. But there’s also nothing more frustrating than having something to contribute and being confronted with “Comments on this post are not allowed.” The middle-ground? There’s no easy answer to this one, but a strong plug-in can at least take the spam away. We recommend Akismet.
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Excessive use of plug-ins. Okay, so we just recommended a plug-in above. We’re not advocating for the use of no plug-ins at all – sometimes, they’re simply the easiest, most reliable workaround on a site. But there are several reasons why too many plug-ins can be disaster for an otherwise great site. The first, and perhaps most important, is speed. No, not the Keanu Reeves movie from the 90’s, but the actual loading time of your site. A website stuffed to the gills with plug-ins is going to have a hard time competing with a more nimble site, and if your site is taking 15 seconds per page to load, all of your otherwise fantastic plug-ins won’t be able to shine when a user navigates away. Another potential danger of plug-ins is the constant need to “babysit” them. That is, update them, check for bugs, make sure they’re working with the latest version of WordPress, etc. Your time could be better spent editing the content of your site, working with your customers, or even sitting on the couch reading a magazine. Endlessly chasing after plug-in updates is not a fun job (trust us, we’ve been there).
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Constant self-promotion. You’re amazing, we get it. Obviously, or we wouldn’t be on your site or reading your social media posts. Reminding visitors of your skills and worth in a clean, unobtrusive manner is great, but when it’s the only thing you or your site can talk about, there’s a problem. “Show, don’t tell” can be massaged back to “Show and tell” – but when it starts and ends with “Tell,” you may get an eye roll out of those reading. Look at the article you’re reading for example. Do we want you to use our services? Sure, if you have a need. But the goal isn’t to cram our skills down your throat – we just want to spread the gospel of happy, healthy websites. (And we just really like making lists.)
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