Nikka Estefani
Category: Design Talks
Many entrepreneurs do their best to make their online businesses as promising as it could be, both for themselves and their potential customers.
They make a great and promising product, spend money on marketing campaigns in hopes of attracting customers and make a sale, and they even deliver their product or service well to their customers. These are all great foundation to start and build your online business. However, since you are doing business online, there is one thing you should not forget about your business: your website (or app).
Many entrepreneurs seem to think that starting an e-commerce store or blog is enough to get them started. Yes, it is enough to get started, but if you don’t take care of it enough, it will soon negatively impact your business. In fact, you could be losing potential income just because you have a poor website!
Your website or app – specifically, its UX or UI – is very important, too. In fact, it is important because it is your very storefront in the digital world. Try to imagine going on a messy restaurant or an ugly store, it is not pleasing, right? The same is true if you have a messy website – it is not pleasing for your customers; hence, they tend to go away and find another store.
So, what are the common poor UX/UI practices entrepreneurs often to do? We have identified at least 7 poor UX/UI practices that can seriously hurt your online business if you do not take action to fix it. They are:
- Messy website
- Your website lacks essential information
- Your website takes years to load
- Not mobile-friendly
- Buttons are hard to find
- Buttons don’t work
- Poor visual design
1) Messy website
A messy website is probably one of the most common, if not the most common, poor UX practice made by website owners and online entrepreneurs alike. And yes, a messy website alone is enough to ruin your business!
So, what is a messy website? A messy website simply means that it is hard to navigate on your website. Essential buttons don’t immediately appear or are hard to find. It takes a lot of cognitive load just to get from selecting a product to making a purchase – hence, some customers just give up the purchasing process. See how you can lose money just by having a messy website?
What is the solution for a messy website? Very simple – simplify your website. Be sure to place essential buttons and pages right at the very front of your main page. If you need to remove fancy widget (such as the dropdown menu, for instance) as they take cognitive load as well, then remove it.
The most important thing for your website is this: that visitors and customers will be able to navigate it easily. If they can’t navigate it easily, if they took a lot of trial-and-error just to get to your purchase section, they’ll be discouraged to make the sale (or buy and never come back) and this will seriously hurt your business.
In short, make your website simple and easy to use.
2) Your website lacks essential information
This is somehow related to the point above, but sometimes, some website don’t simply show essential information or pages.
What are the essential information or pages for any website? Here are the 3 most common pages you must have:
FAQ – this should serve as a guide for your customers about your business policies and how to navigate your store in general.
About Us – yes, some may look for your “About Us” page because they want to know who they are dealing with or what the background of your business is.
Contact Page – some people would want to contact you, so be sure to place a contact form for them to write their message to. Chat boxes are great, but they don’t necessarily replace contact forms because some messages are too long for a chat box and more appropriate to be sent as an email.
3) Your website takes years to load
Okay, maybe it does not take years (heaven forbid!), but if your website takes more time to load than a 1-hour YouTube video, then you know you need to work on your load time.
Yes, patience is a virtue, but still, nobody likes to wait a few minutes after clicking one of your pages!
4) Not mobile-friendly
Some websites appear well and beautiful on laptops and PC, but becomes a mess when used in a tablet – or worse, mobile device!
Mobile responsiveness goes beyond visual aesthetics – a not mobile-friendly website can hurt some essential buttons when used in a mobile device. Imagine losing your website’s buy button because it is not responsive to mobile devices!
5) Buttons are hard to find
It is also related to the first point (about messy websites), but sometimes, buttons don’t even appear at all! For instance, some payment buttons of subscription websites or apps appear only on the due of the subscription. While the designer may have good intentions, on the part of the user, it can mean distress – “Oh, what if the payment button don’t appear on the due date and I fail to pay?!” Never do they think, “Oh, this disappear/appear button mechanism is cool!”
6) Buttons don’t work
If you have your buttons in place, the next thing you need to make sure is that, they work. Common sense? Yes. But if you tried purchasing on a store or registering on a forum but it says something like, “We cannot process your (activity). Please try next time”, and assuming it’s not because of poor connection, you know you need to do something about your system.
This applies to pages, too – be sure that the pages you link, especially the important ones, still work.
7) Poor visual design
Now, this can be subjected to personal preference, but it’s important you have a basic background of how visual design works. One common mistake here is when text color does not blend well with the background color – like a dark text blending on a dark background or light text to light background. A good visual will do a long way for your business – but so are bad ones!
Conclusion
Poor UX/UI practices will severely affect your business, as cited in the examples above. But the good news is, you can fix them if you practice any of these poor UX/UI practices. So check out your website or app, identify any potential problems, and fix it right away!
