· Boring Website Company · Guides · 6 min read
Three common mistakes when building your own website
Building your own website is tempting, but a few small things quietly cost you customers. Here are the three we see most often, and how we avoid them.
Plenty of small business owners have a go at building their own website, and there is nothing wrong with that. The tools make it look easy, and for a while it feels like you are saving money.
The trouble is that a website has a job to do. It needs to load quickly, work on whatever a visitor is holding, and make it easy for someone to find what they came for. When those things slip, you do not usually get an error or a warning. You just quietly lose customers who never tell you why they left.
Here are the three mistakes we see most often, and how we deal with them so you do not have to.
Mistake 1: images that are far too heavy
This is the most common one by a mile. You take a lovely photo on your phone, upload it, and it looks great on your screen. What you cannot see is that the file behind it is enormous.
There are two separate problems hiding here. The first is the size the image is shown at. A photo that only appears as a small thumbnail can still be loading at full camera resolution behind the scenes. The second is the file size itself. Even an image at the right dimensions can be several megabytes if it has not been saved properly.
Either way, the result is the same. The page crawls, especially on a phone with a weak signal, and Google’s speed test marks you down for it. A slow page costs you twice: visitors give up waiting, and you slip down the search results at the same time.
When we build a site, every image is sized to where it actually appears and saved so the file is as small as it can be while still looking sharp. It is dull, careful work, and it is exactly the sort of thing we take off your plate. You can see how we approach the whole build on our services page.
Mistake 2: a site that only really works on a computer
Most people build their website while sitting at a computer, so that is where they check it. It looks tidy, everything lines up, and off it goes.
Then a customer opens it on a phone and the whole thing falls apart. Text runs off the edge, buttons are too small to tap, and the menu is nowhere to be found. Given that most people will look you up on a phone, often standing in your car park or on the sofa in the evening, that is a lot of visitors having a poor experience.
A website needs to work just as well on a phone and a tablet as it does on a big screen. That is not something you can eyeball on your laptop and hope for the best. We check every site we build across phones, tablets and computers before it goes anywhere near your customers, so it works wherever they happen to be.
Mistake 3: a site that is hard to get around
You know your business inside out, so the layout that makes sense to you can leave a first-time visitor completely lost. They land on a page, cannot see where to go next, and close the tab.
A few simple things fix this, and they are easy to miss when you are building it yourself:
- Clear links and buttons. Every page should make it obvious what to do next, whether that is to call you, read about a service, or get a quote.
- Linking your own pages together. When your services page points to the right places and your other pages point back, visitors find what they need faster. It also helps you get found on Google, because it makes the shape of your site clear.
- A simple trail at the top of each page. A small line showing Home then Services then the page you are on lets people move back a step without hunting for the menu.
None of this is flashy, but it is the difference between a visitor becoming a customer and a visitor giving up. We build every site so the way through it is obvious, and we set out exactly what you get, and what it costs, on our pricing page.
The boring way round all three
The honest truth is that these mistakes are not hard to fix once you know about them. The catch is that you have to know about them, remember to check for them, and keep checking every time you change something.
That is the part we take off you. We build fast, tidy sites that work on every screen and are easy to get around, and once you are live we look after them so they stay that way. Nothing for you to log in to, learn or update. If you are a small business anywhere across North Wales, from Ruthin to the coast, that is the whole idea.
Common questions
How big should the images on my website be?
There are two parts to this. The size on screen should match where the image is shown, so a small logo is not secretly a huge photo shrunk down. The file itself should be as small as it can be while still looking sharp, usually well under 200KB for most photos. If that sounds fiddly, it is, and it is the sort of thing we handle for you as part of the build.
Do I really need my website to work on phones?
Yes. Most people who look you up will do it on a phone, often while they are out and about. If your site is awkward to use on a small screen, a good chunk of your visitors give up before they reach you.
What are breadcrumbs?
They are the small trail of links near the top of a page that shows where you are, for example Home then Services then a particular service. They let people step back without hunting for the menu, and they are one of the behind-the-scenes details that helps you get found on Google.
If you would rather spend your time running your business than second-guessing your website, tell us what you need and we will talk it through.