Some time ago we talked about The 8 most common mistakes when creating virtual stores, with the aim of helping owners improve their customers' shopping experience and make the profits they had long hoped for.

On this occasion we want to talk to you about the 8 most common mistakes when creating a website, those errors that hinder the experience of your users and that do not allow you effectively position yourself in the first places on Google.

We are all human and we can make mistakes, but we can also correct them, so continue reading this article to find out if you make any of these mistakes and make the appropriate corrections.

1. Design and user experience

As with online stores, design and user experience should always be the key factors to keep in mind when creating a website.

An attractive and user-friendly design is one that displays all the information in an organized and easy-to-find manner, combining it with the essence and personality of the brand.

A website with lots of text, few images, poorly structured layout and complex navigation will only make people who enter leave immediately.

If you are thinking of creating a website, it is best to invest with experts who know about web design with User Experience and User Interface, which will guarantee you a professional and functional website.

2. Responsive design

Nowadays, every website must have a responsive design, that is, it can be navigated from a mobile device without any problem.

Recent studies confirm In 2020, 671% of users who browse the Internet do so from mobile devices, so if your website is not designed to be viewed and navigated from these devices, you are losing a large number of users. In addition, Google penalizes websites that do not have this design, affecting their positioning.

3. Website loading speed

The loading speed of a website is essential. You can have a great design, striking images and innovative content, but if all of this does not load quickly, the person who enters will leave.

The proper loading time for a website should be 3 seconds or less, so your website should be optimized to load in this time range. To achieve this, avoid using the following in your website programming:

• Excessive use of JavaScript for animations and transitions
• Very heavy images
• Embed multimedia content, such as videos, audios or slides

The hosting of your website is also very important, it must be fast and have enough space to store all the information on your website.

Consider looking for hosting plans that suit your needs and guarantee good service.

Never save on hosting service.

4. Autoplay music and videos.

Multimedia content is good material for a website and can help a lot with SEO positioning, but it is a serious mistake, firstly to embed it directly into the website (as it makes it heavy and slow to load) and secondly to have it play automatically (as it can interrupt and distract your user).

If you want to add this type of content, the best thing you can do is upload it to a platform (such as YouTube or SoundCloud) and use the code that these platforms generate to display a visualization of the video or audio on your website.

Be very careful to give users the opportunity to choose whether or not they want to play the video or audio.

5. Forgotten online chats

If you want to include an online chat on your website, you must be willing to answer it. When a user uses the chat, it is because they want to resolve a question and this method is the fastest way to get the answer they want. If the user writes in the chat and does not get an answer, they will simply leave your website.

Create a schedule for your chat and try to answer your users' questions as quickly as possible. If you find that you don't have the time or the ability to manage a chat, consider hiring a "chatbot", that is, artificial intelligence that answers, based on training, the most frequently asked questions that users may have.

6. Untimely pop-ups

Pop-ups are great ways to highlight important information, such as discounts, coupons or breaking news, but you need to know when they should appear.

If a user enters a website and is greeted with a pop-up, the person will immediately close it. The pop-up should be a complement, an addition; ideally it should appear when they have found what they are looking for. For example, if they are viewing the prices of your services, when they reach the end of the page, a pop-up may appear about a special discount.

As a rule, a pop-up that appears within the first 60 seconds after the website fully loads is considered intrusive and annoying, so try to schedule them to appear some time later.

7. Broken internal links

If there is something that really annoys users, it is visiting a website and seeing “we are sorry, the page you are looking for no longer exists.” This type of thing makes people leave your website and causes Google to penalize you.

To avoid these errors, you must perform a correct redirection using 301 and 302 codes. What these codes do is that when people enter a page, they are immediately redirected to the new page. This also serves to pass all the authority of a page to its new destination.

8. Expired domain

Remember, your domain must be renewed every year, so put your domain renewal date on your calendar. If your domain expires, people can't access your website, which means you lose potential customers.