Websites can fail even before a single line of code is ever written. The success or failure of your website will very much depend on the competence or incompetence – of your web designer & how dedicated or lame they are in preparing your website for your market. 95% of sites will never make page 1 or page 2 of SERPs. Here are the worst web design planning mistakes in order:

(Please see: Top 60 Web Design Mistakes of 2009 for further information & resources)

1 – Poor Keyword Research – There are many tools available to web designers where keyword research is concerned – not using these is the single worst mistake a web designer can make. Other than confirming what you suspected, keyword research usually reveals many niche terms that visitors use when looking for your kind of business/service. The niche terms (long tail keywords) with less traffic may in fact be more desirable to you as visitors are usually much more specific just before they make a buying decision.

2 – No Competitor Research – Not checking out your competitors could prove costly in terms of wasted time/money – without competitor research you won’t be able to tell weather your page 1 competitors have a few or thousands of backlinks, and you wont be able tell how many content rich pages their websites have. Competitive research will also help you determine any areas you could improve as far as page planning is concerned. Moneysupermarket.com who usually rank no1 for ‘mortgage’ and have over 300 thousand backlinks & thousands of pages would hence cost a fortune to outrank

3 – Nothing Special to Offer – doing exactly the same thing as your competitors is likely to make you blend into the abyss of failed or failing websites. Quality web design is all about being different – hence unless you spend some time planning to be better than your competitors then you are likely to fail. Think about better content, better visitor experience, easier navigation, special offers – anything that distances you away from the average – If you make the effort so will your visitor

4 – Poor Content Quality – if you have done your competitor research then you will know how much quality content you have to write to match your competitors. Both quality & quantity of text content is important – paragraphs should be no more than a few lines long, headings should contain your researched keywords. Planning this in advance will help improve your website ranking & conversion rates.

5 – Lack of Page Planning – failing to plan each of your pages correctly will cause you a problem with ‘on page factors’ – these affect your position in search engines. The following should contain your researched keywords: page names, directory names, titles, descriptions, headings, footers, menu text, link text & paragraphs. Your menus should be simple/ text selectable & your primary keyworded heading should be displayed high on page. Your contact details should always be found easily.

6 – No Plan for Marketing – if your aim is to write a website which will drive business through web traffic and you haven’t considered how this traffic will magically appear then you haven’t made a marketing plan. Depending how competitive your industry is – you may need to build 10s, 100s or 1000s of backlinks using web partners, directories & blogs. This may take hours/week/years hence you will need a plan with timescales.

7 – Hosting Overseas – planning to host your website overseas is also a big mistake as many search engines use ‘Geo Targeting’ in their ranking algorithms – worse still – your website will almost certainly load slower than if hosted with a reputable host in your home country. So savings here are not worth making. Always check your hosts IP address to insure the servers really are based where the host claims they are – yes there are hosts that tell big fat lies.

8 – Poor use of Colours – you have approximately 3 seconds to make your first impression hence insure your colour scheme is perfect for your website & is unlikely to offend your visitors. Avoid luminous colour schemes & take care when designing websites geared for other countries as certain colours have major cultural significance. Avoid using any more than 3 colours in your scheme & insure these are web safe & matched well. Poor planning in this area is likely to make your website look amateur.

9 – Poor Choice of Fonts – choosing fonts that are tough to read makes it hard work for your visitors and even worse for anyone with visual impairment. Use basic fonts such as Arial & Helvetica wherever possible, else use fonts that are clear & match your website theme well.

10 – Website Name & Suffix – choose a domain that contains your keywords & select the correct domain suffix (top level domain) – whilst using your keywords in your domain is not essential, it helps with towards your page ranking. Choosing the wrong suffix will not help you achieve listings in the right territory. Common UK TLD’s:

.com – commercial/ecommerce website (UK &/or International)

.co.uk – typical uk corporate website

.net – larger network website – typically used by web hosts

.biz – almost purely for business-to-business sites

.org.uk – group, charity or organisation

.info – informational sites – non e-commerce

.name – For identity purposes of an individual or organization

.ltd.uk – UK ltd company

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