Top Web Design Mistakes Nigerian Businesses Make

Today competition is so high, especially in areas that deal with digital marketing and any business, especially in Nigeria, needs an online presence to address the increased internet usage. Currently, Nigeria has more than 108 million internet users, out of which 85% use mobile internet; thus Nigerian companies need to focus on website efficiency. Nevertheless, a lot of corporate websites still follow practices that reduce the effectiveness and usability of their site. Another strategy which Nigerian businesses should embrace is the Mobile-First Design, where an organisation makes sure that any website they have is optimised for mobile devices since most times, this is where the traffic starts.

In this blog post, we will present the list of the most common web design threats that many Nigerian businesses fall for and offer recommendations on how to avoid them. Knowing these vices, business owners can design their websites to be more visually appealing but, more importantly, more effective.

 

1. Neglecting Mobile-First Design

One of the biggest mistakes companies make is to develop the layout for the workspace first while neglecting mobile users. This is a significant oversight in Nigeria where a vast majority of internet users connect to the Internet using their handheld devices. A Mobile-First Design makes sure that your website is optimized for mobile devices as well as loads fast. This is important as from the Google algorithm update, it became evident that Google ranking will penalize a site that is not friendly to mobile users.

In order not to fall into this trap businesses should strive to have a good mobile experience. These areas include employing enhanced font size, button formats that are finger-friendly, and smaller picture sizes for enhanced speeds.

 

2. Slow Loading Times

The prominent problem of today’s highernet is that patience is not granted by people: thus, according to surveys, 53 % of internet users expect the site to load in 3 seconds. A lot of Nigerian businesses commit the cardinal sin of putting up bulky images, videos, and every kind of plugin that drags the site down. In a country with fluctuating mobile internet connections, a website must load fast so the consumers are retained.

A website should have optimized images, cached browsers and use a Content Delivery Network (CDN) to enhance site loading. Part of user experience, and more importantly, it relates to one of the ranking factors specific to Google search – the speed of the web page in question.

 

3. Overcomplicating the Design

Some Nigerian businesses have fallen under the misconception that downloads are necessary for any website they design, thereby packing too much information in their sites, too many colours, or flashy animations. Of course, creativity is good; however, it is necessary to remember that if the structure of a website is too complicated, a visitor cannot understand how he can move on the site.

The solution is to increase the simplicity of the forms while stressing their usability and effectiveness. This is important to ensure that users are free to explore the most vital parts of the website while minimally being disrupted by other task-invoking cues. Consumers understand that a site doesn’t have to be slick to be effective; it just has to be understandable.

 

4. Poor Navigation Structure

Another is when the web design has a complicated design of, or badly sown, website map. People using these sites must be able to directly access what they are searching for with ease probably in two clicks. If your website has a large number of links in its menu or if the most relevant pages are deep-sixed into subcategories, the visitors will be back out in despair.

To avoid this, Nigerian businesses should make sure that they have organized their site with a strong orientation. Some of the tips for this include; grouping related pages, using simple labels on the menus and ensuring the usability of important links such as the ‘About Us’, ‘Services’, and ‘Contact’ links on the homepage. The better you make the visitor able to get the information they are looking for, the longer he/she will spend on your site. 

 

5. Ignoring SEO Best Practices

It is crucial to understand that everyone wants their website to show up in the search engine result pages, but the majority of Nigerian businesses fail to pay attention to this aspect of web design. Failure to do so means your ability to make your site visible to potential customers is limited.

To stop this, businesses must ensure SEO into web design is integrated correctly from the onset. This involves ensuring that the title tags, the meta descriptions, and applying proper heading structure (H1, H2, H3) with keywords such as “Nigerian businesses” and “ web design mistakes” appropriately. Other factors include improving the speed of your website, making the design mobile responsive or friendly, and setup up SSL encryptions.

 

6. Ambiguous Call-to-Actions for Consumers

A website’s ultimate purpose is to persuade people to become customers or clients while many Nigerian organizations’ websites do not possess clear global CTAs. They will be confused as to what their next step is most probably subscribing to your newsletter, contacting your company or making a purchase from you.

Contacts and ‘Calls to Action’ should be plain straightforward, and radiantly located throughout your site. Thus, taglines like “Sign Up Now ”, “Contact Us, Today ”, or even “Get a Free Quote” may lead the users in the right direction. Ctas should always be visible from readily distinguishable colored text or bigger buttons.

 

7. Not Utilizing Analytics

It also emerged that most Nigerian businesses are unaware of their website traffic monitoring via tools such as Google Analytics. When there is no available data it becomes hard to determine whether any change or lack thereof is effective or ineffectual. Evaluating the pages displays essential information about the users and their behaviour, the bounce rates and the pages that are highly performing. which pages are making good sales.

That way, analytics become an intrinsic part of your website in that they can be used to inform changes to the website that will make it more effective in the long term. For instance, for a specific web page, a relatively high bounce rate is suggestive of the fact that perhaps, the content found on the page is not sufficiently compelling and may need revision, or the page takes too long to load – developing an effective marketing strategy requires careful interpretation and analysis of the data and information being generated.

 

Conclusion

By steering clear of these frequently made design errors, web users are bound the enhance their experience enhancing engagement with potential clients and hence will help in the expansion of business. Mobile-First Design approach, website velocity, minimalism and WSO will allow Nigerian firms to design and develop websites that not only attract traffic but also convert it into sales.

Today, your website may be the customer’s first touch point with your business hence it is very important. It is consequently important that Nigerian businesses avoid the following mistakes while improving on the best practices as outlined above, to have a website that is as effective a marketing tool as is desirable.