Common mistakes when building a website (and how to avoid them)

The most common mistake when building a website is not a technical one: it is thinking of the website as a pretty brochure instead of a tool that has to bring you customers. Almost all the others are born from there: slow websites, impossible to use on mobile, without a single line of copy written to sell and with the phone number hidden in the last corner. In this guide I tell you the mistakes I see over and over when a business brings me its website to fix it, and how to avoid them from the start.

I have spent years developing and rescuing websites for businesses in Málaga, and I can assure you that most of these mistakes are not down to bad luck, but to decisions that seemed reasonable at the time. The good news is that almost all of them can be prevented if you know what to look for. You do not need to be technical: you just need to understand what each piece of your website is for and what happens when it fails.

This is the mother of all mistakes, the one that drags all the others behind it. Many businesses order a website because "you have to have one", without stopping to think about what they want it to do: get people to call?, fill in a form?, buy?, book an appointment? When there is no clear goal, the website ends up being a pretty catalogue that leads nowhere, and then comes the usual complaint: "I have a website but nothing comes in".

Before choosing colours or photos, define what action you want the visitor to take. That action, your main goal, has to be present and clear on every page: a visible button, a phone number at hand, a simple form. Everything else revolves around that. A website with a clear goal almost designs itself; a website without a goal is a waiting room with no way out.

Speed is one of those mistakes you do not notice until you have already lost the customer. A website that is slow to load loses visits before it even shows what it offers: people do not wait, they close it and go to the competition. And it is not just a matter of patience; search engines measure the loading experience and tend to place fast websites ahead. A slow website penalises you twice: in visits and in ranking.

The causes are usually the same: huge unoptimised images, templates loaded with features you do not use, and a pile of accumulated extensions. Google measures all this with specific metrics, the so-called Core Web Vitals, which you can consult in the official Google Search Central documentation. Optimising images, trimming the code and removing what is unnecessary are the first measures I apply when a slow website reaches me.

• Upload images at the real size they are displayed, not multi-megabyte uncompressed photos.
• Avoid templates and extensions that load features your business does not need.
• Measure speed on mobile, not just on your computer with a good connection.
• Remember that every extra second of loading is a percentage of visits that leave.

Today most of your visits come from mobile, and yet I still see websites designed with only the computer screen in mind. The result is predictable: tiny text, buttons impossible to tap with a finger, menus that spill off the screen and forms that are a chore to fill in. Each of those details is a customer who gives up halfway.

A well-built website looks and works perfectly on any screen, and today the sensible thing is to design it thinking about mobile first. It is not enough for it to "be visible": it has to be comfortable to use with the thumb, with text readable without zooming and buttons that are large and at hand. Before you consider a website good, pick it up on your own phone and try to do what you want a customer to do. If it is hard for you, it will be twice as hard for a stranger in a hurry.

Here two mistakes that go hand in hand come together. The first is the copy: websites full of empty phrases like "we are industry leaders" and "quality and commitment", which say nothing and do not tell the customer what they gain by hiring you. Good copy talks about the customer's problems and how you solve them for them, in normal words, not in brochure jargon. Writing for the reader, and not to show off, is half the work of a website that converts.

The second mistake is hiding the contact details. I find websites where finding the phone number or the form is a treasure hunt. If someone wants to hire you, do not put obstacles in their way: the phone, the WhatsApp and the form have to be visible and repeated throughout the page, not just in a section called "Contact" at the end of the menu. A short form, with just the right fields, converts far better than one that asks for half your life story. If you want to go deeper into how to design a page that converts, I develop it in my article on the landing page that converts.

Many websites are born invisible. They are published without thinking about how people are going to find them on Google: without worked titles and descriptions, without a clear page structure, without copy that answers what your customer is searching for. Having a gorgeous website that nobody finds is like opening the best shop in the world in a dead-end alley. SEO is not later magic; it is thought out from the design of the website.

The other related mistake is treating the website as something you do once and forget. A website is a living thing: it needs updates, backups, checking that the forms still work and that nothing has broken. Without maintenance, sooner or later something fails just when you need it most. Define from the start who takes care of it and how often; I explain it in depth in my article on why to maintain your website.

• Work the titles and descriptions of each page with what your customer searches for in mind.
• Structure the pages with a clear hierarchy, do not cram everything into a single one.
• Schedule automatic backups so you do not depend on luck.
• Check every so often that forms, links and buttons still work.

If you look closely, almost all of these mistakes share a common root: seeing the website as an ornament instead of a working tool. When you think first about what you want to achieve, who is going to read you and how you make it easy for them, the colours and photos fall into place on their own. Aesthetics matter, of course, but after function, not before. A pretty website that does not sell is money wasted; a simple website that brings customers is an investment.

I am Elmar Mamedova, a full stack developer in Málaga. I create websites that are fast, clear and built for local businesses, and I rescue the ones that were made in a hurry and never quite work. If you suspect your website makes any of these mistakes, tell me your case and I'll honestly tell you what is going on and where I would start. If you are about to launch it, my checklist to launch a website will come in handy.